A Woman who went to Alaska

by May Kellogg Sullivan

May second: My Swedish friends left very early today for Nome, and only Miss L. from the Home is there, sweeping out the place; but B. and the visiting preacher will go with her to the Home today, closing the hospitable doors of the Mission for a time. This evening they held a meeting for the natives in camp, and I attended, but it seemed like a funeral without the friends now "mushing" on the Nome trail.

A woman has come to live at Mellie's, and is a study in beaver coat, dyed brown hair (which should be grey, according to her age), and with, it is reported, a bank account of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after having lived in Alaska nearly five years. She is called a good "stampeder," has a pleasant, smiling face, but is usually designated "notorious."

May tenth: Mollie went out early with Muky, her dog-team and guns, to escort Ageetuk, Alice and Punni Churah, with their mother, who is Mollie's aunt, to their new hunting camp in the mountains. At seven in the evening Mollie returned with wet feet. Tomorrow she will take a net, and some other things they have forgotten. They have gone to take their annual spring vacation and hunt grey squirrels for a month, living in a hut in the meantime. The weather is warm and springlike.

May thirteenth: The captain has been obliged to go to Nome on business, weak and ill though he is, and has been for months. It did not seem to me that he could live through the winter, and he is far too weak to take this long trip over the trail, but he says he is obliged to go, and will return at the earliest possible moment. He has taken Fred, the Russian boy, and a team of nine dogs, leaving after supper, and intending to travel night and day, as we now have no darkness.

The dissipated men around camp, idle and drunken most of the time, with nothing to occupy their attention after the long, tedious winter, still spend their hours in gossiping, swearing, drinking, and gambling, knowing no day and no night, but making both hideous to those around them. As a destroyer of man's self-respect, independence, and dignity, there is nothing to compare with the accursed liquor. There are numbers of instances in camp proving the truth of this statement. There is the English clergyman's tall and handsome son, well educated, musical and of agreeable manners—fitted to grace the best society, but—liquor is to blame for his present condition, which is about as low as man can sink.

It is ten in the evening and I am in my little room upstairs, the only white woman in the camp except Mellie and two like her. Down stairs in the bar-room the men are singing, first coon songs and then church hymns, with all the drunken energy they can muster. The crash of broken glass, angry oaths, and the slamming of doors reaches my ears so frequently as to cause little surprise, the French cooks in the kitchen adding their share to the disturbance. In a distant part of the hotel lies the little sick girl, her cot rolled each night close to the bedside of her mother, who tries to soothe her in her pain, Mollie and the wicked little Eskimo servant being the only women besides myself in the house. The noise and confusion increases down stairs, and I shall sleep little tonight. I will look at my revolver and see that its contents have not been removed.

May fifteenth: Here I am alone with the little children, a bad native girl, and a gang of the worst men in Alaska, Mollie having gone out hunting. At midnight Sim, Mellie and several others left for a dance at White Mountain, but it was two o'clock in the morning before the house was quiet. While I lay perfectly still, and trying to sleep, a man's stealthy footstep passed my door. He walked in his stocking feet—bare floors and walls echo the slightest sound, and my ears are keen. Was it a friend or foe? What was his object? My heart beat with a heavy thud, but I remembered the loaded revolver under my bed, and thanked God for it.

After a long time I slept a fitful, uneasy sleep for an hour, and dressed myself as usual at half-past six o'clock, feeling badly for want of needed sleep. Afterwards I washed, dressed and fed the children, amusing and entertaining them in my accustomed way. Ageetuk's house being closed, little Charlie is kept here all the time, Polly looking after him nights. A saloon keeper named Fitts, villainous in reality as well as in looks, is hanging around continually, wearing the blackest of looks at every one, having been in trouble nearly all winter, and closing out his saloon a few weeks ago. A big Dutchman, burly as a blacksmith and well soaked in whiskey, lounges about in blue denim and skull cap, winking his bleared eyes at Polly and swearing soundly at his native wife when she steps inside the doors to look after him.

All went well for a while today after Mollie's leaving, Jennie coaxing to be carried to her grandmother's for a visit, to which I consented, until Charlie and I sat down to supper, which I had spread, as is my habit, in the living room. During the day I had turned matters well over in mind, and decided, with Mollie's advice, to sleep in her bed alongside of Jennie's cot, and to have grandmother stay with us, locking the doors of the rooms, as they should be. To my consternation, when I chanced to look for the keys in the doors, there were none, showing plainly that they had been removed.

This looked like a trap. There was nothing to do, much as I disliked it, but to ask for the keys, as I would never spend the night in the house without them. Soon afterward the steward entered, and I very calmly and politely asked for the door keys of the two rooms, saying that I would spend the night with Jennie. With cool insolence he replied that he would lock them himself.