JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Wonders of Natural History

Jack Heaton, Gold Seeker

Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator

Jack Heaton, Oil Prospector

The Boys’ Airplane Book

The Boys’ Book of Submarines

Handicraft for Boys

Inventing for Boys

Farm and Garden Tractors

“HIS FIRST EFFORTS AT SNOWSHOEING WERE LAUGHABLE IN THE EXTREME.”

JACK HEATON

GOLD SEEKER

BY

A. FREDERICK COLLINS

Author of “Inventing for Boys,” “Handicraft for

Boys,” “Jack Heaton, Oil Prospector,” etc.

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY

MORGAN DENNIS

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1921, by

Frederick A. Stokes Company

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

To

THE CORYS

WITH PLEASANT MEMORIES OF

ALASKAN NIGHTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

• [“His efforts at snowshoeing were laughable in the extreme”]
• [“It was a team of dancers”]
• [“Black Pete did pull the trigger every chance he got”]
• [“‘I’ve conclooded they’ve got human brains just the same as you and me’”]
• [“‘These Indians cached the gold in a pile of stones’”]
• [“Bill drew his six-gun and emptied it into the head of the great beast”]
• [“‘Gold! Gold! Nothing but gold!!!’”]
• [“The ungainly craft pitched and rolled about like a piece of cork”]

JACK HEATON, GOLD SEEKER

CHAPTER I
HOW THE TROUBLE STARTED

“Well glory be! an’ if it ain’t Jack Heaton hisself. An’ right glad am I to see yuh, Jack. Bill will be mighty glad, too, for he’s that bugs on goin’ to South America for them di-am-onds. Sure he’s been talkin’ o’ nothin’ else these last two weeks gone Saturday. An’ how are yuh anyhow, Jack?”

It was Mrs. Adams, Bill’s warm-hearted and courageous mother, who had answered the bell and was greeting Jack in this whole-souled fashion.

Since the boys had returned from Mexico and had come into possession of all that money for the services they had rendered the American Consolidated Oil Company, Inc., the Adamses, mother and son, had risen in the world not only figuratively but very literally, for instead of living in a shanty hard by the gas-house under the viaduct which spans Manhattan Street, they had moved into a five room apartment on Claremont Avenue—and a front apartment overlooking the Hudson River at that. No wonder, then, that Mrs. Adams was emitting her good nature in all directions like rays of radium and that of all persons Jack was an especial target for them.

“Bill’s in the parlor, Jack; go right in,” she said with emphasis on the parlor, for it was the only one she had ever been the mistress of in all her hardworking life.

“Well, Bill, what do you think you’re doing, getting ready to go after a yegg or rehearsing for a movie?” asked Jack as he reached the front room, which by the grace of landlords and popular usage is known as the parlor, where he found his pal engaged in the gentle pastime of snapping a six-gun.

Bill cut short his exercises with the weapon that had seen such hard service in Mexico so recently and he laughed lightly, though no one except his closest friends would have been aware of it.

“Nary one, Jack, but I’ve had one o’ them hunch things that you used to get and it’s the one best bet as how me and you are goin’ to the wilds o’ the Amazon and capture some o’ them chunks o’ mud similar like and appertainin’ to the one you wears on your mitt. So I was just limberin’ up my trigger finger a bit with a little action.”

“Oh, you were, were you,” remarked Jack with a mild touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“Yes, an’ I was just thinkin’ about ’phonin’ you to find out how soon we could get under way. You see, I haven’t done a tap to make a dollar since our landfall and owin’ to the high cost o’ livin’—we’re over two hundred feet above Manhattan Street now—my pile’s nosin’ down like a submarine and it’ll soon be restin’ on the bottom and we’ll be back where we come from. So I’m askin’ you, not only as man to man but as my pal, when do we start?”

“We don’t head that way this time,” replied Jack, “we head north, with a capital N.”

“Whad’a mean we head north?” asked Bill in utter amazement.

“That’s exactly what I came over to see you about, Bill. I’ve had half-a-dozen jobs offered me since we came back but routine work is entirely out of my line so what’s the use in wasting someone else’s good money and my own good time. No, I’ve tried it and I can’t be a good man Friday for any business concern—not even for my dad’s.

“So you see you and I are in the same class—everything going out and nothing coming in and I’ve been wondering a lot lately what we could scare up that would make a noise like a million dollars. Say Bill, did you ever read Jack London’s ‘Call of the Wild’?” Jack put the question without notice.

“‘Call o’ the Wild’?” mused Bill, turning the phrase over in his dome of thought; “I’ve heard all kinds o’ calls o’ wild men an’ wild women but never do I remember any wild call by this blokie Jack London. Who is this guy anyway?”

“There’s no use talking to a fellow like that,” thought Jack, but then, as in dozens of other instances in the past, he patiently explained who Jack London was and repeated the tale as told by that past master of fiction, for the benefit of his less well-read pal.

“Now the point I’m driving at is this,” he went on. “Jack London tells us that white men who were prospecting in the land of the Yeehats, a tribe of Indians in the gold country of Alaska, found diggings where there was gold, gold, nothing but gold, I tell you, and they packed it in moosehide sacks so that they could get it back to civilization. Then the Yeehats came upon and killed them and the shining yellow metal fell into their hands. The gold must still be up there, and you can’t dispute it either.”

At this recital Bill’s big blue eyes bulged out like those of a spider watching a fly. He had caught the drift of what Jack was saying and if there is any one thing that will set an inert imagination to functioning quicker or fix the attention of the human mind faster than another it is the mordant of seeking out this precious metal that we call gold. Then he blinked his eyes and shook his head.

“It sounds to me,” he said finally, which in the lingo of the cowboy, means that he had his doubts. “If this is a yarn this London feller wrote how do we know that he didn’t make up the Yeehats and the gold just like he made up the rest of it,” Bill wanted to know, and not without reason.

“I’ll tell you how. That book was given to me for a birthday present when I was about ten years old and whenever I wanted to read a good story I took it up just as everybody, from the rag-picker to the president, re-reads ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and ‘Treasure Island.’ So one fine day, not long after we got back from the oil-fields I spied the book and read it again; then all of a sudden this ending about the Yeehats and the gold in sacks struck me that there might be some truth lurking behind the fiction like a greaser behind a giant cactus or a Siwash behind a totem pole.”

“But how can we find out for sure?”

“I have found out already. I wrote to the Secretary of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington and to the Minister of the Interior of Canada, and they sent me handbooks that tell all about the Indians of Alaska and the Yukon Territory and I’ve got the real dope on them.”

Bill had a high regard for Jack’s way of boring into things and this scheme of going to the governments for information about the Indians up there in the far Northland seemed to his untrained mind to approach very closely to a high order of genius. Still he was not entirely convinced.

“That shows that the climax of London’s book relating to the Yeehats is straight from the shoulder, doesn’t it?” Jack wound up.

“That part about the Yeehats is all right but how about the gold? Because a tribe of Indians called the Yeehats lived up there doesn’t say that pioneer prospectors actually found the nuggets, got it, piled it up in sacks ready to bring back where they could spend it and then were killed off by the Indians. Mind you, Jack, I’m not sayin’ as how it couldn’t have happened but I’m only sayin’ as how I’d like to know for sure afore we goes, see?”

“Well first of all there’s the Yeehats—” Jack began to explain all over again.

