Jack Heaton, gold seeker

by A. Frederick Collins

It was not often that the dogs got into any very serious fights but there had been bad blood between Eileen’s Indian dogs and Jack’s and Bill’s dogs from the time they first met and they would have discarded the Indian dogs long before but as each team was short a dog and the two scrubs, as Bill called them, could haul their full share, they kept them.

At the first camp they made, going down the Big Black River, Link, one of the Indian dogs and Dave, of Jack’s team, got into a fight over so small a thing as a piece of fish that neither of them had, and before the boys could separate them Link lay very close to the edge of the world next to come. It was a calamity that this fight should have happened a day after instead of a week before they started for it proved to be the most costly dog-fight that was ever pulled off anywhere, bar none.

Bill was for leaving the dog and going on but Jack said it was best to stay in camp for a few days and let Link’s wound’s heal, for they had great need of him as both sleds were loaded to the guards and it was all that a full team of seven dogs each could haul. Then again Jack had conscientious scruples against shooting the dog or turning him loose in the wilds. (Perhaps because Link belonged to Eileen). But before Link was whole again another seven days had slipped by and spring was pressing winter hard for first place.

The days were getting longer and so warm that their thick fur clothing was quite uncomfortable and they must needs change into their mackinaws. The melting snow and running water everywhere made sledding overland out of the question but the trail was still holding on the river though here and there holes appeared and cracks separated the more solid stretches of ice. Time was up and they must push on.

Jack took the lead as he had Eileen on his sled and Bill’s outfit came on a little ways behind. Another day’s march and they came to some rapids where the air holes were larger and the ice bent under the weight of their treasure. Jack was ahead of his team picking the way across the treacherous trail when all of a sudden Bill let out a blood-curdling yell of the Apache variety, and on looking back he and Eileen saw that he and his sled and Jinx, the wheel dog had gone through the ice while Sate and the rest of the team were straining every muscle to the breaking limit to keep from being dragged down into the icy waters behind them. The pole that Bill had taken the precaution to carry saved him from going under but try as he would he could not get out.

Running back at top speed Jack had the situation sized up long before he reached the scene of disaster. When he was within a dozen feet of the team he made a mighty slide, as a man sliding for home with three on bases, and drawing his hunting knife from its sheath at the same time, the instant he came alongside the last dog he cut the traces. Relieved of the mighty weight so suddenly the team fell headlong forward and sprawled about on the ice; at the same moment the sled, with over half of the moosehide sacks of gold on it, and Jinx, the wheel dog, dropped to the bottom of the river. Jack then helped Bill out and on getting back to the former’s team they made an air line for the shore.

It would add nothing to the gayety of the world to relate what Jack said to Bill and Bill said to Jack and what both of them said about the loss of their vast fortune so soon after they had found it. Eileen was the peace maker and she told them they still had enough gold to keep them forever and ever (she had never lived in New York) and that the loss of the gold mattered not a whit as long as Bill had been saved. And both of the boys came to think that she had the right view of it at that.

The result of the dreadful mishap was a pow-wow in which it was resolved first, that they couldn’t afford to take any further chances on the last ice with either Eileen or the remainder of their treasure, second, that spring was altogether too far advanced to make any further attempt to get to Fort Yukon with their remaining sled, and third, that they must mark the spot where the gold went down so that they could recover it when conditions were more favorable.

“The only thing for us to do now,” declared Jack, “is to camp right here until the first water and then build a boat or a raft and float on down to Fort Yukon, which is some seventy miles from here. In the meantime we’ll build up a cairn of rocks on each side of the river and in a line with the sunken yellow stuff so that when we do come back we’ll know right where it is.”

“An’ one good thing no one else ’ull ever guess out where it is,” philosophized Bill.