The Boy Scouts on the Yukon Part 4

"I want to say, Colonel," said Rand, rising and facing the army officer at "attention," "that I think I speak for the whole patrol when I promise in their names the most earnest fidelity and strict attention to rules and regulations until our mission up here is finished."

"Yes, yes," echoed the Scouts, springing to their feet and saluting the Colonel, who also rose and returned it with a smile of acknowledgment. At the same moment Swift.w.a.ter Jim entered the saloon.

"Young men, your commander," said Colonel Snow, waving a hand toward the miner. With one accord the patrol turned toward the grizzled Alaskan and saluted. Jim turned red with pleasure and waved a knotted hand in recognition.

"Glad to see ye, boys, but salutin' won't be necessary ev'ry time we meet.

I used ter be satisfied on shipboard if a man jumped about a foot high every time I spoke real serious, but I guess we can get through this job without much loud bossin'. I simply want ter sejest that I ain't very good at argying, so I hope we shan't have much of that."

One by one, the boys shook hands with the miner in token of fealty, and from that time until the steamer reached Skagway spent several hours a day with him in what he called his "first cla.s.s in gettin' on the job." The most of this work included thorough instruction in the geography of Southeastern Alaska and Southern Yukon territory, the Colonel's land being located in the Canadian dominions. Especially was their attention drawn to numerous waterways as shown on the maps, which must form the highways for all transportation during the summer time, and knowledge of whose location, size and tributaries formed a man's best safeguard in this almost pathless wilderness.

A visit was paid to the hold, this time with the captain's permission, to enable Swift.w.a.ter to estimate the amount of freight that was to be handled and the best way of distributing it among the transports. The boys went with him to learn something of their new duties in this connection.

"I move," said Rand, "that that earnest young sleuth, Mr. Jack Blake, be appointed guide to this expedition to the dark and creepy hold. He knows where everything is, for he has fallen over it all, I hear."

"He might meet Monkey Rae," said d.i.c.k with a mock shudder, "then think of the carnage."

Dublin and the Raes, fearing Captain Huxley's possible report to the authorities at Skagway, had "jumped the ship" as the commander of the "Queen" expressed it at Ketchikan, the first port of call in Alaska, and d.i.c.k's fears were therefore groundless, but Jack, who had learned the lesson of taking a joke goodnaturedly grinned feebly, and readily dived into the hatchway and down the ladder. The electric lights had been turned on, and the hitherto Egyptian darkness of the hold had vanished. They readily found their consignment, and the miner went over it carefully.

"What ye got here?" he asked, kicking the heavy case before referred to, which the boys had brought along on their own initiative. "Pianny? Don't believe we need any pianny, up Yukon way. There's plenty piannys in Alaska, now, but I remember the first one that was brought in. It's up in Dawson yet. It was brought in on the first rush in '98. Cost four hundred dollars in the States and two thousand dollars to haul up from Skagway.

The last time I heard it, it was being mauled by a feenominon, who had a patent pianny-playin' wooden arm on one side, and it sounded like a day's work in a boiler factory at one end and a bad smash in a gla.s.s pantry at the other. I heard some o' them educated Cheechakos talkin' about art, but I didn't care for it much."

"It isn't a piano," said Gerald as the laugh subsided. "It's a little enterprise of our own, and is to be put in storage in Skagway until we're through with our work."

"Wa'al," replied the guide, as he tested its weight, "we don't have to handle it then, and that's something of a load off my mind."

The next day when the boy Scouts awoke they found the vessel anch.o.r.ed in the picturesque harbor of Skagway, the end of the "Inside Pa.s.sage."

CHAPTER V.

A NEW MODE OF TRAVEL.

Their stay in Skagway was brief. It was the point of parting between Colonel Snow and his young charges, as it was necessary for him to hasten a way westward to another part of Alaska on his mission, which would occupy some weeks. The boys parted with him reluctantly and with some little feeling of homesickness, but he promised to join them as early as possible and a.s.sured them that he had placed them in safe hands, with ample means for their return to Skagway should sickness or accident befall them.