“That part about the Yeehats is all O.K.; there’s no blinkin’ at facts. No one I’ll say, no not even a bookmaker could think up such an outlandish name as Yeehat even to splice it to a redskin for a name, but any one who couldn’t think about gold in chunks would be lonesome if he had a brain,” argued Bill.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” called out Jack. “First of all never call a man who writes books a bookmaker. A man who puts his pen to paper and writes down various things for other folks to read is a maker of books while a man that takes bets at a race track is a bookmaker. Now don’t get these two professions mixed up again.”

“The trouble with you, Jack, is that you can’t see the woods because o’ the trees, as you used to tell me down in Mexico when I picked you up on some point that didn’t have anything to do with the case. What’s the diff I’d like to know, whether he was a maker o’ books as you calls him or a bookmaker as I calls him. Well go on with your ratkillin’.”

“What I was going to say when you sidetracked me was that when a writer writes a book every idea that goes into it really comes from some outside source and consequently all this stuff that we call inspiration and imagination is more or less bunk. This being true, I hold that what London wrote about the prospectors, the gold they found, the moosehide sacks of it they piled up and the Yeehats, were not just mere fleeting fancies which were conjured up in his brain to serve his purpose for the story but hard and fast facts that he had heard about when he was up above there in Alaska.”

“I knows what you say and I guess I knows what you’re talking about, but as against the book that tells about the Yeehats and the sacks o’ gold in the land where the rainbow ends give me the straight tip on the di-am-onds that Jack Heaton got from the cannibal princess where the rainbow begins,” plugged in Bill, still bent on the diamond project.

“Don’t you see, Bill, it will take a mint of money to outfit that diamond hunting expedition—why, we’d have to take a small army with us to cope with those Amazonian savages while as I told you before they’re all Christianized, peace-loving folks in the far north—too cold to be anything else. Why, we couldn’t begin to finance this diamond proposition between us even if we put every dollar we have to our names in it,” Jack drove his argument home and he could see that the force of his logic and oratory was beginning to have the desired effect on his hard-headed pal.

“Couldn’t you get the directors of the American Consolidated Oil Company to take a flyer and back us in the di-am-ond venture,” further persisted Bill.

“I might be able to get them to see it but those old four-per-centers are long on sure things and very short on anything that looks like a gamble. I’d hate to have any of them go into anything with us that was not as sure of succeeding as to-morrow’s sun is sure of rising, for if we ever went down there and failed to bring back a boat load of diamonds as large as the Koohinoor, or Mountain of Light as it is called, they’d think they’d been stung by a nest of hornets and if we didn’t bring back any at all they’d want to throw us into the Atlantic Ocean.”

“They’re sure enough dead-game sports,” Bill commented sadly, “but there’s one thing certain and that is if I don’t make a ten-strike soon I’ll have to get a job as a longshoreman and me mudder and me ’ull be movin’ down to the shanty. Get me?”

“As a longshoreman only gets ten dollars a day for six or eight hours’ work I guess the job at that might net you enough to keep the coyote from sleeping in the vestibule of your apartment. If I wasn’t too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work I’d get a job on the docks myself. As things now stand I’m going to Alaska and I’ll bring back so much gold that if I threw it on the market there’d be a slump in the price of it,” orated Jack boastfully, as he rubbed his hands together in pleasurable anticipation like a miserable young Shylock. But the magic of gold is apt to make misers of even the most generous folks.

“Yuh lads come now and have a bite to eat,” sang out Mrs. Adams cheerily and the two youngsters went through an arched hole in the wall that connected, yet separated the parlor from the dining room, though this may sound a bit paradoxical. The latter room was decorated with a plate rail around the wall and a great vari-colored dome lamp hanging from the ceiling.

Under the lamp was a table laid with a cloth as white, silver as bright and china as fine as would be found, Jack opined, up or down the Avenue or even over on Riverside Drive. Bill’s mother was almost as proud of her new home and its fixtures as she was of her boy and that is saying all of it. As for Jack, why she thought he was the smartest boy in the world; yes, she truly did, and whatever he said went with her.

Their apartment was tastily furnished and comfortable, and he was glad to know that he had been, in a measure, indirectly responsible for it. It has often been said that travel is the great educator but the possession of money goes a mighty long ways toward making gentlemen out of coal heavers and ladies out of scrub women. True there was still some room for improvement in the way Bill and his mother handled “English as she is spoke” but no improvement was needed in their hearts.

“So yuh lads are goin’ to South America for di-am-onds, are yuh,” said Mrs. Adams when they were seated. “Well, it ’ud be a fine and ge-glorious thing if you’d fetch home a couple of scuttles of them baubles and throw them to those as can afford ’em at so much per throw,” and her eyes reflected the happy thought which she had voiced, as a Kimberly blue-white stone reflects the light of the sun. “But do yuh know Jack,” she added pensively, “I’d a deal ruther have me boy Bill livin’ with me in the shanty than to have him riskin’ his young life down there on the equator with those man-eaters.”

“You can rest easy in your mind on that score, Mrs. Adams,” Jack assured her, “for I’ve nearly persuaded Bill to give up this South American venture and join me in an expedition to the Alaskan gold fields, to search for a few sacks of nuggets.”

“Ilasker, Ilasker? No, I never heard of the place before. It must not have been on the map when I went to school,” thought Mrs. Adams out loud.

“You’ve heard of the Yukon?” suggested Jack.

“Yukon, Yukon? I can’t say that I have, but,” and her eyes brightened as though she had solved a jigsaw puzzle, “I have heard of the Klondike.”

“That accounts for it then,” said Jack, “for the Klondike is a gold district and it is named from the Klondike River which it is on. The Klondike River is in the Yukon Territory, which belongs to Canada, and this is directly east of Alaska. The Klondike River is really only a stream, perhaps not over a hundred feet wide, but so rich were the early gold fields there that practically all of the Yukon Territory and a part of Alaska to boot has been called the Klondike country. Such is the fame and power of gold.”

“We own Ilasker, don’t we Jack?” Bill wanted to know.

“Yes, though she used to belong to Russia but the U. S. bought her about fifty years ago for seven million, two hundred thousand dollars. Since then she has produced three hundred million dollars worth of gold. Some bargain, what say, Bill?”

“I’ll say it was,” replied his pal.

“It came about this way,” continued Jack, “when she was owned by Russia she was a losing deal for that country because in the first place she was too far away from the seat of government and there was no wire or wireless communication at that time between them; and in the second place Russia hadn’t any more of a notion as to how to govern her than she has of governing herself now.

“When the Civil War was on Russia was a good friend of the Union and helped us in every way she could, even to loaning us her warships. As Russia wanted to dispose of Alaska and Uncle Sam wanted to pay something for the services she had rendered, Mr. Seward, who was Secretary of State in President Lincoln’s Cabinet, bought the territory, which was then considered entirely worthless, from her.

“The International boundary line that divides Alaska from Canada was in dispute between the United States and Great Britain almost from the time we got her from Russia but neither country did any worrying over it for Alaska was not supposed to be worth arguing about. But when gold was discovered on the Yukon River in 1896 and at Cape Nome in 1898 there was a great stampede, just as there was to California in ’49. Then it was that both the United States and Great Britain got busy and a commission met in London, England, in 1903 to settle the matter, which was done to the satisfaction of both countries.”

“How far away are these gold fields that you and Bill are goin’ to?” Mrs. Adams asked; “are they as far away as the di-am-ond fields of South America?”

“I should say about the same distance, Mrs. Adams, and that is in the neighborhood of some five thousand miles.”

“It’s sure some little ways off,” chipped in Bill, “but distance doesn’t count; what we wants is the yellow butter, hey Buddie?”

“That’s what we’re after; other folks have found it and we stand as good a chance as they did. Are you with me, Bill?”

