“Who do I have the pleasure of thanking for saving my skin?” I ask, extending my hand.
“George,” he says, with a devilish wink. “George Cook.”
To celebrate my escape from death, George Cook takes me to a rowdy watering hole replete with singing miners, their fingertips flush with a golden gleam. A jaunty tune sounds from a player piano and a barmaid sweeps around collecting empty glasses and refilling all those who stay. George and I find a table in the corner away from the din.
“A prospector, huh?” George asks, pulling at his drooping mustache. He’s unlike any man I’ve ever met before, almost like he was raised by animals. His pants seem sewed together by a patchwork of lesser pants and his slouchy hat refuses to stay upright. He exudes a stink that’s a mix of fish and wood and mountain, but it’s oddly alluring—like he’s had adventures I couldn’t even dream of. “First time to Alaska?”
“Yep, come from a farm in Washington State. My wife and child are there.”
“Yet you were drawn to the wild,” he says, nodding as if we’re one in the same. “I have a wife and child as well. She’s an Indian and my daughter a half breed. Most like to sneer. I love them just the same. Their tribe holds wisdom that white men would be lucky to come across. They are richer than all of us combined.”
“With gold?”
“No, with love, respect for the land, with things that matter.”
“Yet you search for gold, George.”
“I am not from there so material possessions still delight me. And gold brings promise.”
“You aiming to head up the Yukon?”
“Sure am,” he says, knocking back his ale and wiping the foam from his mouth with his sleeve. “Looking to rouse a gang together with some Indians as well. Figure my knowledge of their ways can help me get the best guides to join.”
“That’s what I’m after too. ’Cept I don’t have much money.”
“They won’t want your money.” He stands and beckons. “Come, follow my lead.”
We head toward the bar and when the barmaid bends over to retrieve a dropped washcloth, George reaches his long arms down and procures two bottles of whiskey. He sticks them under his coat, his eyes dancing.
“Your turn,” he says. I don’t know what to do until George—while concealing the bottles he already stole—tells the barmaid that he thinks she’s lost a button from her blouse, and when she bends over again, he nudges me and I reach down and grab two more whiskey bottles. By the time she raises her head, we’re out the door with the booty.
Juneau at night seems different than during the day, more remote, less populated. Any other prospectors either getting a sound sleep or finding ways up the mouth of the Taiya River one hundred twenty miles north so they can begin their expedition through the Yukon. George leads me to another Tlingit settlement and I worry about duplicating my same fate. The way those savages laughed and made fun of me back in Sitka still stings.
George explains he’ll handle everything since he speaks their language.
A campfire blazes at the settlement. A dozen Tlingits turn from the fire, wary of the white men approaching.
“This is their kwan,” George says.
“The last kwan I was in was not so welcoming.”
“Tlingits have different units. And besides, you have me as a tagalong this time. They are at odds with Juneau, the mines conflicting with their lifestyle.”
“How do they feel about gold?”
“Gold is universal. They just don’t believe in machines as a way of obtaining it.”
“Neither do I.”
Two little girls observe us warily, both with rings through their noses and necklaces made of beads and shells. They take George’s hand but not mine and lead him over to the fire where the elders sit. George waves me over too.
“I’ve been here before,” George says. “They know me. Some prospectors try to pan around their settlement, but I come for the company.”
George starts talking in Chinook to the man I believe to be the chief. The chief speaks in a low gruff while George gets animated, gesturing with his hands. Another man passes George a long pipe and he complies with a puff. The man points at me and George says something in response, which I assume to be an introduction. One of the little girls sits close, placing her cheek against my leg. She sticks out her tongue.
“She likes you,” George says. And then I see him get down to business. He loses his jokey persona and becomes very serious, pointing in various directions and acting out rowing a boat. I want to tell him that won’t work, but then the chief nods as if it’s all been decided. The chief points to two men and orders them to stand. Then he looks at George with eyebrows raised, asking: What will you give me in return?
