Then once more I struck out for Bennett.
CHAPTER X
Our last load was safely landed in Bennett and the trail of the land was over. We had packed an outfit of four thousand pounds over a thirty-seven-mile trail and it had taken us nearly a month. For an average of fifteen hours a day we had worked for all that was in us; yet, looking back, it seems to have been more a matter of dogged persistence and patience than desperate endeavour and endurance.
There is no doubt that to the great majority, the trail spelt privation, misery and suffering; but they were of the poor, deluded multitude that never should have left their ploughs, their desks and their benches. Then there were others like ourselves to whom it meant hardship, more or less extreme, but who managed to struggle along fairly well. Lastly, there was a minority to whom it was little more than discomfort. They were the seasoned veterans of the trail to whom its trials were all in the day's work. It was as if the Great White Land was putting us to the test, was weeding out the fit from the unfit, was proving itself a land of the Strong, a land for men.
And indeed our party was well qualified to pass the test of the trail. The Prodigal was full of irrepressible enthusiasm, and always loaded to the muzzle with ideas. Salvation Jim was a mine of foresight and resource, while the Jam-wagon proved himself an insatiable glutton for work. Altogether we fared better than the average party.
We were camped on the narrow neck of water between Lindeman and Bennett, and as hay was two hundred and fifty dollars a ton, the first thing we did was to butcher the ox. The next was to see about building a boat. We thought of whipsawing our own boards, but the timber near us was poor or thinned out, so that in the end we bought lumber, paying for it twenty cents a foot. We were all very unexpert carpenters; however, by watching others, we managed to make a decent-looking boat.
These were the busy days. At Bennett the two great Cheechako armies converged, and there must have been thirty thousand people camped round the lake. The night was ablaze with countless camp-fires, the day a buzz of busy toil. Everywhere you heard the racket of hammer and saw, beheld men in feverish haste over their boat-building. There were many fine boats, but the crude makeshift effort of the amateur predominated. Some of them, indeed, had no more shape than a packing-case, and not a few resembled a coffin. Anything that would float and keep out the water was a "boat."
Oh, it was good to think that from thenceforward, the swift, clear current would bear us to our goal. No more icy slush to the knee, no more putrid horse-flesh under foot, no more blinding blizzards and heart-breaking drift of snows. But the blue sky would canopy us, the gentle breezes fan us, the warm sun lock us in her arms. No more bitter freezings and sinister dawns and weary travail of mind and body. The hills would busk themselves in emerald green, the wild crocus come to gladden our eyes, the long nights glow with sunsets of theatric splendour. No wonder, in the glory of reaction, we exulted and laboured on our boat with brimming hearts. And always before us gleamed the Golden Magnet, making us chafe and rage against the stubborn ice that stayed our progress.
The days were full of breezy sunshine and at all times the Eager Army watched the rotting ice with anxious eyes. In places it was fairly honeycombed now, in others corroded and splintered into silver spears. Here and there it heaved up and cracked across in gaping chasms; again it sagged down suddenly. There were sheets of surface water and stretches of greenish slush that froze faintly overnight. In large, flaming letters of red, the lake was dangerous, near to a break-up, a death trap; yet every day the reckless ones were going over it to be that much nearer the golden goal.