The journey is always beset with dangers. One day out, and the members of the patrol know that their lives depend wholly on themselves. They may see no one else for twenty or thirty days. They will go through a vast and lonely land travelling along the wide valleys of frozen rivers, up long narrow gulches filled with snow, over miles of wind-swept mesas, and across high, treeless, mountain ridges. "All goes well, if all goes well," is a proverb of the trail, for in winter-time there, death is always near. His opportunity comes easily in numerous ways. A gashed foot cut by a slip of the axe in getting firewood, a sprained ankle, an unsheltered camp with a blizzard in the night, fog, or wind, or snowstorm, sick dogs or men, short rations, a mile in the wrong direction, all these very simply lead to distress, maiming or death. The greatest and commonest danger comes from the glacial overflows. In winter the creeks freeze solid. This dams back the water in its sources in the banks, until the expulsive force in the hidden springs, deep in the mountains, drives the water out on top of the ice. Even in the most extreme cold you will find in these canyons, under the snow or shoal ice, pools of this overflow water remaining liquid for hours. To get into this with moccasins means an immediate camp and fire, otherwise there will be frozen feet and permanent crippling, and if one is alone and dry wood not at hand, it is fatal. All these and more are the chances the experienced "musher" must be prepared to take. No "tenderfoot," in his right senses, would attempt such a long journey, in winter, alone.
It was the morning of December 21st, 1910, that the patrol left Fort McPherson for Dawson. It comprised Inspector Fitzgerald, Constables Taylor and Kinney, and Special Constable Carter, with three dog-teams of five dogs each. They expected to be in Dawson about the beginning of February. They never reached Dawson. Their comrades at Fort McPherson of course gave no anxious thought to them, and when the Dawson search-party came in at close of day on March 22nd, it was with surprise and horror, that they heard of the loss of the whole patrol. Next day the frozen bodies of all four were brought in, those who three months before had set out on that wilderness journey, so keen and strong. They were found within thirty miles of the Fort, but it was a long, long trail of 300 terrible miles that they had travelled.
Towards the end of January the Dawson police commenced to expect the patrol. After the first week in February, they became uneasy. On the 20th February some Fort McPherson Indians arrived in Dawson. One of them, named Esau, had been with the patrol, as guide, to the head of Mountain Creek, where he was discharged on New Year's Day. The Police had lost their way, had come on this camp of Indians and employed Esau to guide them until Fitzgerald was satisfied the party could do without him, when he was dismissed. It was a tragic mistake.
On the 28th February, Supt. Snyder of the Dawson Post, fearing trouble, despatched the relief-party under Corporal Dempster, consisting in addition, of Constables Fyfe and Turner and a half-breed named Charles Stewart. March 12th, on the McPherson side of the Divide, Dempster saw the first sure traces of the lost patrol. In the Big Wind River valley he found a night-camp which had doubtless been made by the missing men. There were one or two empty butter and canned-beef tins lying about and a piece of flour-sack marked, "R.N.W.M. Police, Fort McPherson." The morning of March 16th, they discovered a toboggan and seven sets of dog-harness "cached" about six miles up Mountain Creek. On searching more carefully, a dog's paws and shoulder-blade were found, from the latter of which, the flesh had evidently been cooked and eaten.
Ten miles from Seven-Mile Portage, March 21st, Dempster noticed a blue handkerchief tied to a willow. He went over to it, climbed the bank, and broke through the fringe of willows into the timber. There before his eyes was the end of a chapter in the sad story. In the snow lay the bodies of Constables Kinney and Taylor. A fire had been at their feet. Their camp kettle was half-full of moose-skin, which had been cut up into small pieces and boiled. Dempster's party cut some brush, covered the bodies with it, and went on in the direction of the Fort. He says in his report, "I had now concluded that Fitzgerald and Carter had left these two men in a desperate effort to reach the Fort, and would be found somewhere between this point and McPherson. Next morning, about ten miles further down the river, a trail appeared to lead towards the shore and while feeling in the new snow for the old tracks underneath, we kicked up a pair of snow-shoes. We then climbed the bank and a little way back in the woods we came on the bodies of the other two men. This was Wednesday the 22nd March. Carter had died first, for he had been laid out upon his back, his hands crossed upon his breast and a handkerchief placed over his face. Fitzgerald lay near him."
Dempster and his party then went on to Fort McPherson arriving about six o'clock in the afternoon the same day. There help was obtained and the remains were brought in. On March 28th, the four bodies were laid side by side, in the same grave. The funeral service was read by the Rev. C. E. Whittaker, the Church of England missionary at that remote point. A firing-party of five men fired the usual volleys over the grave. The brave men of the lost patrol had all come to their last camping-ground.
Fitzgerald's diary of the fatal journey was found. He had kept it up to Sunday, February 5th, when it ceased. Between the lines, for there is no sign of weakening in the written words, one can read the pathetic story of a long struggle against death from starvation and exposure, an heroic battle, maintained to the last in terrible agony. Let me quote but six entries from the diary. It was carefully written commencing December 21st, the day they left the Fort. It is a sad but thrilling drama extending over fifty days, staged in a mystic, white, winter-land, cruel and lonely, silent too, save for the howl of wolf or roar of mountain storm. Every entry is of absorbing interest, but the quotations suffice to tell of the fateful seven days spent in vainly searching for the pass up Forrest Gulch, and then the brave struggle to retrace their steps to Fort McPherson. Death ever came closer, stalked at last beside them every moment. He had no power to destroy their unconquerable spirits but he finally claimed their weary, worn-out bodies. Here is the chronicle.
"Tuesday, Jan. 17th. Twenty three degrees below zero. Fine in the morning, with a strong gale in the evening. Did not break camp. Sent Carter and Kinney off at 7.15 A.M. to follow a river going south by a little east. They returned at 3.30 P.M. and reported that it ran right up into the mountains, and Carter said it was not the right river. I left at 8.00 A.M. and followed a river running south but could not see any cuttings on it. Carter is completely lost and does not know one river from another. We have now only ten pounds of flour, and eight pounds of bacon, and some dried fish. My last hope is gone (of getting through to Dawson) and the only thing I can do is to return and kill some of the dogs to feed the others and ourselves, unless we can meet some Indians. We have now been a week looking for a river to take us over the divide, but there are dozens of rivers and I am at a loss. I should not have taken Carter's word that he knew the way from Little Wind river."
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"Tuesday, Jan. 24th. Fifty-six below. Strong south wind with very heavy mist. Left camp at 7.30, went six miles and found the river overflowed right across. Constable Taylor got in to the waist and Carter to the hips, and we had to go into camp at 11.00 A.M. Cold intense for all the open water. Killed another dog and all hands made a good meal on dog-meat."