Four miles of this moose-hunt, with the big brute growing more tired and we more anxious to pass him. Instead of our hunting the moose he is haunting us. At last, around a little point of woods, we see him lying down in the middle of the river right ahead of us. The dogs break bounds and almost upset me as they dash down the trail with Breeze standing on the brake and yelling "Whoa!" The weary bull-moose staggers to his feet again and makes the edge of the woods, but there lies down again.
The trail veers right up to him. I run ahead and take "Leader" and "Ring," one in each hand, and Breeze does the same with "Teddy" and "Sheep." "Moose" is more tractable and we can control him with our voices. We drag the dogs bodily with the sled behind, pass the big brute, his long face not a rod from us, and then, setting "Leader" on the trail again, we urge them down five miles further to "Happy River Roadhouse." That was one hunt in which I was glad to lose the game.
Four hundred miles from our starting point we put up at the "Pioneer Roadhouse" in the little town of Knik at the head of Cook's Inlet. This was one of half a dozen small towns around Knik Arm and Turn-again Arm, the two prongs of Cook's Inlet. These towns had been in existence for fifteen or twenty years, with gold-miners and their families living there; and yet, here at Knik, I preached the first sermon that had ever been preached in a region larger than the state of Pennsylvania! This visit led to the establishment of a number of missions in that region, which is now traversed by the new Government railroad. The towns of Anchorage and Matanuska have sprung into existence and a thriving population of railroad builders, coal miners, gold miners, farmers and men of other trades and professions has settled there.
I left Iditarod on March fifth. I swung into Seward at nine o'clock on the morning of March twenty-eighth and was heartily greeted and entertained by Rev. L. S. Pedersen, pastor of the Methodist Church. He was a photographer as well as a preacher, and took the picture of my arrival. In spite of their hard work, my dogs were fatter and fuller of "pep" than when we started.
I fairly cried when I bade my team good-bye at Seward, taking each beautiful head in my arms and talking to them all. They seemed to feel the parting as keenly as I, for there was a general chorus of mournful howls as I turned away. I never saw my splendid dogs again, for the man who engaged to take them back to Iditarod failed to keep to his bargain, and I had to give them to the man who cared for and fed them at Susitna. I shall never find another team like them.
Notwithstanding the heaviness of the trail, the bitter struggles over mountains and through deep snows, not to mention the pains of lumbago, I look back upon that trip and other trips like it with joyful recollection and longing to repeat the experience. I would rather take a trip through that beautiful wilderness, with my dogs, than travel luxuriously around the world on palatial steamboats. There is more fun in dog-mushing.
[V]
LOUIE PAUL AND THE HOOTZ