Alaska Part 55

All pa.s.sengers, freight, and supplies for the interior now pa.s.s through White Horse. The river bank is lined with vast warehouses which, by the time the river opens in June, are piled to the roofs with freight. The shipments of heavy machinery are large. From the river one can see little besides these warehouses, the shipyards to the south, and the hills.

Pa.s.sing through the depot one is confronted by the largest hotel, the White Pa.s.s, directly across the street. To this we walked; and from an upstairs window had a good view of the town. The streets are wide and level; the whole town site is as level as a parade-ground. The buildings are frame and log; merchandise is fair in quality and style, and in price, high. Mounted police strut stiffly and importantly up and down the streets to and from their picturesque log barracks. One unconsciously holds one's chin level and one's shoulders high the instant one enters a Yukon town. It is in the air.

Excellent grounds are provided for all outdoor sports; and in the evening every man one meets has a tennis racket or a golf stick in his hand, and on his face that look of enthusiastic antic.i.p.ation which is seen only on a British sportsman's face. No American, however enthusiastic or "keen" he may be on outdoor sports, ever quite gets that look.

There was no key to our door. Furthermore, the door would not even close securely, but remained a few hair breadths ajar. There was no bell; but on our way down to dinner, having left some valuables in our room, we reported the matter to a porter whom we met in the hall, and asked him to lock our door.

"It doesn't lock," he replied politely. "It doesn't even latch, and the key is lost."

Observing our amazed faces, he added, smiling:--

"You don't need it, ladies. You will be as safe as you would be at home.

We never lock doors in White Horse."

This was my first Yukon shock, but not my last. My faith in mounted police has always been strong, but it went down before that unlocked door.

"Possibly the people of White Horse never take what does not belong to them," I said; "but a hundred strangers came in on that train. Might not _one_ be afflicted with kleptomania?"

"He wouldn't steal here," said the boy, confidently. "n.o.body ever does."

There seemed to be nothing more to say. We left our door ajar and, with lingering backward glances, went down to the dining room.

Never shall I forget that dinner. It was as bad as our lunch had been good. The room was hot; the table-cloth was far from being immaculate; the waitress was untidy and ill-bred; and there was nothing that we could eat.

Nor were we fastidious. We neither expected, nor desired, luxuries; we asked only well-cooked, clean, wholesome food; but if this is to be obtained in White Horse, we found it not--although we did not cease trying while we were there.

We went out and walked the clean streets and looked into restaurants, and tried to see something good to eat, or at least a clean table-cloth; but in the end we went hungry to bed. We had wine and graham wafers in our bags, and they consoled; but we craved something substantial, notwithstanding our hearty lunch. It was the air--the light, fresh, sparkling air of mountain, river, and lake--that gave us our appet.i.tes.

When we had walked until our feet could no longer support us, we returned to the hotel. On the way, we saw a sign announcing ice-cream soda. We went in and asked for some, but the ice-cream was "all out."

"But we have plain soda," said the man, looking so wistful that we at once decided to have some, although we both detested it.

He fizzed it elaborately into two very small gla.s.ses and led us back into a little dark room, where were chairs and tables, and he gave us spoons with which to eat our plain soda. "Let me pay," said my friend, airily; and she put ten cents on the table.

The man looked at it and grinned. He did not smile; he grinned. Then he went away and left it lying there.

We tried to drink the soda-water; then we tried to coax it through straws; finally we tried to eat it with spoons--as others about us were doing; but we could not. It looked like soap-bubbles and it tasted like soap-bubbles.

"He didn't see his ten cents," said my friend, gathering it up. "I suppose one pays at the counter out there. I would cheerfully pay him an extra ten if I had not gotten the taste of the abominable stuff in my mouth."

She laid the ten cents on the counter grudgingly.

The man looked at it and grinned again.

"Them things don't go here," said he. "It's fifty cents."

There was a silence. I found my handkerchief and laughed into it, wishing I had taken a second gla.s.s.

"Oh, I see," said she, slowly and sweetly, as a half-dollar slid lingering down her fingers to the counter. "For the spoons. They were worth it."