Except for the brief glimpses of native and local Alaskan life which they had obtained during the stoppages of the steamer at Metlakatla, in the Annette Islands, a reservation set apart by Congress for the now civilized Tsimpsean Indians, a tribe which, with their devoted missionary head, William Duncan, immigrated from British Columbia to secure, it is said, greater religious liberty, and at Ketchikan, a thriving town, the boys here gained their first real impressions of Alaskan conditions. They found Skagway a town of about fifteen hundred people, set in a great natural amphitheatre surrounded by mountains capped with perpetual snow. It is connected with the outside world by a cable to Seattle, and by other parts of Alaska by telegraph, and has electric lights and a telephone system. A fine school building and several churches that reminded the young Scouts of many Hudson river towns, and wiped out the last remaining evidences of homesickness, were among the attractions, and the sight of a real railroad equipped with locomotives, cars, shops and station were among the marvels found where they had expected to find a wilderness.

It was from this town that thousands of prospectors and adventurers started in 1897 and 1898 in the rush to the Klondike, and Swift.w.a.ter told them many stories of the terrible winter trip over the White Pa.s.s in those years in which hundreds of men lost their lives and thousands of horses were killed.

With Colonel Snow they made one or two trips into the surrounding country, visiting the nearby Chilkat and Chilkoot villages, during two days that Swift.w.a.ter had gone over to White Horse in Yukon territory, at the other end of the White Pa.s.s and Yukon Railroad, a distance of 112 miles, to make arrangements for boats and Indian guides and boatmen to carry their machinery into the wilderness. The boys were greatly interested in this first near view of Alaskan Indian life in the two villages which they visited, and in comparing the natives with the Indians with whom they had been a.s.sociated in their trip to the Canadian Rockies. The Alaskan Indians were shorter in build, more squatty in figure and broader faced than the Crees and the other Southern red men. Jack, who had been poking about into the various corners of the first village, which were composed of huts and sod houses, came back with a look very like disgust in his face.

"I say, Don," he exclaimed, "for goodness sake don't do anything to get adopted into this tribe," referring to an episode of their journey in search of the lost mine, when Don had for obvious bravery been made a fullfledged Indian.

"Sure, I'll na do anything to deserve it; it would be naething to be proud of. They do not look much like our friends in Canada."

"There are two points in which I find they are identical," said Jack.

"What are those?" asked Rand, "color and clothes?"

"No," replied Jack, "dirt and dogs. The dirt must have been here when the Indian came onto this continent, but I've wondered whether the Indian found the dog when he came here or the dog found the Indian. They seem to have been inseparable ever since."

"D-d-do you s'pose they have dog days up here so near the pole?" asked Pepper.

"Begorra, it looks to me as if all days might be dog days around here,"

suggested Gerald, who was surrounded at that moment by at least a dozen of the hundred animals in the village.

"You would be surprised to know," said Colonel Snow, "that the dog is really the most important animal, except perhaps the reindeer in our Northern possessions. Little of this country would have been explored or settled except for his good services. There was a time when as much as two thousand dollars has been paid for a good dog up here."

The Indians were persistent peddlers, offering the handsome baskets, hats and blankets which they are peculiarly skilful in making, and the boys would have loaded themselves down with souvenirs had not Colonel Snow suggested that they would have plenty of time to supply themselves before they left for the south again.

Two days later, Swift.w.a.ter Jim, having returned from White Horse, and the freight having been taken from the steamer's hold, it was placed on cars of the White Pa.s.s and Yukon Railroad; the "piano case" as it had come to be called having been put in storage until their return, and early in the morning of a June day the boys bade farewell to Colonel Snow and boarded the train for White Horse.

