Joe smuggled himself and his papers aboard a steamboat bound for Skagway, and worked his passage as cabin boy, waiter and general roustabout. At Juneau and Skagway he sold about one-fourth of his papers and magazines—the papers for twenty-five cents each and the ten-cent magazines for fifty cents. He could have sold out, but hearing that he could get double these prices at Dawson and down the Yukon, held on to his stock.
He formed a partnership with an old "sour-dough" miner, who helped him get his papers over the Chilcoot Pass and down the Yukon to Dawson. At the great Klondike camp he quickly sold out his papers at a dollar each, and the magazines at a dollar and a half to two and a half.
Joe spent the winter of 1898-9 at Dawson, selling the two papers published in that city and running a general news stand, in which he sold the reading matter he had sold before but gathered up again from the buyers. Sometimes he sold the same magazine four or five times.
When the Nome Stampede began, Joe got into the good graces of the manager of the steamboat company and got free passage down the Yukon. He shared my wolf-robe on the floor of the purser's room, and we became great chums. The boy was so bright and quick, and at the same time so polite and accommodating, that he made friends everywhere. He was a Sunday-school boy, and distributed my little red hymn-books when I held service in the social hall of the steamboat on Sunday, and his clear soprano sounded sweetly above the bass notes of the men.
"Joe," I asked him one day, "how much money have you made during the last year and a half?"
"Well," he replied, "I sent two thousand dollars out home from Dawson before I started down here, and with what I am making on this trip and what I hope to make at Nome, I think I'll have five thousand dollars clear when I land at Seattle the last of October."
"That's a dangerous amount of money for a small boy to have," I warned him. "Have you lost any of it?"
Joe grinned. "No, I dassen't. Some card sharps tried to get me to gamble at Dawson. They said I could double my money. But my partner [the old miner] said he'd lick me half to death if I ever went near the green tables. I didn't want to, anyhow. Everybody helps me take care of my money."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Why, give it all to mother, of course. She'll use it for me and my sister. I'm going to school as soon as I get home. Mother works in a store, but I guess this money'll give her a rest. She needs it."