Down the Yukon

by Will Hobbs

  We counted ourselves extremely lucky.

  Lucky and exhausted. We spread out the oilskin tarp, threw ourselves down on it, and slept, no matter that the sun was bright and the new day already warming at three in the morning.

  Approaching wakefulness, I heard bacon hissing on a stove. Abe is already cooking breakfast, I thought, and I’m not even up. I’ll be late for the mill.

  The next thing I heard was the chuffing of a steam engine. The engine at the mill, I figured. Someone else has stoked the furnace, and I was supposed to have done it.

  My eyes opened to a vast expanse of water and bluffs in the distance. Amid my confusion, the foreground exploded with motion. A flock of red-breasted ducks rose from the water and ran skittering along the surface, their black-and-white wings beating a frenzy until they rose, all at once, into the air.

  As I blinked away the onslaught of the light I realized I was on the Yukon River with Jamie. I rolled over—there she was, sound asleep. I heard the swooshing sound of the sweeper sawing up and down in the river and remembered what had happened.

  I got up and stretched, looking out across the river and upstream.

  What I saw dumbfounded me. In the middle of the vast Yukon River, in broad daylight, floated a two-story building.

  FOURTEEN

  I dropped to my knees and shook Jamie by the shoulder. Her eyes popped open as if she were in mortal peril. “Whaa—” she started to say.

  “Sorry to wake you, but there’s something out on the river that you have to see.”

  She got to her knees, blinking away the light, and shaded her eyes. “What in the world?”

  The building was close enough now that I could make out the lettering between the first and second stories: MOONLIGHT HOTEL.

  “The Moonlight, from Dawson!” Jamie exclaimed.

  The next moment the letters began to turn away from us. The chuffing of a steam engine carried across the water—the same sound I thought I’d dreamed. Suddenly we could see that the hotel was on a small barge being pushed by a tiny sternwheeler.

  Jamie rubbed her eyes. “But what’s it doing here?”

  “Moving to St. Michael?” I guessed. “Nome?”

  With a yawn, Jamie lay down on her back and fetched her watch out of her trouser pocket. She yawned again and opened it up. “Ten before eight. We’ve lost…almost fifteen hours.”

  “But we’re no longer in a hurry,” I reminded her.

  She sat upright, suddenly alert and conspiratorial. “There’s a long way to go. A lot could happen. Who says we can’t still win?”

  Here came Burnt Paw between us with a flurry of kisses that sent Jamie bounding to her feet like a colt off to the races. “Jason, our bedrolls are dry! Let’s roll them up and put them away! Hurry!”

  We waved to the two men at the rail of the little sternwheeler, the New Racket. A third waved from the wheelhouse.

  On a whim, Jamie flew to picking wildflowers from the profusion around us—blue lupine, goldenrod, and pink shooting stars. In the next instant she was running in a circle around the tarp and tossing the colors into the air. Burnt Paw was beside himself chasing after her, barking, leaping to catch the flowers.

  “I’m so happy to be alive!” she cried.

  Jamie’s dark hair had fallen out of its braid, and now it danced, fetching and disheveled, on her shoulders. “Father and I stayed in the Moonlight Hotel when we first arrived in Dawson! Jason, it’s a good luck sign, don’t you think?”

  “I do, I do,” I said, feeling merry as she.

  “Let me tell you a joke,” Jamie said breathlessly, coming to a sudden stop. She seemed to have forgotten we were in a hurry, but then, so had I.

  “You ever hear about the two prospectors who were walking along the railroad track when they spied a human arm lying off to the side?”

  I shook my head.

  “‘That looks like Pete’s arm,’ said the first prospector. ‘It is Pete’s arm,’ said the second.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. This was already funny.

  “They walked on a little ways and then they saw a human leg beside the rails. ‘That looks like Pete’s leg,’ observed the first prospector. ‘It is Pete’s leg,’ said the second. After a short while they saw a head lying beside the track. ‘That looks like Pete’s head,’ said the first prospector. ‘It is Pete’s head,’ replied the second prospector, who stooped and picked it up. He held it by the ears, gave it a shake, and cried, ‘Pete, are you hurt?’”

