Adventures in Alaska

by Samuel Hall Young

But the greatest of Bunch-grass Bill's many acts of kindness towards me remains to be told. As Dr. Davy had said from the first, mine was "a bad case." I had seven and a half weeks of high fever before it broke, whereas the usual limit of fever was three weeks. I reached the extreme of emaciation and weakness. I could hardly lift my hand. When they bundled me in a blanket like a baby and hung me on the hook of a big steelyard I weighed sixty pounds! I was long in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and reached its utmost boundary, until the very waters of the dark river lapped my feet.

"Well, Bill," said Dr. Davy with a sigh, as he was returning one morning from his call upon me, and stopped, as was his custom, to report to the "Beach Saloon," "I'm afraid it's about over. I don't think Dr. Young can last much longer. He can retain nothing on his stomach. We've tried all the brands of condensed milk in the camp to no avail. Everything comes up the instant it is swallowed. There are many internal complications, and he may go off any hour in one of those deathly convulsive chills."

"Big Wilbur," who reported the scene to me afterwards, said that Bill's face "went white as chalk, and then flushed red as fire." He jumped at the doctor as though he were going to assault him.

"By God," he cried, "he's not goin' to die. We'll not let him, Doc. See here: When I had the fever at Dawson, what saved me was cow's milk. Now, there's a cow here. You come with me, and we'll go see her."

"That cow," explained Wilbur, "was a wonderful animal. Her owner sold twenty gallons of milk a day from her, and she didn't look as if she gave one. Bill knew the owner was doping the milk with condensed milk and corn-starch and water and other stuff. So he strapped on his two big guns. He's great for bluff, is Bill. Doc. and I went along to see the fun. We found the owner in the stable 'tending to his cow. Bill didn't beat around the bush any.

"'You look here' he said. 'Your cow's givin' too darned much milk. Now this man I want it for is my father, an' he's got enough microbes in him already. Doc. here, analyzed your milk; didn't you, Doc?' (Doc. Davy was game, and nodded.) 'He says you put tundra water and all kinds of dope in it. I'm goin' to keep tab on you, an' if you dope my milk—well, you know me! It don't make no difference what you charge—a dollar a bottle or five dollars a bottle—my father's got to have pure milk. Understand?'"

For three months Billy went to the stable every day and superintended the milking. At a cost to him, sometimes, of three dollars for a pint bottle, and never less than a dollar a bottle, the "bad man" brought me every day, with his own hands, a bottle of fresh milk. When Bill and the doctor came in with that first bottle Mrs. Perrigo carefully raised my head and gave me a brimming glass of the rich milk. I drank it all and dropped off to sleep. I needed no more whiskey. The turning point of my illness was that glass of cow's milk. Bill's big bluff saved my life!

To show the rough, yet fine sentiment of the man, let me tell one last word about the lone cow. She went dry before spring, and, as the camp was crazy for fresh meat, the owner butchered her. One of the Odd Fellows told me. Said he, "Bill just went wild when he heard of it, and we had all we could do to keep him from going gunning for the man who killed the cow that saved your life. Why, that man would lay down his life for you, and laugh while he was doin' it."

I would I could tell of Bunch-grass Bill's conversion and entire reformation, but this is a true story, and I never heard that he ever got so far as that. This much, however, I am proud to tell. One day in the spring of 1900, when the army of gold-seekers was beginning to land on the "Golden Beach," I was standing with Bill near his saloon. On a sudden impulse I spoke to him.