“It sounds to me, Jack, but I’ll go with youse to Ilasker on your hunch even if we have to walk back.”

“Good!” ejaculated Jack; “I guessed you would from the start. And so you see all of this six-gun practice is tommyrot, for the men of the frozen north are different from those of the burnt-up south, for whether they are Americans, French-Canadians, Indians or half-breeds, they are all white men—white at heart—and you’ll never have any use for a side arm up there.”

“It must be a orful nice country, but if you don’t mind I’m going to tote mine along just the same.”

“Then it’s all settled, is it, Bill?”

“I’m right there, pal o’ mine, every time.”

The boys struck hands and their new adventure was on.

CHAPTER II
HO! FOR THE GOLD COUNTRY!

“Now that I’ve declared myself in on this game I wants to know something about how it is supposed to be played,” said Bill, who, having once thrown his pet scheme overboard went into the new one heart and soul. “How big a country is this here Ilasker and to what part do we hike?”

Now Bill was like lots of other born and bred “Noo” Yorkers in that wherever there was an a the end of a word he invariably substituted er for it. As Bill’s mother had excused herself and made her exit, Jack took it upon himself to set his pal to rights.

“Not Ile-ask’-her, Bill, but A-las’-ka; get that? A-las’-ka!”

“All right, A-las’-ker then; have it any way,” groused Bill who, though he always wanted to know the right of every thing and had insisted time and time again that Jack correct him whenever he said or did anything that was not “accordin’ to Hoyle,” as he put it, still he was a little peeved when his pal did so, and in this respect he was not unlike the common run of folks whether of low or high degree.

“It’s a larger country than you’d think. Here are two maps of her that I’ve brought along,” said Jack as he produced, unfolded and spread the large sheets on the floor. This done, both he and Bill dropped to the correct prone position for shooting—that is lying flat on their stomachs with their faces downward—a position of great value in skirmishes on the border, but one seldom needed in civilized New York, unless it be to size up a map to the best advantage.

“This smaller one will give you an idea of how big she really is,” continued Jack; “it shows Alaska laid on top of the United States, that is compared with her. You see the main part of her is nearly square and she is hemmed in by the Pacific and Arctic Oceans all round except on her eastern boundary which is the Yukon Territory of Canada.

“If you lay the square part of Alaska over the middle part of the United States as this map shows, it will cover about all of Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma; then that handle of coast land, which is less than a hundred miles wide and some five hundred miles long, extends southeast along the western edge of Canada and this strip would reach clear across Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean, while pushing out to the southwest is the Alaska Peninsula and beyond it the Aleutian Islands.

“The peninsula is nearly five hundred miles long and the islands are strung out for another five hundred miles or more, so that the tail end of them would touch the Pacific Ocean in California. You see for size, Texas, which we think is a pretty big state, isn’t in it with Alaska.”

“It’s almost big enough to get lost in,” reflected Bill dryly.

“Now this large one is a government map of Alaska and I’ll show you exactly where we are headed for. See that red cross I’ve marked there just below the Arctic Circle on the Big Black River? Well, that’s our destination and when we reach it we’ll be in the land of the Yeehats. At any rate that is where they once lived, for from what I have gathered they were wiped out of existence some years ago. Once we get into their country it’s up to us to find out where the gold is cached.”[1]

“But suppose the Yeehats, or some other tribe of Indians, are still there and that they’ve got the gold corralled, what then?” Bill wanted to know.

“Oh well, we’ll have to treat with them according to the exigencies of the case. The first thing we must do though is to get there, the next is to locate the gold and when this preliminary but important work is done I think we can safely say that it is ours.”

“Ours not because we found it first but because we found it last,” Bill added to clinch the ownership.

“Exactly, or words to that effect.”

“Must be awful cold up there,” suggested Bill as his eyes wandered around the sub-Arctic region on the map.

“In summer it’s a mighty pleasant place but in winter it does get a little chilly, for sometimes the bottom nearly drops out of the thermometer and the quicksilver falls to fifty, sixty and even seventy degrees below zero; but you don’t mind a little thing like cold weather do you?”

“No,” replied Bill thoughtfully, “but I kicked all last winter to the superintendent of this here apartment buildin’ because the heat was only sixty-eight degrees while I likes it about seventy-two degrees. If I’d a-known we was goin’ on this here trip to the frigid zone I’d a-told him to bank the fires, or let ’em go out entirely, so I’d get used to it. Lettin’ that be as it may, what kind of an outfit do we want and do we get it here or when we gets up into that blarsted country?”

“We’ll take our rifles and I suppose we ought to have a shot-gun for small game, and while, as I have said before, the inhabitants, whatever may be their color or country, are all peace abiding folks still we ought to take our six-guns along so that we can protect our gold when we get back to civilized lands again.”

“An’ we’d better take our thermos bottles, solid alcohol cookin’ outfit, flash lamps, compasses and a pair of pliers with us, not forgettin’ me mouth-organ,” put in Bill.

“By all means,” allowed Jack; “as for the rest of it we can find out exactly what we need in the way of rations and equipment when we reach Dawson or Circle City. We don’t want to overload ourselves but there must be a-plenty of the necessaries, for, the way I figure it, we’ll probably have to stay the best part of a year in those parts.”

“When do we leave for this promised land o’ gold and sixty degrees below zero?” inquired impatient red-headed Bill.

“It’s about the right time of the year for us to be pilgriming now,” returned his partner; “that’s why I’m here.”

“How long will it take us to get up there?”

“Oh, about three weeks or so if we make connections and don’t lose too much time on the way.”

“Then I takes it the weather’ll still be warm when we arrives. We’ll get a canoe, or maybe a couple o’ them, and paddle up this Big Black River until we comes to the land of the Yeehats,” suggested Bill.

“No, that’s not my idea of it at all. You see, Bill, so much of the country where we are going is low that it is more or less wet all the time and it would make traveling overland in summer with our outfit a hard game. The way I’ve figured it out is that we ought to start from Circle City when winter sets in and travel by dogsled; then we can go up or down rivers, over them, cut cross country, yes, to the North Pole if we want to, and without any hard work on our part.

“Winter sets in early up there and by the time we reach Circle, get our outfit, learn the lay of the land, hear what all the old timers have to say and the first snow begins to fly, we’ll be just about ready to strike out.”

Bill shoved his hands in his pockets, went to the window and focused his eyes on a great warship that lay at anchor in the Hudson. He was wondering, not about the craft for he knew all about her and every other kind afloat; he likewise knew about some of those craft that navigated the land as for instance hawses, but this traveling in winter in search of gold with dog-sleds was a deep mystery to him.

“In winter the gold’ll be snowed under and we’d never find it I’m a-thinkin’,” he said thoughtfully.

“Take it from me, Bill, wherever the gold has been cached there will be signs that will point out the place as plain as the nose on your face. All we’ve got to do is to find the signs—uncovering the gold will be easy,” argued Jack.

“It sounds to me, Buddy, but if we’re goin’, the sooner the quicker says I.”

“The Twentieth Century Limited leaves the Grand Central Station at 2:45 in the afternoon and pulls into the LaSalle Street Station at Chicago the next morning in time so that we can make connection with the North Coast Limited of the Burlington Route which carries a Northern Pacific sleeper through to Seattle. How about leaving to-morrow afternoon?”

“All to the good; that’ll give me time to see me goil and tell her I’m goin’ to Ilasker,” for Bill, be it known had become very much smitten with Vera Clair, the little blond telephone girl down in the office of the American Consolidated Oil Company. And Vera, who could roll the number three under, over, through and above her tongue with the best of operators, and who also lived in Harlem, thought quite well of Bill, too.