  I’d been trying not to bust out laughing, and now I could. Ethan-like, I slapped myself on my thigh so hard it hurt. Burnt Paw was so excited he was springing up eye level with me again and again as if he had steel coils in his little feet.

  “Yep, Jamie,” I said, “that’s sure-enough funny. Got any more?”

  “Maybe so,” she said, suddenly serious. Her eyes were surveying the disorder all around us. “But we have to get packed!”

  “Just one more?”

  “Later, on the river…if you’re good, both of you.”

  We were back on the river little more than an hour when we saw the sign at the border: ENTERING ALASKA. Before long we passed under the Indian village of Eagle, a jumble of cabins atop a cutbank on our left. Dressed-out salmon from pink to the color of cured tobacco decorated drying racks all along the bluff. Close to river level, sled dogs appeared out of holes they’d dug in the banks to keep cool. Each was chained to a stake. As we floated by, some barked and some howled like wolves until we were far down the river.

  Twenty minutes later we made our stop at the tiny mining town of Eagle City, fast as we could, for flour and baking powder. The gold camp was up on a high bluff above a spectacular horseshoe bend in the river; we took a second leaving the trading post to admire the view. The Hannah, one of the Alaska Commercial Company’s new steamboats, was just arriving from downriver.

  We raced down the hill. The Hannah’s passengers spilling onto the dock were on their way to Dawson, but they were all buzzing about the Great Race, which must have been a colorful sight for them indeed. We took no time to ask who was in the lead but put back on the river as fast as we could.

  Below Eagle City we entered a deep twisting canyon with sheer bluffs on the curves. We passed the mouths of four rivers entering from the north—the Seventymile, the Tatunduk, the Nation, and the Kandik. At last I reminded Jamie that I’d been very, very good, and she said, “I thought you’d never mention it. You keep paddling. Did you hear about the two prospectors who went duck hunting? The first one shot, and when a duck fell out of the sky he said how terrible he felt about it being dead. The second prospector said, ‘Don’t feel so bad—the fall would’ve killed him anyway.’”

  I kept paddling, but I sure had a good laugh.

  From behind me came her animated voice. “What about the prospector bride who cried her eyes out when her husband went out with all the other prospectors to shoot craps? She didn’t know how to cook them.”

  I gave the Yukon a slap with my paddle, which set off Burnt Paw barking.

  “Did you hear about the prospectors building a house? One of them went to the boss and asked if they should build it from the bottom up or the top down. The boss yelled at him, ‘Start from the bottom and build up, you numbskull!’ The prospector turned to his partners and said, ‘Rip ’er down, boys! Gotta start over!’”

  I turned around and said, “I just hope you have more, or I’ll throw myself in the river.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t, so go ahead.”

  “On second thought, I won’t. Where did you get them?”

  “I heard them in another form last winter. I turned them into prospector jokes and worked them into a play I wrote.”

  “You’ve written a play? You don’t mean it.”

  Neither of us was paddling now. “I wrote it on my voyage north to pass the time. I finished it as we were pulling into St. Michael, and did some polishing on the journey up the river. I gave it to Arizona Charlie before we lef
t. Maybe he’s read it by now. I wrote it with his Palace Grand in mind.”

  “What’s the play about?”

  “It’s about Dawson City—it’s a satire on the rise of the kings of the Klondike. Guess who I patterned it on? It’s entitled The Adventures of Big Olaf McDoughnut.”

  “Big Alex McDonald!”

  “None other. I’m guessing that Dawson City audiences will love a Klondike story. As for Big Alex, I met him last year—he won’t mind fun being poked his way. In fact, he might die laughing; he’s known for being generous.”

  “I can swear to that. Do you remember my companion of last summer, Charlie Maguire? We wintered at Five Fingers together, canoed into Dawson together?”

  “I remember Charlie. He’d lost one leg at the knee.”

  “That’s him. Charlie wanted to get home to Chicago, and we were saving up money for the transportation. Big Alex found out and invited him to stuff his pockets from a bowl full of nuggets.”

