At White Horse, there was trace of Swiftwater and Bera, but they had twenty-four hours the start of me and, when I finally found that they had gone through to Dawson, I simply quit.
Down the Upper Yukon there was a constant stream of barges, small boats and rafts. Miles Canyon, with its madly rushing, white-capped waters, extending over five miles of rock-ribbed river bed and sand bar, was scattered o’er with timbers, boards, boxes and casks containing the outfits and all the worldly possessions of scores of unfortunates.
“On, on, and ever and eternally on, down the Yukon to Dawson!” That was the cry in those days and it bore, as unresistingly and as mercilessly as the tide of the ocean carries the flotsam and jetsam of seacoast harbors, the brave and the strong, the weak and crippled, the wise and the foolish, in one inchoate mass of humanity to that magic spot where more gold lay underground waiting for the pick of the poverty-struck miner than the world had ever known of—“The Klondike.”
All things finally come to an end. I was in Dawson. At the little temporary dock on the Yukon’s bank, stood Bera and Swiftwater. The miner did not wait till I landed from the little boat. He went up the gang plank and grasped me in his arms.
“Mrs. Beebe,” he said, “we’re married. Come with us to our cabin. We are waiting for you, and dinner is on the table.”
Swiftwater during all that summer and winter in Dawson was the very soul of chivalry and attention both to Bera and myself. There was nothing too good for us in the little market places at Dawson and a box of candy at $5 a box just to please Bera or to satisfy my own taste for sweetmeats was no more to Swiftwater than the average man spending a two-bit piece on the outside.
As the spring broke up the river and then summer took the place of spring in Dawson, the traders from the outside brought in supplies of fresh eggs, fresh oranges, lettuce, new onions—all the delicacies greatly to be prized and more esteemed after a long winter than the rarest fruits and dainties of the States.
When summer came, Dawson got its first shipment of new watermelons from the outside, Swiftwater bought the first melon he could find and paid $40 in dust for it, and brought it home, simply to please Bera and to make his home that much happier.