The Trail of 98 (12 page)

You saw them in the canyon at the trail top, staggering in the wind that
seemed to blow every way at once. You saw them blindly groping for the caches
they had made but yesterday and now fathoms deep under the snowdrift. You saw
them descending swiftly, dizzily, leaning back on their staffs, for the down
trail was like a slide. In a moment they were lost to sight, but to-morrow they
would come again, and to-morrow and to-morrow, the men of the Chilcoot.

The Trail of Travailsurely it was all epitomised in the tribulations of that
stark ascent. From my eyrie on its blizzard-beaten crest I could see the Human
Chain drag upward link by link, and every link a man. And as he climbed that
pitiless treadmill, on each man's face there could be deciphered the palimpsest
of his soul.

Oh, what a drama it was, and what a stage! The Trail of '98high courage,
frenzied fear, despotic greed, unflinching sacrifice. But over allits hunger
and its hope, its passion and its paintriumphed the dauntless spirit of the
Pathfinderthe mighty Pioneer.

Then I knew, I knew.
These silent, patient, toiling ones were the Conquerors of the Great White Land;
the Men of the High North, the Brotherhood of the Arctic Wild. No saga will ever
glorify their deeds, no epic make them immortal. Their names will be written in
the snows that melt and vanish at the smile of Spring; but in their works will
they live, and their indomitable spirit will be as a beacon-light, shining down
the dim corridors of Eternity.

I slept at a bunkhouse that night, and next morning I again made a call at
the tent within which lay Berna. Again Madam, in a gaudy wrapper, answered my
call, but this time, to my surprise, she was quite pleasant.

"No," she said firmly, "you can't see the girl. She's all prostrated. We've
given her a sleeping powder and she's asleep now. But she's mighty sick. We've
sent for a doctor."

There was indeed nothing to be done. With a heavy heart I thanked her,
expressed my regrets and went away. What had got into me, I wondered, that I was
so distressed about the girl. I thought of her continually, with tenderness and
longing. I had seen so little of her, yet that little had meant so much. I took
a sad pleasure in recalling her to mind in varying aspects; always she appeared
different to me somehow. I could get no definite idea of her;
ever was there something baffling,
mysterious, half revealed.

To me there was in her, beauty, charm, every ideal quality. Yet must my eyes
have been anointed, for others passed her by without a second glance. Oh, I was
young and foolish, maybe; but I had never before known a girl that appealed to
me, and it was very, very sweet.

So I went back to the restaurant and gave the fat cockney a note which he
promised to deliver into her own hands. I wrote:

Then once more I struck out for Bennett.

Our last load was safely landed in Bennett and the trail of the land was
over. We had packed an outfit of four thousand pounds over a thirty-seven-mile
trail and it had taken us nearly a month. For an average of fifteen hours a day
we had worked for all that was in us; yet, looking back, it seems to have been
more a matter of dogged persistence and patience than desperate endeavour and
endurance.

There is no doubt that to the great majority, the trail spelt privation,
misery and suffering; but they were of the poor, deluded multitude that never
should have left their ploughs, their desks and their benches. Then there were
others like ourselves to whom it meant hardship, more or less extreme, but who
managed to struggle along fairly well. Lastly, there was a minority to whom it
was little more than discomfort. They were the seasoned veterans of the trail to
whom its trials were all in the day's work. It was as if the Great White Land
was putting us to the test, was weeding out the fit from the unfit, was proving
itself a land of the Strong, a land for men.

And indeed our party was well qualified to pass the test of the trail. The
Prodigal was full of irrepressible enthusiasm, and always loaded to the muzzle
with ideas. Salvation Jim was a mine of
foresight and resource, while the Jam-wagon proved himself an
insatiable glutton for work. Altogether we fared better than the average
party.

We were camped on the narrow neck of water between Lindeman and Bennett, and
as hay was two hundred and fifty dollars a ton, the first thing we did was to
butcher the ox. The next was to see about building a boat. We thought of
whipsawing our own boards, but the timber near us was poor or thinned out, so
that in the end we bought lumber, paying for it twenty cents a foot. We were all
very unexpert carpenters; however, by watching others, we managed to make a
decent-looking boat.

These were the busy days. At Bennett the two great Cheechako armies
converged, and there must have been thirty thousand people camped round the
lake. The night was ablaze with countless camp-fires, the day a buzz of busy
toil. Everywhere you heard the racket of hammer and saw, beheld men in feverish
haste over their boat-building. There were many fine boats, but the crude
makeshift effort of the amateur predominated. Some of them, indeed, had no more
shape than a packing-case, and not a few resembled a coffin. Anything that would
float and keep out the water was a "boat."

Oh, it was good to think that from thenceforward, the swift, clear current
would bear us to our goal. No more icy slush to the knee, no more putrid
horse-flesh under foot, no more blinding blizzards and heart-breaking drift of
snows. But the blue sky would canopy us, the gentle breezes fan us, the warm
sun lock us in her arms.
No more bitter freezings and sinister dawns and weary travail of mind and body.
The hills would busk themselves in emerald green, the wild crocus come to
gladden our eyes, the long nights glow with sunsets of theatric splendour. No
wonder, in the glory of reaction, we exulted and laboured on our boat with
brimming hearts. And always before us gleamed the Golden Magnet, making us chafe
and rage against the stubborn ice that stayed our progress.

The days were full of breezy sunshine and at all times the Eager Army watched
the rotting ice with anxious eyes. In places it was fairly honeycombed now, in
others corroded and splintered into silver spears. Here and there it heaved up
and cracked across in gaping chasms; again it sagged down suddenly. There were
sheets of surface water and stretches of greenish slush that froze faintly
overnight. In large, flaming letters of red, the lake was dangerous, near to a
break-up, a death trap; yet every day the reckless ones were going over it to be
that much nearer the golden goal.