“If you say that,” warned Jack, “Miss Clair will think you are going to ask her a very important question and you might find yourself in a somewhat embarrassing position.”

“What d’you mean ‘ ’barrassin’ position,’” questioned Bill sharply, blinking the while at Jack.

“Why she might think you meant you were going to pop the question⸺”

“Put the pedal on that soft stuff right where you are, or I’ll make youse put up your dooks, see, Buddy.”

“Then say A-las-ka, as I told you before, and you’ll be on the safe side,” again explained Jack.

“All right, A-las-ker then,” Bill attempted once more and Jack gave up trying to teach him how to pronounce it as a bad job.

The next afternoon the boys met at the Grand Central Station with their big suit cases and each carried in his money-belt two hundred dollars in cash and a draft on the National Bank at Skagway for a thousand dollars. It was not long before they were on board the Twentieth Century Limited and were being whirled through the tunnel under New York and up to Mott Haven; there the powerful electric locomotive gave way to a gigantic steam locomotive and they were soon running along the edge of the historic Hudson River headed toward the field of their new endeavors.

At the sight of the Palisades Bill could no longer restrain his aesthetic feelings—oh yes, Bill had them too, and he knew the beautiful when he saw it.

“I tell youse the Hudson has got them all faded, Jack. I’ve seen ’em all includin’ the Schuylkill at Philadelphia and they might as well get offen the map.”

“There are three rivers you haven’t seen yet, Bill, and these are the Mississippi, the Yukon and the Amazon. When you have seen these great streams you’ll be in a better position to judge the merits of the Hudson.”

“This position right here in seat 2, car 30 is good enough for me to size up the Hudson. Just as Noo York is the onliest town in the world so the Hudson is the onliest river on the map. Somebody oughter give Mr. H. Hudson a medal for havin’ discovered it; an’ when we come back, richer’n Rockerfeller, I’ll donate one to him that is twenty-four carats fine.”

Jack had the porter fix a table between the seats and laid out his time-tables of the three railroads that were to carry them across the continent. Then for Bill’s enlightenment and his own pleasure he traced the route they were to make to Seattle and thence on up to Circle City, Alaska.

“Let’s see, we reach Chicago to-morrow morning and change cars there. Then we’re in for a long ride, for it will take us about three days and nights to make the trip. We’ll get into Seattle next Saturday morning some time. Our boat leaves Seattle the following Monday morning and this will give us all the time we want to see Seattle.”

“Now look up this boat trip from Seattle to Skagway,” said Bill.

“We take the S.S. Princess Alice and sail up through Puget Sound until we reach the northern end of Vancouver Island, when we come to the open sea; then we run through Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Province of Columbia, when we pass through Dixon Entrance into Clarence Strait and are in Alaskan waters. Farther on when we get to Juneau we’ll begin to see something that looks like real scenery for that’s the beginning of the great glaciers.”

“I’m not so keen on seein’ scenery as I am on seein’ gold,” vouchsafed Bill, whose resultant financial success in the Mexican expedition seemed to have completely turned his young head from contentment and the love of adventure into discontent and a violent itching for riches.

“You’ll see both a-plenty before we’re through with it, take it from me.”

“What’s all them pink spots on the map, islands?” inquired Bill scanning them closely.

“Yes, and the blue part outside is the Pacific Ocean while that on the inside represents various inlets, straits, sounds, canals, etc. So you see we take what is called the inside route and it will be as smooth sailing as if we were going to Albany on the day boat.”

“An’ what happens when we land at Skagway?”

“There we change to the railroad, which has been built in recent years over the White Pass across the Coast Range, and we are then in the Yukon Territory which, as I told you and your mother, is a part of Canada. The railroad ends at White Horse, a town about a hundred miles farther north. We’ll still have about seven hundred miles to travel before we get to Circle City, but we do this leg by a steamer on the Yukon River, and from there to the land of the Yeehats on the Big Black River we’ll have to cover with dog-sleds,” concluded Jack.

Their journey across the continent was about as exciting as a trip from Manhattan Street to Bowling Green on the Subway. While the boys were very much awake when in their waking state, when it came to sleeping they could beat the seven sleepers by a stretch, and as for appetites—well, they just naturally had an exaggerated idea of what their stomachs were for—and ate like young pug-uglies. In truth they were on the job every time the dining car waiter announced the last call for breakfast and the first call for lunch and dinner.

As they were nearing Savanna up in the northwest corner of Illinois, Jack told his pal that they would soon strike the Mississippi River and that from there on to St. Paul the railroad parallels the ‘father of waters.’

“The Mississippi is a thousand five hundred miles long, has its head waters at Lake Itaska in Northern Minnesota and empties into the Gulf of Mexico about a hundred miles south of New Orleans,” explained Jack. “You will see from this, Bill, that there are other rivers in our United States besides the noble Hudson.”

Presently the train ran right along side of the great river. Bill took one look at the installment of scenery which lay spread out before them as flat as a board and then he burst out into a long and loud cackle, making, according to Jack’s way of thinking, a holy show of them both.

“Why the big noise?” questioned Jack in a sour voice, for he was exasperated beyond all measure at this unseemly conduct of his pal.

“It’s enough to make a bucking broncho laugh. The Mississippi eh? and you’d put it in the same class with the Hudson? Why it’s nothin’ but a stream o’ mud,” Bill made answer.

“You must remember that we’re a thousand miles from its delta,” expostulated Jack.

“That’s nothin’; the Hudson’s so wide at Noo York the politicians can’t get enough money together at one time to build a bridge acrost it, see Buddy?”

And let it be said in Bill’s behalf that that part of the Mississippi which is visible to the eye where the Burlington railway parallels it does make a mighty poor showing.

The boys were conspicuous for their silence all the rest of the way to St. Paul for Bill had made up his mind that he wouldn’t let even his pal run down his Hudson River, and Jack had taken a mental vow that, pal or no pal, he would never again point out any wonder, ancient or modern, whether produced by nature or fashioned by the hand of man again to Bill, because the latter always pooh-poohed everything unless it was in or intimately associated with the city of Bagdad-on-the-Hudson.

As the train was nearing Livingstone, Montana, late in the afternoon of the following day the boys had entirely forgotten that the muddy waters of the Mississippi had been the innocent cause of making them a little sore at each other and all was to the merry with them again.

Livingstone is the junction where the change is made for Gardiner, the “gateway of the Yellowstone,” and everybody in the car was talking about the hot-springs, the geysers, the ‘Devil’s Paint Pot,’ ‘Hell’s Half-Acre’ and other wonders to be seen there. Moreover quite a number of passengers were tourists who had made this long western trip for the express purpose of seeing the Park.

“We should by all means have seen the Park since we are so near it. It was a great mistake of mine to have bought our tickets through to Seattle without a stop-over here,” said Jack who was genuinely regretful that he had not thought of it at the time, but it was too late now.

“Never youse mind,” bolstered up Bill cheerily, “we’ll stop off when we comes back and we’ll have all the time we needs and plenty o’ coin to do it on.”

“That listens all right too but I have observed it is very seldom indeed that a fellow ever returns over the same trail that he sets out on, and that the time to see a thing is when he passes by the first time. Well, we’ll get the gold we’re after and then I’m going to make a tour of the world strictly for pleasure.”

“I’m with youse Jack,” responded Bill heartily.