George whips out the two whiskey bottles from under his coat and motions for me to do the same. The Injuns’ eyes all go wide, they couldn’t be more pleased! George opens the cap, takes a small sip, then passes it to the Injun on his right. The Injun sticks his eye into the bottle, then places his lips over it and chugs. After finishing, he howls at the moon, then passes it along as each Injun does the same.
We sit around sipping whiskey as one of the Injuns tells a story. He’s acting out a lot of it so I can understand some. It involves some type of animal, possibly a wolf, and the journey this wolf goes on. It’s an arduous trip filled with sacrifice and at the end I’m not sure if the wolf died because the Injun just stops moving but his eyes are wide open in shock. A lot of the Injuns are drunk, and I’m drunk too, so I tuck my coat under my head to make a pillow. But this little girl with the ring in her nose shakes her head. She leads me to a plankhouse with totem poles erected at the sides where a makeshift bed has been set up. She grunts and closes the door behind me, vanishing before I can thank her. I’m so sleepy from my trek that once I lay my head down, it’s already morning.
August 19th, 1898
I wake up to a beautiful Tlingit girl with long hair and button eyes. She beckons me to join the campfire where the tribe eats a breakfast of fish with Indian potatoes, along with greens, seeds, and berries. George has already finished and plays games with the Injun kids. When he sees me, he hurries over.
“Enjoy breakfast? When the tide goes out, the table is set. It’s an old Tlingit saying.”
He indicates the fish bone on my plate, all that remains.
“It was delicious.”
“So, we have two options. One, we can have them build us a canoe, but that will take some time and we’ll have to leave the canoe at the Chilkoot Pass, since it will be too much to carry.”
“What’s the other?”
“I’ve learned that a gang of Indian braves has passed through Chilkoot and a US Navy gunboat was dispatched to apprehend them. One of the tribe members speaks decent English, better than myself. I didn’t tell you this but I’m former Navy. I think I can convince the ship to take us up the Taiya.”
“The ship is still there?”
“We’ll find out.”
We leave with foodstuffs: jerky bacon, flour, beans, and some tools to build a boat once we cross the Chilkoot Pass: a two-man whipsaw, sturdy axes, iron nails, along with pitch and oakum. In addition to the whiskey bottles, the two guides loaned are paid in gold and silver from George’s pocket with the promise of many more riches. George was right that they didn’t care about white man’s paper money.
The little girl with the ring in her nose runs up, pinching my palm to say goodbye.
She’s about the same age as Little Joe seems but so much wiser, like she’s lived a dozen lives already where all he’s experienced is our farm. I plan on taking him on an expedition sometime so I can watch his eyes dance. I miss him so already.
As we head back into Juneau I’m introduced to the two Injun guides, a man named Kaawishté, who was the Injun who knew some English, and one other whose name is a blur and speaks nil English.
We reach the dock off Front Street. The streets have muddied due to a sleety rain, and sure enough,
the USS Pinta galley’s stovepipe rises from the harbor. George boards with me and the guides in tow and marches right for the captain. With a glint in his eye, George the showman pleads his case, tells of his military background, and how if we can get a lift to the Taiya, it would position us to begin our adventure up the Yukon. The captain, Commander Henry Nichols, USN, seems to have a wanderlust bone in his body and agrees that they could take a detour and deliver us and our supplies to the Taiya.
I’m in disbelief but George seems nonplussed. I get the sense that lucky things like this happen to him all the time. He simply has that kind of easy charm. Until he tells me,
“I’m AWOL, just so you know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I deserted the military so if I’m caught my goose is cooked. But I enjoy living on the edge of danger.”
We eye two sailors passing by as my stomach churns. About halfway to our destination, the captain comes down from his quarters to check on us. The Injuns sit across from each other sharpening their knives in case there’s trouble with the captain. The captain holds two Springfield rifles, and I think he’s about to shoot us for George’s deserting, but then he hands over the rifles along with rounds of ball cartridges.