In this game of taking desperate chances, many a wild player lost, many a
foolhardy one never reached the shore. No one will ever know the number of
victims claimed by these black unfathomable waters.

It was the Professor who opened our eyes to the danger of crossing the lake.
He and the Bank clerk quarrelled over the wisdom of delay. The Professor was
positive it was quite safe. The ice was four
feet thick. Go fast over the weak spots and you
would be all right. He argued, fumed and ranted. They were losing precious time,
time which might mean all the difference between failure and success. It was
expedient to get ahead of the rabble. He, for one, was no craven; he had staked
his all on this trip. He had studied the records of Arctic explorers. He thought
he was no man's fool. If others were cowardly enough to hold back, he would go
alone.

The upshot of it was that one grey morning he took his share of the outfit
and started off by himself.

Said the Bank clerk, half crying:

"Poor old Pondersby! In spite of the words we had, we parted the best of
friends. We shook hands and I wished him all good-speed. I saw him twisting and
wriggling among the patches of black and white ice. For a long time I watched
him with a heavy heart. Yet he seemed to be getting along nicely, and I was
beginning to think he was right and to call myself a fool. He was getting quite
small in the distance, when suddenly he seemed to disappear. I got the glasses.
There was a big hole in the ice, no sleigh, no Pondersby. Poor old fellow!"

There were many such cases of separation on the shores of Lake Bennett.
Parties who had started out on that trail as devoted chums, finished it as
lifelong enemies. Tempers were ground to a razor-edge; words dropped crudely;
anger flamed to meet anger. You could scarcely blame them. They did
not realise that the trail
demanded all that was in a man of gentleness, patience and forbearance. Poor
human nature was strained and tested inexorably, and the most loving friends
became the most deadly foes forevermore.

One instance of this was the twins.

"Say," said the Prodigal, "you ought to see Romulus and Remus. They're
scrapping like cat and dog. Seems they've had a bunch of trouble right along the
lineyou know how the trail brings out the yellow streak in a man. Well, they're
both fiery as Hades, so after a particularly warm evening they swore that as
soon as they got to Bennett, they'd divvy up the stuff and each go off by his
lonesome. Somehow, they patched it up when they reached here and got busy on
their boat. Now it seems they've quarrelled worse than ever. Romulus is telling
Remus his real name and
vice-versa
. They're raking up old grievances of
their childhood days, and the end of it is they've once more decided to halve
tip the outfit. They're mad enough to kill each other. They've even decided to
cut their boat in two."

It was truly so. We went and watched them. Each had a bitter determination on
his face. They were sawing the boat through the middle. Afterwards, I believe,
they patched up their ends and made a successful trip to Dawson.

The ice was going fast. Strangers were still coming in over the trail with
awful tales of its horrors. Bennett was all excitement and seething life.
Thousands
of ungainly
boats, rafts and scows were waiting to be launched. Already craft were beginning
to come through from Lindeman, rushing down the fierce torrent between the two
lakes. From where we were camped we saw them pass. There were ugly rapids and a
fang-like rock, against which many a luckless craft was piled up.

It was the most fascinating thing in the world to watch these daring
Argonauts rush the rapids, to speculate whether or not they would get through.
The stroke of an oar, a few feet to right or left, meant unspeakable calamity.
Poor souls! Their faces of utter despair as they landed dripping from the water
and saw their precious goods disappearing in the angry foam would have moved a
heart of stone. As one man said, in the bitterness of his heart:

"Oh, boys, what a funny God we've got!"

There was a man who came sailing through the passage with a fine boat and a
rich outfit. He had lugged it over the trail at the cost of infinite toil and
weariness. Now his heart was full of hope. Suddenly he was in the whirl of the
current, then all at once loomed up the cruel rock. His face blanched with
horror. Frantically he tried to avoid it. No use. Crash! and his frail boat
splintered like matchwood.

But this man was a fighter. He set his jaw. Once more he went back over that
deadly trail. He bought, at great expense, a new outfit and had packers hustle
it over the trail. He procured a new
boat. Once more he sailed through the narrow canyon. His face
was set and grim.

Suddenly, like some iron Nemesis, once more loomed up the fatal rock. He
struggled gallantly, but again the current seemed to grip him and throw him on
that deadly fang. With another sickening crash he saw his goods sink in the
seething waters.

Did he give up? No! A third time he struggled, weary, heartbroken, over that
trail. He had little left now, and with that little he bought his third outfit,
a poor, pathetic shadow of the former ones, but enough for a desperate man.

Once more he packed it over the trail, now a perfect Avernus of horror. He
reached the river, and in a third poor little boat, again he sailed down the
passage. There was the swift-leaping current, the ugly tusk of rock staked with
wreckage. A moment, a few feet, a turn of the oar-blade, and he would have been
past. But, no! The rock seemed to fascinate him as the eyes of a snake fascinate
a bird. He stared at it fearfully, a look of terror and despair. Then for the
third time, with a hideous crash, his frail boat was piled up in a pitiful
ruin.

He was beaten now.

He climbed on the bank, and there, with a last look at the ugly snarl of
waters, and the jagged up-thrust of that evil rock, he put a bullet smashing
through his brain.

The ice was loose
and broken. We were all ready to start in a few days. The mighty camp was in a
ferment of excitement. Every one seemed elated beyond words. On, once more, to
Eldorado!

It was near midnight, but the sky, where the sun had dipped below the
mountain rim, was a sea of translucent green, weirdly and wildly harmonious with
the desolation of the land. On the bleak lake one could hear the lap of waves,
while the high, rocky shore to the left was a black wall of shadow. I stood by
the beach near our boat, all alone in the wan light, and tried to think calmly
of the strange things that had happened to me.