Jack made no reply for he could see himself carrying Bill along as a piece of excess baggage and having him size up everything they saw using his Noo York, as he calls it, as a yard-stick to measure it by. Bill was all right for a trip of any kind where a sure-shot and brute-force were needed but on a pleasure trip around the world—well, he preferred to go it alone.

Came the time when the shine porter indicated his desire to brush off the boys and they knew that they were getting close to the end of the first leg of their journey—Seattle. They were right glad to get off the train, though withal they had had a pleasant journey and had met a number of interesting people. Among them was a Mr. Rayleigh who was accompanied by his very charming daughter Miss Vivian.

Jack had told the Rayleighs a little of his varied experiences in the World War, of his expedition to the Arctics, of his more recent journey to Mexico (giving Bill all the credit of their adventures there) and of their proposed trip to Alaska to find gold. The net result of it all was that the chance acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship before they left the train at Seattle and his new found friends gave Jack a very cordial invitation to visit them in Chicago when he returned from his quest in the Northland, but they left poor Bill out in the cold.

Jack didn’t blame Mr. Rayleigh much for he didn’t know Bill’s heart and he judged him by exterior appearances only. Poor Bill! the only way he could ever get a look-in anywhere was when some one saw him in action, and if Mr. Rayleigh could have seen him swatting German U-boats, or on the ’dobe in that fight with Lopez’s gang he would have welcomed him with open arms.

As it was, Jack accepted the invitation so cordially given, with avidity, for he liked Miss Vivian—she was so different from those New York girls (but hush! it would never do to voice this thought in Bill’s hearing or there would be a pitched battle on the spot) and she seemed to him more like a beautiful dream picture than a real being who lived in a world of three dimensions.

“Yes,” he said to himself, “I’ve simply got to get that gold now, there’s no two ways about it.”

Seattle, so named after old Chief Seattle, an Indian who was friendly to the whites, is built on a site where a handful of Indians once had their village, but it was an important place even then in virtue of its being a convenient point where every once in a while thousands of Indians would meet and hold their pow-wows.

It was settled by the pale faces about seventy years ago and when the gold stampede for the Klondike was on, it was the great center for outfitting the prospectors. Later on Skagway became the chief outfitting station but as the latter town is in Alaska a duty must also be paid by those who cross over the boundary line into the Yukon Territory since it is a part of Canada. To get around this the boys concluded that they would wait until they got to Circle City and outfit up there if this was possible.

Jack was rather surprised to find that Seattle was a fine, up-to-date city in every sense of the word but of course Bill couldn’t see it that way at all, so listen to him yawp:

“Youse could sot the whole blinkin’ town down on the East Side of Noo York and then where’d it be? Youse couldn’t find it, see!”

By the following Monday the boys had seen everything that Seattle and the surrounding country had to offer but the only things that interested Bill were the Siwash Indians and Mount Ranier.

“I suppose you’ll say that the New Yorkers are dirtier than these Siwashes and that Mount Ranier can’t hold a candle to the Palisades,” Jack bantered him.

“Somebody must have taken the wash out of them Siwashes from the way they smell, and as for Mount Ranier, I’ll say it’s a real mountain. Let’s climb it, what say, Jack?”

“After we get the gold,” was his pal’s comeback.

The five days that followed on the S. S. Princess Alice were long, bright, glorious, tiresome ones and the boys would have enjoyed every minute of the time if that disconcerting, maddening, magic word gold had not kept burning in their brains. They saw yellow and the nearer they came to that wonderful land in the far north, which the discoveries of gold had made as famous as diamonds have made the Kimberly mines or watered stock has made Wall Street, their very beings seemed to be transmuted into the precious metal.

Hence, neither the great Coast Range Mountains nor the wonderful glaciers appealed overmuch to these youngsters who had set their hearts on getting gold out of the Yukon-Arctic district just as firmly as had ever the most seasoned prospector.

But Juneau did make an impression on Bill for he heard tales of gold up there the like of which he had never heard before. Only once did he think to belittle the town by making odious comparisons of it with his “Noo York” but with Jack’s help he smothered the attempt for he was in the gold country now and was carried away by that malignant disease known as the gold fever.

CHAPTER III
ON THE EDGE OF THINGS

The Princess Alice made a stop for a few hours at Juneau, a town standing on a promontory between Lynn Canal and the Taku River, and the boys, with many other passengers, disembarked to see what they could see. Here for the first time they felt they were getting pretty close to the field of their future activities for they were in Alaska, the land of the midnight sun and the aurora borealis, the moose and the caribou, the prehistoric glaciers and—hidden gold.

Across the water a great mill was in full blast and as they stood looking at it a big, grisly sort of a man, who appeared to be between fifty and sixty, and whose clothes showed that he was an old time prospector, moved over toward them. Evidently he had in mind the idea of holding some small conversation with them, for up on top of the world the inhabitants do not consider formal introductions as being at all necessary when they feel like talking to any one.

“Goin’ to buy it boys?” he asked, grinning good-naturedly to show that his intentions were of the best.

“Afore we do, we’d kinda like to know what it is, for we’d hate to buy a pig-in-a-poke,” replied Bill smiling just as cheerfully, only, as I have previously mentioned, whenever Bill smiled the scar across his cheek made him look as if he was getting ready to exterminate a greaser.

“Oh, I see, you youngsters are new up here—tourists maybe,” came from the big throated man.

“We’re new up here all right,” admitted Jack, “but we’re not up here to see the sights, or for our health either, but to do a bit of prospecting.”

“Shake pards,” and he held out a calloused hand, as big as a ham and as horny as a toad’s back, to each of them in turn. “I’m Hank Dease, but in these parts I’m known as Grizzly Hank. And who might you fellows be?”

“I’m Jack Heaton of New Jersey, and this is my side-kick, Bill Adams of New York City, New York County and New York State, and there with the goods as needed.”

“I blazes! I’m right glad to know you boys,” drawled Grizzly Hank, “for you look to me as if you’re made o’ the right kind o’ timber. Since you’re strangers here I’ll tell you about Juneau, which I allow is the finest city in the world.”

Now Juneau has a population of about two thousand people, so, naturally, Bill was going to jump right in and monopolize things by asking Grizzly Hank if he’d ever been in Noo York, but Jack gave him the high-sign not to break in and so for once his pal held his peace.

“I’ll tell you about the wonderful things we have here first and then if there’s any little thing you want to know about prospectin’ up here or in the Yukon Territory I’ll tell you as good as I know. I’ve been in this country for nigh onto thirty years and you see how well I’ve panned out, but you fellows may do better—a few do, but, I blazes, most of ’em don’t.”

Grizzly Hank had found a couple of good listeners and as he liked to talk he was making the most of them while they lasted.

“That’s the Treadwell mill you are lookin’ at over yonder on Douglas Island. It has an output of gold that runs upwards of eighty thousand dollars a month. The first gold ever found in Alaska was down at Sitka in 1873, but it was old Joe Juneau, a French-Canadian prospector, who showed that gold could be mined here in payin’ quantities.

“At that time another prospector named Treadwell who was in this district had loaned a little money on some claims over there and finally had to take them for the debt. Later on he bought French Pete’s claim which lay next to it for the magnificent sum of five hundred dollars; and these claims which he bought for a mere song are the great Treadwell mines of to-day. I blazes! There are some other mines in this district and since Treadwell took over the original claims the output of gold has been to the tune of a hundred million dollars and the end is nowhere yet in sight. I blazes!”

“Do you mean to say, Mister Dease, that gold is mined over there like coal?” asked Bill, thereby exposing his ignorance.

The grisly prospector looked amused but he recalled the time when his own ideas of mining gold had been just about as vague.