“When ya make it back to Juneau, just return ’em,” the captain says, and walks away before we can object.
As I hold the rifle in my hands, I’m aware of the many shots I will take. The animals I will slay for sustenance, and those I will kill in lieu of them killing me. The rifle is heavy with history, alive with a sense of its future. When I look up, hours have passed and
we’ve arrived at the rapid, glacier-driven waters of the Taiya River, into the wilderness now, civilization a memory.
34
Chilkoot Pass and a Tagish Village
August 20th, 1898
George warned about the perilous Chilkoot Trail, but I didn’t believe until I actually faced the thirty-five-hundred-yard climb up its steep white slope. Prior to reaching its base, the greatest difficulty was the fifty-pound rucksack on my back. But the breathtak-ing country makes up for its weight. Snow-capped peaks and proud evergreens, fields of green-jeweled grass, the pine aroma outside of Dyea and the calm blue waters with etch-ings of mountains reflected. One of them being the Chilkoot. Despite its outward beauty, it stands before us harsh and unremitting. George and the two guides woke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, already ahead of me toward its base. There is no way I can turn back.
Even in the summer season, the snow is packed thick with layers of iced boulders. The wind cuts like knives. The glacier majestic yet seeming like it might dislodge at any second and come crashing down. My mackinaw coat rimmed with sweat. My rucksack digging into my back. Two miles up, we reach a flat area where we can rest. I can vaguely spy the summit, yet my legs betray my excited brain. No longer able to stand, I take to crawling, inching over boulder by boulder. I can’t feel my hands and there are pools of ice water in my boots. I reach the summit on all fours as an animal, no longer entirely human.
August 21st, 1898
The ice on Lake Lindeman has broken up enough that a boat could pass through. After a breakfast over a fire of beans and jerky bacon, we set to work with the guides on a canoe.
First, we make a saw pit, take the bark off logs, then place them on top. George holds one handle of the jag-toothed six-foot whipsaw, while one of the guides clasps it from below.
Then they switch and me and the other guide take over. We finish come nighttime and paddle across, the lake still, barely lapping, the surrounding world ours alone. No sign of man, but we know that’ll change once we close in on the Klondike. For now, we’ll travel and pan in spots we think might produce gold. From everything I’ve been through to get here, I’m thrilled to no end!
August 22nd to September 3rd, 1898
The next few weeks prove to be a blur of disappointment. The gold we find no more than dust. The loneliness settling in. The guides speak to each other and George occasionally but not much to me. I miss Adalaide and Little Joe terribly, having left them for well over a month now. I wonder if Little Joe has gotten over his chills. If Adalaide waits for a letter that I am unable to send. I swear once we hit a town that will be the first thing I do. I think of mornings spent in bed cuddling with them both, a fire roaring. George tries to
keep my spirits up, but he is unsuccessful. Once the grip of depression has you in its vice, it won’t dare let go.
Having always been a good rifle shot, I spend the time honing my skills. I can hit a bobbing duck or a goose that we can roast over a spruce fire. Salmon are caught with netting, and clams and bottomfish just from digging. So we eat okay, trying not to cut into our preserves too much. As we near September, the weather takes a turn. Our tents barely keeping out the chilled rush of winds that howl throughout the nights. My dreams even cool, icy realms devoid of sun, a blue-cheeked Little Joe shivering, my bones brittle enough to snap. What a fool I am to think I could strike it rich in the Yukon. The only thing I’ll bring back home is frostbite, if I survive. One morning we wake and the Injun guide who spoke no English is dead. We put pennies over his shut eyes and drift him out on one of the lakes, holding our hats to our hearts.
“He had a sickness in him,” Kaawishté says. It’s the first he’s spoken to me in days.
He has jet-black hair that sweeps down to his shoulders, his mouth in a permanent frown the shape of an umbrella, broad shoulders with hands the size of pans. He could break my neck with barely a twist.