The journey required nearly six hours, but the first half was a stiff climb to the top of the pa.s.s and through such magnificent scenery of mountain and gorge that the boys scarcely noticed the pa.s.sage of time, beguiled, as it was, with thrilling tales by Swift.w.a.ter Jim, with the story of the fight of the Argonauts against the winter horrors of this same trail in the early days of the great gold rush.

They arrived at White Horse about four o'clock in the afternoon, and were met by six halfbreed Indians headed by a well-known guide of that region known as Skook.u.m Joe, who spoke good English and greeted Swift.w.a.ter as an old friend. He had been charged with securing the crews for the two boats that Swift.w.a.ter Jim was to use in the trip, and he introduced the men whom Jim greeted in the "pigeon" Siwash of that section, used as a means of communication with the natives who do not speak English.

"I send up river for um," said Skook.u.m Joe, "Dey know dat country. Good work when no rum; rum, no work," referring to the prevalence of the liquor habit among the Indians since they have come into contact with the whites.

"This here is going to be a traveling lodge of the Cadets of Temperance, especially so far as natives is concerned," said Swift.w.a.ter Jim, "and consequently everybody will work on this voyage."

As the cases of machinery were removed from the cars they were opened and the a.s.sembled parts as far as possible taken to pieces. These the Indians wrapped in heavy canvas, making convenient bundles or "packs" for handling, and obviating the necessity of transporting the heavy material of the cases. Bundled together the entire freight was transported by teams to the water front, where were tied up two commodious shallow flat-bottomed boats into which it was loaded. To this was added provisions sufficient for two months, which Swift.w.a.ter had contracted for on his previous visit to the town, and sundry tents, tools and blankets.

Much of the clothing with which the boys had provided themselves had been left at Skagway as it was not needed for the present season. As it was necessary to pay duties on the machinery which had been brought from the United States into the Canadian territory, and to give bond for the two arms and personal equipment which was to be taken into the woods, but eventually returned to American territory, Swift.w.a.ter visited the Custom House, and while there introduced the Scouts to the Commissioner of Customs, who spent part of the remainder of the afternoon in showing the boys the town and the natural beauties surrounding it.

Among other places they visited the barracks, where they were introduced to the small squad of Northwestern Mounted Police, the splendid organization maintained by the Canadian Government for the preservation of order in its western and northwestern possessions. Its members are recruited from among ex-soldiers of the British army, with a reputation for hardihood and intrepidity second to none.

The station squad, composed of four members, received the boys cordially, and showed considerable interest in the organization of the Boy Scouts in the United States. Major McClintock, head of the station, apologized for the necessity of registering the young men at the barracks as police regulations required.

"This is a vast and wild territory, and we police, who are responsible for law and order here are few and far between. It is necessary for the safety of all that we know as far as possible just who the people are who come into Yukon territory. Besides, this country is a refuge for hundreds of men who find life unpleasant in more civilized sections, and we must keep them under supervision. By the way, I have just received notification from the United States marshal at Ketchikan that three queer characters dropped off the steamer from Seattle there and were heading for the Klondike, and would probably pa.s.s through here, and he asks us to keep an eye on them.

Thus far I have seen nothing of them."

"Dublin, Rae and Monkey," exclaimed Rand.

"Oh; you know them, do you?" said Major McClintock.

"Jack here knows them very well," said d.i.c.k with a grin.

"Chance for more detective work, Jack," urged Rand.

"Faith, he might join the Mounted Police," cried Gerald. "Major, won't you give Jack a chance with your troop?"

The boys joined in the laugh, and Jack, who had begun to enjoy the joke on himself, told Major McClintock of their various encounters with the three men, and all that was known of their careers.

"Well," said the officer, "we'll keep a sharp eye out for them."

The head of the Mounted Police, who seemed very familiar with the Boy Scouts of Great Britain, told them something of the great organization in England headed by General Baden-Powell, with whom he himself had served in South Africa.