“You see, boys, gold is found in several ways up here. Sometimes it is ’bedded in quartz when the ore, as it is called, has to be mined and then crushed in a stamp mill to get the gold out; more often it is found as free gold, dust and grains and bits of pure gold mixed with the dirt when it must be panned, that is, put in a pan and the dirt washed away and then the gold, which is the heaviest, falls to the bottom of the pan, and again,” he lowered his voice to make what he was about to tell them more impressive, “nuggets of gold are picked up from bits the size of a pea to chunks as large as my fist! I blazes! It all depends on the locality.”

“These diggin’s here are quartz mines and the ore is of mighty low grade—only a couple of dollars in gold to the ton of quartz. To get this gold out the quartz, or ore, is crushed in a mill called a stamp, and the Treadwell has the largest number of stamps of any mill in the world—upwards of two thousand, I blazes!”

Grizzly Hank paused for a moment to get a fresh start.

“Go on Mister Hank, we’re listenin’ with both ears,” urged Bill.

“As you were saying—” Jack paced him.

“As I was about to say,” continued the prospector, who was every whit as appreciative of his audience as it was of him, “when Treadwell began to take out gold, old timers all along the coast clear down as far as ’Frisco heard of it, came up and pushed further north believing that they would find other lodes of gold bearing ore and they believed right, I blazes!

“That other mine over there on Douglas Island that you see to the right is the Mexican Mine but it’s small fry as against the Treadwell for it only has a hundred and twenty stamps working.”

“We’re not pertiklarly keen on Mexican mines, oil wells or anything else that goes by the name of Mex—we had all the Mexican stuff we wanted when we was down there six months ago,” broke in Bill to whom the word brought no very pleasant recollections.

“To this side of the Mexican mine,” went on the prospector, “is the Ready Bullion mine and it has a two hundred stamp mill.”

“Ready Bullion listens good to me,” admitted Jack, once more breaking into his discourse.

“Shortly after the Treadwell mine began to show itself a bonanza, a story went the rounds that it was an accidental lode, or a blowout as we call it; that is, it was a lode of gold deposited there by some gigantic upheaval of the earth when Alaska was in the makin’ and that it was the only place north of fifty-six where gold could be mined at a profit.

“I always believed that yarn was set agoin’ to keep other prospectors out of the country; but when it kept on producin’, men with picks and shovels came here just the same, and what happened was that other deposits were found and these are the mines that are bein’ worked now in southern Alaska.

“Still other prospectors pushed on further north with their packs on their backs, on sleds which they pulled themselves or which were hauled by dog teams, on horses and mules, and they toiled up the Trail of Heartache, as the nearly straight-up White Pass trail was called in those days. I blazes, and, I was one of ’em.

“Once on the other side of yonder range we prospected for gold bearin’ quartz, and panned the river beds until we reached the Klondike River. There is where Carmack, with two Indian pards, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, had already staked rich claims. One day Carmack went down to the stream to wash a piece of moose he had killed and it was then that he saw gold in the water and when he panned it he got more nuggets than his eyes could believe. News of gold travels faster than greased lightnin’ and it was not long before the biggest gold stampede was on that ever took place in the golden history of gold! I blazes!

“Over night the Klondike became famous and wherever human bein’s lived that spoke a language it was a word that they knew and it meant but one thing to them—and that was gold. And, I blazes, the world knew that gold was bein’ panned out in the Klondike by hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars and the world went crazy over it.

“When I got there one mornin’ I was dead-broke but by night I was a rich man. It was nothin’ to wash a hundred, five hundred, I blazes, a thousand dollars from a few pans of gravel. And still further north, somewhere along the Porcupine River, Thornton and a couple of his pards discovered a blow-out where nuggets of gold were so thick they could pick ’em up like stones; they packed them in moosehide sacks and corded them up like stovewood until they had all the gold they thought they could carry out of the country.”

Grizzly Hank had the boys going for fair. They stood as though they were magnetized to the spot. Both were itching for more detailed information but neither spoke his mind for they had agreed before they left New York that while they would have to admit they were prospectors bent on finding gold, like countless thousands before them, they would give no hint, under any circumstance, of their real mission to any one.

“Go on—” said Bill impatiently.

“Yes, pards,” he went on, his sharp, deep-set eyes brightening which showed that however it was he had failed to keep the elusive metal he had found, his long quest left no cause for regret; “yes pards, the gold belt runs from the Gulf of Alaska to the Arctic Ocean, and the further north you go the more gold you’ll find and—the harder it will be to get it down under.[2] I’m goin’ to the Porcupine River district as soon as I can get some one to grub-stake me⸺”

A mighty bellowing blast came from the triple throated whistle of the steamer at the dock and drowned out the alluring voice of the prospector pioneer. Then the warning sound subsided for a moment.

“There’s your boat a-whistlin’ an’ if you’re goin’ on her you’d better scoot. I blazes! Good-by and good luck.”

They started for the boat on the run but their minds were in a semi-torpid condition, for the old miner had surely enough set them by the ears. When they were again on the deck of the Princess Alice and had somewhat recovered from the magic of his words they fell to discussing gold, Grizzly Hank and a few other consequential things.

“Moosehide sacks of gold corded up like stovewood!” repeated Bill blinking his blue eyes.

“The farther north you go the more gold you’ll find!” reiterated Jack, for the words sounded like ready money to him.

“Shake, old pard, we’re on the right trail,” and the boys struck hands with a vengeance. “I was thinkin’ as how we orter have taken Grizzly Hank along with us,” commented Bill; “he knows all the ropes and he’d a-come in mighty handy.”

“I thought of that too when he was talking to us but then we’d have to split up our winnings into thirds which would mean that we’d simply short-change ourselves out of a couple of million dollars or so. Then again his ideas and ours would probably be entirely different for he’s a prospector of the old school while we are discoverers of the new school. Finally, ‘two’s company and three’s none’ is just as true, I imagine, of the trail as it is of a parlor date.”

“Agreed to on all points,” said Bill, “but when we comes back let’s grub-stake him to the limit so that he can eke out a million or so on his own account afore he kicks-in.”

Skagway was the jumping off place as far as the Princess Alice was concerned and the boys were right glad of it for they were anxious more than ever to get into the heart of things. The town is on the Chilkat Inlet at the head of Lynn Canal and, like many others along the coast, it has a mountain for a background.

They stopped over night at Mrs. Pullen’s hotel, which is also a wonderful Alaskan museum, and as they were looking about they came across a rack of the inevitable picture post cards. Bill said he was of a mind to send one down under to a certain little telephone countess, (whom he could see in his mind’s eye masticating the indestructible listerated nuggets and hear her say in the deep recesses of his auditory organ “who do you want to talk to?” with the “smile that wins.”)

On one of the post cards was a picture of a very pleasant, mild mannered looking gentleman whose kindly eyes and benevolent mouth bore out Jack’s statement that all men north of fifty-six are white at heart. Under the picture on the card of the somewhat incongruous caption of Soapy Smith.

“I suppose he’s the Sunday School Superintendent, owner of the First National Bank and mayor of this burg,” Bill remarked to his partner.

A prosperous looking individual standing near-by overheard Bill’s facetious comment, smiled sadly and said:

“I take it you boys haven’t heard the story of Soapy Smith and so I’ll enlighten you as to the manner of man he was. Soapy came by his saponified cognomen honestly for he began his career as a full member of the fraternity of gentle grafters. Soapy’s line was to wrap up a ten dollar bill with a small bar of soap and sell it from the tail end of a wagon for the small sum of one dollar.