“What was the sickness?” I ask.
He looks at me like I’m a dunce for not knowing. “He was never a believer. That’s why the chief chose him to go. He wanted him out of our tribe.”
“And you?” I ask, as the question hangs in the air. I’m nervous to hear the answer.
“I am our future.”
He pivots so he is no longer looking directly at me, the conversation ended. George shrugs and I think about how I represent my family’s future as well. Each day I wonder if I should turn around and head back. I know George does as well. I’ve heard him murmur-ing in his sleep. But not Kaawishté, even the death of his tribemate doesn’t hasten his determination. Rather noble.
September 4th to September 30th, 1898
The next day, Kaawishté decides we must find a settlement in the area to replenish our supplies. Without realizing, we’ve come low on beans and flour and simply eating fish or game does not reward enough sustenance. My belly has sunken in, ribs poking through, my tongue flush from dehydration. George and I agree.
After floating upstream for days, we come across a Tagish village. George replies that he only knows Chinook and won’t be able to understand, but Kaawishté reassures us.
He’s spent some time with the Tagish, knows of their ways. We’ve no other choice but to have him lead. As we plunge into the ice waters of Nares Lake, we hear a cannon that makes me think of when I first arrived in Sitka and the steamboats were setting off. At first, I wonder if we’re being attacked, since the boundaries between American Alaska and the Dominion of Canada are fuzzy at best, but the noise keeps mutating, drawing closer, headed straight for us. Across the channel, the thunder from a herd of pounding caribou, thousands of them, roaring through the earth, their fur shimmering, galloping a fierce beat as they charge as a united front. The raw mystique of their power brings tears to my eyes, not from sadness like I’ve felt so far, but at the awe that nature inspires. I had
only destinations in mind from the start of my journey, but I must breathe in the entirety of this adventure, for we only live one life.
About fifty miles from the herd lies the Tagish settlement, which hugs the banks of a channel that curls around two lakes. A small clan, no more than twenty or so families with two large community houses and a strip of tiny log cabins in a crescent shape. A woman as old as the hills greets us, barely able to stand, yet her voice throbbing with authority. Kaawishté tells us the Tagish women make the decisions for the tribe while
the men are off hunting.
With slight difficulty, Kaawishté explains our situation and the elder tribe woman receives us sweetly. Kaawishté says that they will house and replenish us but we must work for the trade. First, we are joined by the men finished with their hunt and are served caribou tongue. They laugh as I spit out its sharp hairs. Over the next week, I hunt with the braves and they are impressed by my rifle skills. When we kill an animal, the carcass is given to the entire village as the women work to dry and smoke the meat. I feel like I’m part of a family for the first time since I’ve left my own.
“Their way of life,” George says, gnawing at a dried piece of Caribou skin. “It has its benefits, yes?”
“When was the last time you really spent among white men?”
George shakes his finger. “Not since I was young. I’ll head into Juneau, partake of alcohol and a few modern luxuries, but all I need is a taste. I’m entirely full.”
“Yet you leave your family?” I ask, wanting him to justify me deserting my own.
“Kaawishté spoke of being the future of his tribe. I am the same. We’ve fallen on hard times. Even though we do not require much, the land has changed and does not provide like it used to. The gold will help us settle somewhere more prosperous.”
“My son is sick,” I say, because I’ve barely spoken of Little Joe since we began our trek.
“What does he have?”
I shrug. “He’s always cold.”
George tosses away a sour piece of caribou. He tugs at his mustache. “Maybe that’s actually the secret to longevity.”
“What do you mean, George?”
“Our bodies are all very different. What might kill one causes another to survive. I am saying he may not be as sick as you think. Have faith.”
“I don’t have faith.”
“No God?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t subscribe to God like you may think. But I do believe in my own gods, in the teachings elders have passed down. You should let the Tagish do a ritual to you.
The Ancestor Page 20