  “I didn’t know that! That will be perfect for the story, and I can picture just the spot for it. I’ll write a part for Charlie into the play…. The scene with the bowl of nuggets will come near the end. There’s a certain spot that’s been nagging at me that needs a lift.”

  “You’re a writer, Jamie. A writer!”

  “Just a cobbler of words…I’m my father’s daughter.”

  “Will Arizona Charlie pay you for your play, if he likes it, which I know he will?”

  “Five hundred dollars for a year’s permission, and fifty dollars for every performance.”

  “Imagine!”

  “We shook on it.”

  After a break on shore to ease our aching backs and eat a quick meal, we turned to hard paddling and putting on some miles. Hour after hour went by without us catching sight of a single race boat. We passed a few Indian fish camps.

  At sunset, around eleven, we went to shore to stretch our legs and eat a bite or two. When we set off again, I was in the stern. Jamie stretched out on the gear in front of me. With one hand under her head and the other curled around Burnt Paw, she said softly, “Our canoe sings like an arrow.” A minute later she was sound asleep.

  Paddling at the stern with Jamie asleep so peacefully in front of me, the dog curled against her shoulder, the broad, empty sweep of the Yukon ahead, I was filled with the greatest contentment I had ever known.

  “Being with you again suits me,” I remembered her saying. “All of this is what suits me.”

  Being with Jamie, seeing all this grand country for the first time—I couldn’t have asked for more, unless it was to get back in the race. All night I kept paddling hard.

  It must have been around six in the morning, with Jamie recently roused and paddling again, that we caught sight of the Moonlight Hotel and the New Racket, the pint-sized relic of a sternwheeler that was pushing it. We soon realized that the pair was moored at the landing of the most famous town in the interior of Alaska, Circle City.

  Circle City’s surroundings offered little to please the eye. The mountains had fallen behind, and the river sprawled more than a mile wide here, dirty and yellow and resembling a broad lake.

  We needed a stretch and a few minutes off the river. Upstream of the boat dock, we tied up to a leaning black spruce and climbed the low bluff for a look at the celebrated gold camp turned ghost town.

  The names of dozens of saloons and dance halls had faded on their disintegrating facades. Some couldn’t be read. The sod roofs of a few of the log cabins had fallen in; doors were mostly boarded up on cabins and commercial buildings alike. Two saloons, the Midnight Sun and the Last Chance, had new paint, and so did Mae’s Roadhouse across the street.

  Only three years before, Circle had been a thriving town of more than a thousand, but that was before the big strike on the Klondike that gave rise to Dawson. The most famous thing about Circle City these days was its mistaken moniker. When they named the town they thought it was on the Arctic Circle, but it turned out that the sun refused to cooperate at midsummer and stay above the horizon around the clock. It set briefly, even on June 21. To see the sun above the horizon at midnight, to actually reach the Arctic Circle, you had to float fifty miles farther north.

  As we walked along the bank, the mosquitoes found us. This far downriver it was always just a matter of time once we were on land—seconds, usually. Fortunately, the devils weren’t very numerous or bloodthirsty at the moment. We were able to walk along the riverbank for a closer look at the crumbling town and the floating hotel from Dawson that had stopped for a visit.

  A husky from a team tied outside one of the cabins started to bark at Burnt Paw, but when the others didn’t join in, it quit.

  “Looks like no one’s around the dock,” Jamie said. “The crew from the New Racket must have laid over here for the night. I sure would like to peek inside the Moonlight. We’ll be quick.”

  We walked up the gangplank to the New Racket and along its rails. The crew wasn’t around. “Sleeping in the hotel or up at the roadhouse,” Jamie guessed. “I’m curious to see if the Moonlight ever got fixed up.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been in it.”

  “The walls were mostly wallpaper over canvas—the hotel was one of the first in Dawson and was patched together with whatever was around. If somebody was snoring upstairs and two rooms down the hall, it sounded like the trumpet of doom!”

  From the bow of the little sternwheeler we stepped onto the barge that floated the hotel. The front door had been removed. We walked into the lobby.