“Then the lamb would take his purchase around in the back alley where no one could see him, and open it up and then he would find that he was out just ninety-nine cents, for while he had the soap the slippery ten-spot still remained as a part of Soapy’s financial reserve fund.

“But this graft was too legitimate for Soapy for he had to give a bar of soap worth at least a cent to each and every purchaser. Having accumulated a little coin he drifted in here with the stampeders in ’98 and opened up a saloon, dance-hall and gambling house. As if this game was too honest he organized a gang of outlaws and they robbed men and killed them too, right and left.

“Law abiding citizens got tired of these hold-ups, for the prospectors and miners began to go through Dyea and use the Chilcoot Pass rather than take a chance of meeting Soapy and his gang in Skagway or on the White Pass trail. So a Vigilance Committee was organized and at one of their meetings one night they put Frank Reed at the gate to keep Soapy and the members of his gang out.

“As soon as Soapy heard of the meeting he took his shootin’ irons and went over to it where Reed promptly refused to admit him. Came two simultaneous pistol shots; Soapy fell dead and Reed lived for a couple of weeks and then he cashed in. If you go up to the canyon you’ll see the graves of both these men in the cemetery there. So you see you can’t most always tell by lookin’ at a man what is under his vest.”

The next morning the boys took the train for White Horse, about a hundred and ten miles due north at which point they would make connections with a boat on the Yukon River. While the stampeders had toiled up the icy trail of White Pass, their backs breaking under their packs and their hearts breaking under the torture of it all, the boys were now making the trip in a comfortable train of the White Pass and Yukon Railway, the first in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

“Isn’t just exactly like ridin’ on the Twentieth Century, is it Jack?” observed Bill as the train crept at a snail’s pace up to the summit.

Just then the train rounded a curve blasted out of solid rock and they looked straight down a thousand feet into a canyon.

“More like a trip on the Elevated,” suggested Jack.

Once over the Pass the engineer opened the throttle a little and the train picked up in speed. Then by way of varying the kaleidoscopic changes of scenery the train shot into a tunnel and out of it onto a tremendously high bridge that spans the Skagway River which flows tumultuously over the rocky bottom on its way to the gulf.

A few miles beyond they crossed an old wagon road which was being built to connect White Horse with White Pass but the railroad was completed first and took its place. A dozen miles or so farther on they saw some log cabins which the conductor of the train pointed out as having been the center of White Pass City, one of the tented towns that had sprung up during the mad rush to the Klondike, and when it subsided the town vanished.

Then came into view Glacier Gorge and high above it the train sped along its very edge, then wound up a long grade, when spread before them were the Sawtooth Mountains and Dead Horse Gulch.

“Sounds like the name of a dime novel I onct read,” reflected Bill.

“Why Dead Horse Gulch?” Jack asked the conductor.

“Because when the rush was on in ’98 thousands of the pioneers brought their horses with them and so many of them died down there from starvation and overwork that their bodies choked up the gulch.

“See that sheet of water yonder?” he continued, “that’s the beginning of Lake Bennet and there the hustling, bustling, town of Bennet once was. As soon as the gold crowd from Skagway reached this lake they gave up the trail and threw together rafts and craft of every description. They piled their outfits on or in them and then floated down the Yukon River to the Klondike, unless they were drowned first, as many were. You’ll be glad to know, boys, the train hesitates twenty minutes at Bennet for victuals,” and the boys thought it was high time that it did so.

When this important function was over and they were again on the train it ran along the edge of the lake until the lower end of it was reached where the friendly con called “Carcross! Carcross!”

“This town,” he told them, “is built on a place where the Indians used to watch for the caribou to cross and this is the cause why of its name.”

After a short ride their rail trip—the last they would have for many, many moons—came to an end at White Horse, on the Thirty Mile River. They considered they were playing in great good luck, for the steamboats leave only twice a week for Dawson and one was scheduled to sail that night.

This gave the boys plenty of time to look around White Horse but they saw with eyes dimly for their vision was as blurred by their quest for gold as ever were those who had rushed madly through there in the days of ’98.

Bill opined that he “liked White Horse fine as it has two boats a week we can get away on.” As a matter of fact it is a lively town for the steamboats take on their supplies here for their down river trips.

The boys walked over to the White Horse Rapids, as the Indians called it after a Finnlander because of his light hair and whom they thought was as strong as a horse, after he had lost his life in its swirling waters. And hundreds of other lives and dozens of outfits were lost in the wild scramble of the early prospectors to get to the gold fields.

But neither Jack nor Bill gave more than a passing thought to these foolhardy and adventurous souls who had risked and lost all in their futile attempts to get to the Klondike; much less did they think of those who had made the golden goal and won out in the finality of their efforts, for the boys’ own scheme consumed every moment of their time, and all of their energies were directed upon the consummation of it since they were gold seekers just as truly as were any of those who had gone before.

The steamboat Selkirk, which was to carry the boys from White Horse to Circle City, was of the old time kind that was used on the Mississippi and other rivers half a century ago; that is, it was of the wood-burning, stern paddle-wheel type.

As they stood out on deck the next morning Jack tried to lose sight of the big issue for the moment and he imagined himself to be the first explorer who had traced the Yukon River in this region. If he had not had gold on the brain it would have been an easy thing to do for here were the same virgin meadows, primeval forests and silent fastnesses just as they were when the Russians laid claim to Alaska. And the gold, he reasoned, that was here then is, for the greater part, here now.

Not once since they had left Seattle had Bill compared anything with his Noo York, at least not out loud, but when they were passing through the headwaters of the Yukon he said as though he was talking to himself, “It hasn’t got anything on the Spuyten Duyvil,” which, let me elucidate, is a tidal channel that connects the Harlem River with the Hudson River and so forms the northern boundary of Manhattan Island on which New York City proper is built. But in the eight hundred and sixty odd mile trip down the Yukon to Circle City Bill had ample opportunity to amend his snap comparison and even then he was fifteen hundred miles from its many channeled delta where it flows into the Bering Sea.

“Doesn’t look much like the naked north or frozen regions that the folks back home think it is,” remarked Bill, as they passed a tundra (pronounced toon´-dra) which was thick with grass and shrubs and sprinkled with various plants in flower.

“I’ll say it doesn’t,” replied Jack, “but wait, we haven’t run into winter weather yet.”

As the boat plied its way softly and swiftly down the Yukon they saw occasional Indian villages, the men taking life easy, the children playing and the squaws busy drying the golden salmon on poles set in the sun. Then to the great delight of both boys they saw a caribou swim out from the shore intending, probably, to cross to the other side, but frightened by the modernity of the throbbing, smoking monster he swam back faster than he came, and on gaining the shore he disappeared from view.

Another time Bill went over to Jack, who was talking with some passengers, and saluting as to an officer he said, “I have to report, sir, a bear on the starboard bow.” And sure enough there stood a huge bear high on the ledge of a rock and so motionless was he that he seemed carved out of the rock itself; but inwardly he was fully alive to this mechanical invasion of his eminent domain.

Never was a river trip of such wild beauty, so full of interest and yet such soothing quiet as this one the boys were now making and it would have proved doubly delightful if they had been pleasure seekers instead of gold seekers. The only breaks in the continuity of the run were made when the boat nosed its way along a bank and, finding an anchorage, she wooded up, that is she took on wood to be burned under her boilers.

Now the river widened and the boat ran into the more placid waters of Lake LeBarge which Jack pointed out to Bill as having been the scene of action in The Cremation of Sam McGee, a poem by Robert Service. On reaching the lower end of the lake the boat shot down the Thirty Mile River where the swift current winds forth and back like a tangled rope and it takes a pilot who knows his trade to hold her to the channel.

