He had become even more silent than she. 124 One thing, however, he did regularly. When they partook of the evening meal—a sickly concoction of beans and coffee, or canned meat, and nestled down inside the bearskin sleeping-bags beside the eternal oilstove, his deep voice growled:
“Good-night, Angela!”
Sometimes she responded and sometimes she did not. But it made no difference—the “Good-night” was always uttered.
The last stage of the journey was a fight with time. They struck the Yukon River and went down over the sloppy ice. The break-up was coming, and Dawson was eighty miles away. Despite her bitter feelings she found excitement in the combat. At any moment the ice might split with thundering noise and go smashing down to the sea, piling up in vast pyramids as it went. Each morning they expected to wake and find the ice in movement.
“She’ll hold,” cried Jim. “Another twenty miles and we’re through!”
So they plowed their way to the Eldorado of the North. It was when they were but three miles from Dawson that the break-up came. It 125 was heralded by ear-splitting explosions. Jim put all his weight on to the sled.
“She won’t move much yet,” he growled. “Mush on!”
For another mile they kept the river trail, and then with deafening crashes from behind them the whole ice began to move. No time was to be lost now. Jim dragged the sled inland and made the bank at a suitable landing.
An hour later they made Dawson City. The streets were filled with half-melted snow, through which a mixed humanity trudged, laden with all kinds of gear and provisions. Tents were pitched on every available piece of land. Saloons were filled with mobs clamoring for drink and food. Around the Yukon agent’s office were crowds waiting to register “claims” that might or might not make their owners millionaires. All the creeks within miles of Dawson had been staked long since, and late-comers were staking likely spots further afield. News came of rich yields in some barren God-forsaken place and immediately a stampede was made for it.