  A mural over the registration desk caught my eye. It was entitled “Moonlight on the Yukon.” It was a winter scene with the light of the full moon glinting off snow-covered mountains and the frozen river. My eye was drawn to a speck of a lonely cabin in the corner of the painting with golden lamplight showing through frosted windows. A delicate plume of smoke wafted from the chimney. A closer look revealed snowshoe tracks leading to the front door. Everything about the scene had me awash in memories. It was as if I’d made those tracks myself, returning to the cabin after an unsuccessful moose hunt downriver. Charlie and I were inside that cabin slowly starving on half rations.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Burnt Paw perk up his ears. Jamie scooped him up with one arm, caught my eye, and nodded toward the hallway.

  Burnt Paw’s eyes also swiveled toward the hallway. I heard two voices, one with an English accent. No, Australian. Was it Brackett?

  Yes, and the other was Donner.

  FIFTEEN

  “You said we could afford to loaf a little,” came the boxer’s irritable voice.

  “You slept seven hours,” Donner barked. “Whenever we’re off the river the competition gets farther ahead, or haven’t you figured that out?”

  “I’d rather go ten rounds in the ring than ten hours in that torture device you call a canoe.”

  I wondered why we hadn’t seen their canoe at the riverbank. Had they pulled it out of sight in the willows?

  “Those blighters on the bleeding scows…they have it easy, eh? Stretch out and enjoy the ride. At least we could have taken a rowboat.”

  “Too heavy for the shortcut,” Donner snapped. “I already told you that.”

  “It’s all third-hand, third-hand. You heard it off a fellow who heard it off a stoker on a steamboat. An Indian, to boot. I wouldn’t trust an aborigine, I wouldn’t.”

  “Nonetheless, our canoe is the fastest thing on the river, just as I told you it would be. You’ve had your rest, now let’s get going. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  “Our canoe would be faster yet aboard this hotel, eh? Stash it out of sight? We could ride in comfort all the way to St. Michael. What do you say?”

  “I say we’d be found out. We’re in this to win.”

  “Back in Dawson you said it was for the glory of sport! You’re a wealthy man, Donner. Half the prize money would be a spit in your bucket.”

  “What I brought with me won’t get us past Nome.”

&nb
sp; “You mean back to Dawson.”

  “I’m not thinking about Dawson, I’m thinking about Australia. What do you say to a fighting tour of your home country? You’d be a conquering hero, surely. How long has it been?”

  “It’s been years, but what in blazes are you talking about?”

  “I heard there’s a regular fleet of ships anchored off Nome. Ships coming and going all the time. As soon as we get there and collect our prize, we’ll board the first one south.”

  “And leave all your assets behind in Dawson? Are you daft?”

  There was a silence. When the reply came, it was in a grave tone. “There’s a fiend after me, Sydney. A bloodhound.”

  Jamie might have shifted her weight, or else the floorboard just happened to creak.

  “What’s that?” Donner said.

  We both held our breath. I could only hope they didn’t hear the beating of my heart.

  “This wreck creaking, that’s all,” Brackett said finally. “What’s this about a bloodhound after you? You’re speaking in riddles.”

  “A detective is after me. There, is that clear enough? I thought I’d shaken him last August in Kansas City. I saw him yesterday at the rail of the Hannah, heading upriver. He studied us both like a hawk, but he didn’t recognize me in this garb, under this beard—all he has is a photograph of my former self. And another name, of course. He’s on his way to Dawson. I can’t go back there.”

  There was a lengthy pause. We were in a dangerous situation. A glance at Jamie, and her eyes rolled toward our path of escape.

  “Why? What’s he after you for?” came the boxer’s hoarse whisper.

  “A fire in Omaha—a business I owned—a man died.”

  “You’re wanted for arson and murder?”

  “As God is my witness, Sydney, I had nothing to do with it.”

  That was the last we heard. We ghosted outside and tiptoed along the rail of the New Racket and across the gangplank to the shore. With a glance over my shoulder I satisfied myself that we weren’t being followed. Then the huskies up at that cabin started barking, every last one of them. We ran.