But the most exciting piece of navigation is at Five Finger Rapids, for here the river narrows down into a neck and almost closing the latter are five ugly finger-like rocks projecting above the surface with the water swirling swiftly round them in mighty eddies. It looked to Jack and Bill as if there was not enough room for the boat to pass between any two of them but this didn’t seem to worry the pilot any who held her nose hard toward the middle finger.

The boys thought that he must be tired of life. But hold there matey, just as they had timed her to strike the rock he bore down hard on his wheel to port and the boat missed the rock by the skin of its teeth, Their hearts dropped back from their throats to their thoraxes again and they believed they still stood a fair chance of finding the gold they were after.

And now comes Dawson into view—Dawson in the heart of the Klondike—the Dawson of tradition, adventure, romance and—of gold! This is the identical town where that great army of pioneer gold seekers, who braved the rigors of the winters, the dangers of the rapids, the stresses of starvation and the robbers of Soapy Smith’s gang, found themselves if they were unfortunate enough to be so fortunate.

As the steamboat ties up here for half a day to load and unload its cargo the boys went on a hike over to an Indian village called Moosehide, a little way down the trail from Dawson. On returning to town they got the borry, as Bill called it, of a couple of horses and rode out eight or ten miles where some great dredges were at work bringing up the sand and gravel from the streams and hydraulicking equipments were washing the gold out of it.

“This kind of mining,” Jack said to his partner, “is simply panning out gold on a big scale by machinery, and gold fields that are not rich enough to be worked profitably by a prospector will yield gold on a paying basis where hydraulicking can be taken advantage of.”

“It’s too slow a game for me,” was Bill’s idea of the scheme, “I wants to pick it up in chunks.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Jack made answer.

They left Dawson that evening and the next morning still found them in the Yukon Territory, but shortly after breakfast the boat crossed the International boundary line and they were on good old U. S. soil again. The boat soon made a landing at Eagle City where Fort Egbert is located and the first thing Jack spied was a big wireless station which he knew belonged to the U. S. Army.

From Eagle to Circle City, or just Circle as it is called for short, is a sail of a hundred and ninety miles. Both Jack and Bill were dead tired of traveling and they hailed Circle as heartily as they would have hailed their own home town. But they didn’t know what they were hailing. The only outstanding fact with them was that they had arrived, or at any rate they had gone as far as trains and boats could carry them toward the goal of their desires. The bridge was swung ashore and they got off without delay. The whistle blew a couple of sonorous blasts, and the boat backed off and went on her way down stream.

In the days of the gold rush Circle had been the great outfitting town in these parts. It was built up entirely of log cabins and it had more log cabins than any town had ever gathered together before or since. Why Circle City? Whence the name? Because when the town was started it was believed to be located right on the Arctic Circle but later it was learned that it was a good eighty miles below the Circle.

As the boys stepped ashore they were greeted by a few white men, some Indians and the ear-splitting howls of the huskies.

“I tell you Bill, we’re on the very edge of things.”

“You said a mouthful, pard,” was that worthy’s sober reply.

CHAPTER IV
WHEN BILL AND BLACK PETE MET

The boys wore sorely disappointed in Circle for while it had been, as they had heard, “the largest log house town in the world,” and as far as log houses go it was yet, for that matter, still that essential moving principle that makes up a town, namely the inhabitants, was lacking.

But times have changed since the early ’90’s and now all that remain of its population are a few men who look after the stores and a handful of prospectors, miners, hunters and trappers who come into town to buy their supplies, and these hearten it up a bit. As for the empty log houses they serve only as so many monuments to commemorate the time when the town was alive and full of action.

You ask why the town died out? I’ll tell you. Gold was discovered there in 1894 and for the next four years its growth was phenomenal—the wonder of all Alaska; but when the Klondike was opened up the inhabitants left everything behind them and made a mad rush for the new gold fields, and so at the present time there is little left to tell of the glory that was Circle’s.

The way Jack had figured it out coming up on the boat was that they would get their clothes, grub, sleds and dogs at Circle, which prospectors and others he had talked with said they could do, and then when they were all fixed and winter had set in they would push on over to the land of the Yeehats and there establish a base from which they could work.

This base of supplies was to be like the hub of a great wheel the circumference of which would include all of the territory to be prospected and their local expeditions would be like the spokes, that is they would strike out with their dog teams, traveling light, taking a new line of direction each trip they made. In this way they could, he said, make a thorough search for the hidden gold that those before them had struck so rich but which for divers reasons best known to those who had sought it had never been gotten out of the country.

His best thought, as he had previously explained in answer to an objection of Bill’s, was to make this search during the winter months instead of doing it in summer-time in virtue of the fact that they could then use dog sleds and this would enable them to cover the ground without working themselves to death and do it at a goodly clip besides.

Now, when Bill had set his eyes on the deserted City of Circle he instantly took a violent dislike to it. Having become fairly well posted on the geography of Ilasker, as he still persisted in calling it, he concocted the notion that what they should have done was to come up in the early spring and go on by boat to Fort Yukon, which is about eighty-five miles farther on down the river.

From there, he contended, they could have gotten a couple of canoes and paddled up the Porcupine and Big Black Rivers until they were close to where the International boundary line crosses the Arctic Circle. This done, (according to Jack’s own reasoning he said), they would be about as near the place where they wanted to make their winter quarters as they could get. But there was no getting away from it, they were now in Circle with winter fast coming on and it was too late to change the work sheet as previously laid out.

By the time this argument was over, the boys had reached the Grand Palace Hotel, an enormous log building of two stories of the regulation kind to be found in all frontier and mining towns.

Running nearly the length of one side of the hall as they entered it, was a bar with a hotel register on the end nearest the door. At the extreme farther end of the hall a platform had been built up about as high as a man’s head, while any number of small round tables covered with worn-out and faded green cloth were strewn about the room.

The owner of the Grand Palace in the days antedating the Klondike rush was Sam Hastings, or Silent Sam as he was called, because he never spoke unless he was spoken to and his replies were always pithy and to the point. His face was smooth shaven; he wore a low crowned, narrow brimmed Stetson hat, a rolling collar with a flowing tie, silk shirt with diamond set gold buttons in the cuffs, a Prince Albert coat with a six gun conveniently within reach under it, doeskin[3] breeches and kid button shoes. Unlike Soapy Smith he was honest, as men of his type went in those days, but like Soapy he died with his button shoes on.

Now let this close-up of Silent Sam fade away and take a look at a snap-shot of Doc Marling, the present owner of the Grand Palace and you will observe a further change that time and circumstances have wrought in Circle.

Doc is a big-headed man and bearded like a couple of pards. He wears a woolen shirt, under which beats a fair to middling heart; his breeches are also woolen tied around his ankles and he has on a pair of deerskin moccasins.

He is no shooter—you could see that the moment you look at him—but it is history up yonder that he once choked a bear to death with his hands alone.

He was the only animated object in the great bare room when the boys walked in and they felt like a couple of mavericks that had been cut out from the herd. No more lonesome place had either of them ever been in this side of Nyack-on-the-Hudson.

But Doc Marling didn’t seem to feel that way, since after being there for twenty odd years perhaps he’d gotten used to it. He invited them to inscribe their names on the hotel register, after which he led the march down the hall—it seemed to the boys as if it was a block long—thence up the stair-way whose well-worn steps showed clearly that Circle had been very much alive in the days of her youth, and then to their room which was altogether too big.