It was two o'clock before we could leave our windows that night. It was not dark, not even dusk. A kind of blue-white light lay over the town and valley, deepening toward the hills. In the air was that delicious quality which charms the senses like perfumes. Only to breathe it in was a drowsy, languorous joy. At White Horse one opens the magic, invisible gate and pa.s.ses into the enchanted land of Forgetfulness--and the gate swings shut behind one.

Home and friends seem far away. If every soul that one loves were at death's door, one could not get home in time to say farewell--so why not banish care and enjoy each hour as it comes?

This is the same reckless spirit which, greatly intensified, possessed desperate men when they went to the Klondike ten years ago. There was no telegraph, then, and mails were carried in only once or twice a year.

Letters were lost. Men did not hear from their wives, and, discouraged and disheartened, decided that the women had died or had forgotten; so they went the way of the country, and it often came to pa.s.s that Heartbreak Trail led to the Land of Heartbreak.

In the morning we learned that the boat for Dawson was not yet "in,"

and, even if it should arrive during the day,--which seemed to be as uncertain as the opening of the river in spring,--would not leave until some time during the night; so at nine o'clock we took the Skaguay train for the Grand Canyon.

One "oldest" resident of White Horse told us that it was only a mile to the canyon; another oldest one, that it was four miles; still another, that it was five; all agreed that we should take the train out and walk back.

"There's a tram," they told us, "an old, abandoned tram, and you can't get lost. You've only to follow the tram. Why, a _goose_ couldn't get lost. Norman McCauley built the tram, and outfits were portaged around the canyon and the rapids two seasons; then the railroad come in and the tram went out of business."

We took our bundles of mosquito netting and boarded the train. In summer the travel is all "in," and we were the only pa.s.sengers. When the White Pa.s.s Railway Company was organized, stock was worth ten dollars a share; now it is worth six hundred and fifty dollars, and it is not for sale.

Freight rates are five cents a pound, one hundred dollars a ton, or fifty in car-load lots, from Skaguay to White Horse. Pa.s.senger rates are supposed to be twenty cents a mile. We paid seventy-five cents to return to the canyon which we pa.s.sed the previous day. This rate should make the distance four miles, and we barely had time to arrange our mosquito veils, according to the instructions of the conductor, when the train stopped.

We were told that we might not see a mosquito; and again, that we might not be able to see anything else.

We were put off and left standing ankle-deep in sand, on the brink of a precipice, four miles from any human being--in the wilds of Alaska. At that moment the trainmen looked like old and dear friends.

"The path down is right in front of you," the collector called, as the train started. "Don't be afraid of the bears! They will not harm you at this time of the year."

Bears!

We had considered heat, mosquitoes, losing our way, hunger, exhaustion,--everything, it appeared, except bears. We looked at one another.

"I had not thought of bears."

"Nor had I."

We looked down at the bushes growing along the canyon; little heat-worms glimmered in the still atmosphere.

"Perhaps it is an Alaskan joke," I suggested feebly.

We stood for some time trying to decide whether we should make the descent or return to White Horse, when suddenly the matter was decided for us. I was standing on the brink of the sandy precipice, down which a path went, almost perpendicularly, without bend or pause, to the bank of the river several hundred yards below.

The sandy soil upon which I stood suddenly caved and went down into the path. I went with it. I landed several yards below the brink, gave one cry, and then--by no will of my own--was off for the canyon.

The caving of the brink had started a sand and gravel slide; and I, knee-deep in it, was going down with it--slowly, but oh, most surely.

There was no pausing, no looking back. I could hear my companion calling to me to "stop"; to "wait"; to "be careful"--and all her entreaties were the bitterest irony by the time they floated down to me. So long as the slide did not stop, it was useless to tell me to do so; for I was embedded in it halfway to my waist. We kept going, slowly and hesitatingly; but never slowly enough for me to get out.

It was eighty in the shade, and the sand was hot. I was wearing a white waist, a dark blue cheviot skirt, and patent-leather shoes; and my appearance, when I finally reached level ground and cool alder trees, may be imagined. Furthermore, our trunks had been bonded to Dawson, and I had no extra skirts or shoes with me.

My companion, profiting by my misfortune, had armed herself with an alpenstock and was "tacking" down the slope. It was half an hour before she arrived.

I have never forgiven her for the way she laughed.

We soon forgot the bears in the beauty of the scene before us. We even forgot the comedy of my unwilling descent.