Consequently, I determined to follow the old route, and I went to Skagway, thence over the White Pass road to White Horse and, crossing Lake Le Barge on the ice, there to await the departure for Dawson of the first down river steamer.
It was in the early spring of the year—that is, early for Alaska, although when I left Seattle the orchards were in bloom and lawns were as green as in mid-summer. Lake Le Barge was still frozen over, and the upper waters of the Yukon were beginning to show their first gigantic unrest of that spring—a mighty unrest that carries with it the movement of vast ice gorges down the canyon of the Upper Yukon to the Klondike, and which, if suddenly halted on its way to the sea by an unexpected drop in temperature, is likely to work havoc with men and property and sometimes human lives.
The Yukon River is not like any other stream on the American continent with which you and I are familiar. It seems to be a thing alive when the spring sun begins to loosen the icy chains that bind it hard and fast to old Mother Earth through eight long and dreary winter months. No greater phenomena of nature, showing the change that spring brings to all forms of life—human, animal and plant—is to be found anywhere than the awakening of the Yukon River after her voiceless sleep.
At White Horse the freight for Dawson and the Tanana mines was stacked twenty feet high in all directions when we boarded the first steamer and followed the ice jam down the river to Dawson. Eventually, on a little steamer that plied between Dawson and Fairbanks when the ice is far enough gone to make navigation safe, I made my way to the chief mining camp of the Tanana—Fairbanks, named after the vice-president, who visited the North when he was a senator from Indiana.
I had no trouble in finding Gates.
“Swiftwater,” I said, “I am here to have you provide for your wife and children, and to pay at least part of what you owe me.”
Bill was courteous, suave, obliging and well mannered.
“Mrs. Beebe,” said Bill, “at last I am fixed so that I can do the right thing by you and all others. As soon as I can make my last payment on my Cleary Creek property, I will square everything up, and give you plenty of money for Bera and the boys.”
Now, I know that everyone who reads this little book will say to themselves:
“If Mrs. Beebe don’t get her money now, she certainly is foolish.”