Next day we bade the miners at the creek's mouth good-bye, with promises to hurry up the provision-boat if possible, and made our way to where we had left our boat and cache. The next morning we launched the Skookum again, and began our journey back. Going down was quicker work than coming up, not so laborious, and far more exciting. Owing to the lowness of the water, the stream was one succession of small rapids, which were full of boulders; and to steer the boat, careering like a race horse, among these, was a pretty piece of work. One pulled the oars to give headway, another steered, and the third stood in the bow, pole in hand, to fend us off from such rocks as we were in danger of striking. We soon found that the safest part of such a rapid is where the waves are roughest, for here the water, rebounding from the shallow shore on either side, meets in a narrow channel, where it tosses and foams, yet here is the only place where there is no danger of striking.
The second day out we ran twenty-five or thirty of these rapids. In running through one we pulled aside to avoid a large boulder sticking up in midstream, and then saw in front of us another boulder just at the surface, which we had not before noticed. It was too late, however, and the boat stuck fast in a second, and began to turn over from the force of the water behind. With one accord we all leaped out of the boat, expecting to find foothold somewhere among the boulders, and hold the boat or shove her off so that she should not capsize; but none of us touched bottom, though we sank to our necks, still grasping the gunwale of the boat. Our being out, however, made the boat so much lighter that she immediately slipped over the rock and went gloriously down the rapid, broadside, we hanging on. As soon as we could we clambered in, each grasped a paddle or oars or pole, and by great good luck we had no further accident.
Some distance further down we again sighted white water ahead, where the stream ran hard against a perpendicular cliff. Some miners were "rocking" gravel for gold in the bars just above; and we yelled to them to know if we could run the rapids.
"Yes," came the answer, "if you're a d——d good man!"
"All right—thanks!" we cried, and sailed serenely through. This was known by the cheerful name of Dead Man's Riffle. Owing to the strong wind blowing, the mosquitoes were not very annoying these few days; the sun was warm and bright, and the hillsides were covered thickly with a carmine flower which gave them a general brilliant appearance. These things, with the exhilaration of running rapids, made a sort of vacation—an outing, a picnic, as it were—in contrast to our previous hard work. When we got to the Miller Creek trail we took on a couple of miners who wanted to get out of the country, but had no boat in which to go down to Forty Mile Post. They had worked for some time and had barely succeeded in making enough to buy food, and now, a little homesick and discouraged, they had made up their minds to try to get out and back to "God's country" as they called it—Colorado. With their help we let our boat down through the "Cañon" safely, and the next day,—the 29th of July,—arrived at Forty Mile Post.
At the Post we found that plenty was reigning, for the first steamboat had arrived, bringing a lot of sorely-needed provisions. The trader in charge gave us a fine lunch of eggs, moosemeat, canned asparagus, and other delicacies, and then we took possession of a deserted log cabin. On ransacking around we found a Yukon lamp, consisting of a twisted bit of cotton stuck into a pint bottle of seal oil, and when it began to grow dusk we lighted it and sat down at the table and wrote home to our friends; for the steamer had gone further up the river and would return in a few days, so that letters sent down by her would probably be ahead of us in getting home—eight thousand miles! We had laid in a new stock of provisions. Flour, I remember was $8.00 for 100 pounds, and we managed to get a few of the last eggs which the steamer had brought, at $1.00 a dozen.
The Skookum had suffered considerably in our Forty Mile trip, and we spent a large part of the next day in patching her, plugging her seams with oakum and sealing them with hot pitch. One of our number, who was cooking for the boat-menders, suddenly appeared on the scene, chasing a pack of yelping dogs with our long camp-axe. He had gone to the woodpile for a moment, leaving the door ajar. At this moment a grey dog whose tail had been cut off somehow, was looking around the log house opposite—he had been on guard and watching our door for the last twenty-four hours. He uttered a low yelp which brought a dozen others together from all quarters, all lean, strong and sneaking; and they slipped into our door. When the cook turned from the woodpile a minute later he was just in time to aim a billet at the last one as he emerged from the cabin with our cheese in his mouth. They fled swiftly and were not to be caught: and an examination showed that they had, in their silent and well organized raid, cleaned our larder thoroughly, having eaten the delicacies on the spot and carried off nearly all the rest.
Native Dogs.
The Indian dog is a study, for he is much unlike his civilized brother. He rarely barks, never at strangers, and takes no notice of a white man who arrives in the village,—even though the village may never have seen such a thing, and the children scream, the women flee, and the men are troubled and silent—but he howls nights. A dog wakes up in the middle of the night, yawns, looks at the stars, and listens. There is not a sound. "How dull and stupid it is here in Ouklavigamute," he thinks; "not nearly as lively as it was in Mumtreghloghmembramute. There we had fights nearly every night, sometimes twice. If I only knew a dog I was sure I could lick—anyhow, here goes for a good long howl. I'll show them that there is a dog in town with spirit enough to make a noise, anyhow." With that he tunes up—do, re, mi, tra-la-la, dulce, crescendo, grand Wagnerian smash. The other dogs wake up and one nudges the other and says, "Oh, my, what a lark! Isn't it fun! Let's yell too—whoop, roo, riaow!" And just as men get excited at a football game, or an election, or when the fire-alarm rings, these dogs yell and grow red in the face. Then the inhabitants wake up and get out after the dogs, who run and yelp; and after a while each cur crawls into a hiding-place and goes to sleep. In the morning they wake up and wriggle their tails. "What enthusiasm there was last night—but—er—I didn't quite catch on to the idea—of course I yelled to help the other fellows—it's such fun being enthusiastic, you know."