The Trail of a Sourdough / Life in Alaska

A furious blizzard was raging. Six or eight miners of various ages were huddled around the stove in a little road-house where they were likely to remain storm-bound for several days.

"Chuck some more wood into that bloomin' fire and fill up my pipe if you fellers want a yarn from me," said one, when they had besieged him for a story with which to pass the time.

"You wanted to know yesterday when I staked that claim for the woman, who and where she is, also my reasons for stakin' it; and I promised to tell you when I got the chance. One or two of you grumbled considerable at my stakin' for a person away in the States, and maybe when I have finished my story you won't feel any different; but I can't help it, and it is none of your -- business. The deed is done, and well done, and Rosa Nell (that ain't her name, as you can see by the initial stake if you want to dig it out from under the snow) is the half owner today of one of the handsomest quartz ledges on the whole Seward Peninsula. Walls of grey slate and trachyte, and the yellow stuff is good and plenty. Zounds, boys! I wish I had a bumper," and the speaker threw his furry cap to the ceiling.

"Never mind the bumper, pard, you know it's the last of March when no live mining camp in this country has a thing but empty bottles to bump with. Behold the size of the glass dump outside yonder if you don't believe me", remarked the keeper of the place in vindication of his house; but with sore regret in his voice.

"The story, the story! We want the story", sang out one and another by the stove, "the fire is just a whoopin' and 'twill soon be goin' out".

"Well, then, here goes," said the miner addressed. "It happened two years ago. I sold one of my Nome claims for fifteen hundred dollars with slight prospecting, (like a blasted fool that I was) and after blowin' in a good third or more of the money concluded to buy a thousand dollar outfit and go to Norton Sound. It was late in October; the storms came on, and the upshot of it was that we were ship-wrecked off the coast and were finally put in at a small camp nearly a hundred miles from where we wanted to winter. I had taken two men with me named Long and Hartley, and though we saved, by hard fightin' in one way and another, the most of our supplies, we were without shelter, except a couple of tents, with an Arctic winter-our first in this country, upon us.

"Gee-Whilikins! Boys, it makes my black hair white to think of it! What we suffered for two months in those tents was awful; for the camp was full and there was not a vacant cabin anywhere. If there had been, you know we were absolutely without money to buy or build with. How I cursed myself for havin' foolishly spent hundreds of dollars on 'box rustlers' at the Casino,-but that is another story, boys, so we'll pass it.

"In our new camp we had many Eskimos and all kinds of people. Among others there was a little blue-eyed woman perhaps thirty years of age; maybe more-maybe less. She was also evidently not where she had intended to be, just like ourselves, but was a teacher, left over from some stranded expedition, probably. Anyhow, there she was, and there we were. We a-livin' in the tents, and the thermometer forty degrees below zero. The teacher was stayin' with some of the Missionary folks only a quarter of a mile away, and she was all right.

"In December the dogs of the camp began to go mad. Every few days one or two had to be killed. Some men, you know, don't water their dogs once in six weeks, if at all, and as everything is froze hard in winter, the poor brutes go mad, exactly as in summer in the States, from heat.

"One night, Long and I smoked in the little road-house close by, but Hartley went to his bunk in the tent and turned in. He had not slept, but lay with closed eyes, he said, tryin' hard to get warm under his fur robe; when the tent flap was brushed aside, and in rushed a mad dog, snapping and foaming. At the first movement Hartley supposed we had returned to go to bed, but was instantly undeceived as the crazy brute made directly for him.

"Hartley threw out his hands and leaped from his bunk, seizing an axe that lay upon the floor. With that he made for the dog, and finally drove him from the tent; but only after he had been badly bitten in several places.

"The first we knew he rushed in, half dressed, where we were. He was pale with fright, covered with blood, and his eyes seemed starting from their sockets.

"Whiskey, for God's sake!' he pleaded, panting for breath. 'Hydrophobia, and so far from home. This is hard lines, ain't it, boys?' between gulps, the blood dripping from the hand that tremblingly held the glass.

"With that he broke down utterly and cried like a baby. We washed and dressed his wounds as best we could, and put him to bed in the road-house as it was then past midnight, while three of the boys rigged themselves in their furs and hunted the blasted brute that had done the mischief. They found him gnashing his teeth alongside an outhouse, and a good dose of cold pills settled him forever.

"Next mornin' we sent a man to the little teacher to ask for medicine for Hartley, and immediately she and another woman came over. They brought lint bandages, carbolic acid, and other things and bathed the wounds; but, best of all, they cheered up the poor fellow by telling him that he need have no fear of hydrophobia, as the bite of the Eskimo dogs in winter does not have the same effect that the bite of other dogs has in hot weather. By the repeated visits and ministrations of the women, poor Hartley, in a few weeks, recovered.

"However, the little teacher was not satisfied. She knew we must suffer terribly in our tents, and wanted us to make other arrangements. At last she thought of a plan for us: An old log school-house, long since deserted for the new one built near by, was unused except as a store-room. This building had been originally made warm and tight by moss chinking, a heavy door, and closely caulked windows. Some of the latter were now broken, and the snow sifted in upon the dirt floor, but these things could be remedied.

"The little woman had planned it all before we knew it. She had asked and gained consent of the owners before she opened her story up to us. The baggage then in the cabin was to be piled in one corner, the windows were to be mended as well as possible along with the chimney in the middle of the roof; and for a trifling consideration each month we were to have the use of the building. It was a god-send to three men only partly sheltered by canvas in January, latitude sixty-five; and if you don't believe me, boys, just try tents yourselves next winter, and find out.

"Did we spend the remainder of the winter in that old school-house? You bet we did. After puttin' considerable time on the old chimney, makin' some new stove-pipe and a patent damper of our own from coal-oil cans, and usin' the sides of some of the same in place of glass in the windows, we did get fixed some sort of comfortable. Anyhow, we had a house over our heads that could not blow down in a blizzard, and a solid door which kept out mad dogs at night. To be sure, when the spring rains came, the roof of turf, upon which the grass began to grow, leaked in several places; but we spread our canvas tent over it, weighted it down with stones at the corners, and got along finely.

"The gist of my story is still to come. One day along in February the little woman sent for me. She wanted to see me very particular, the messenger said. When I saw her a few minutes later her eyes were shinin' like stars in the night time. She wanted me to go with another man to stake a creek about fifteen miles to the north of us. She had heard from some source that the creek was good.

"Would I go the next day if she furnished the outfit? Of course I said, yes, and our plans were hastily laid for the next day. We had some trouble to get good dogs for the trip, and before our preparations were completed the whole camp was onto our racket and wanted to go along.

"Now, you know on such occasions, above all others, one does not want the whole country at one's heels, so we tried our best to shake them. We postponed our trip until the second day; the women in the meantime gettin' our grub cooked. We then took the bells off our dog collars and packed our sleds behind closed doors; but it was no go. In spite of all our precautions three dog-teams followed our trail as we slipped stealthily out of camp at midnight. The moon shone brightly and the snow was not too deep. The boys kept at a respectful distance behind us, and we mushed along between low hills mostly up the streams on the ice.

"To make my story shorter, we staked what we wanted of the creek, and let the other fellows in on what was left. After that, without sleeping, but with a hasty meal, we put back home again as fast as our dogs would travel.

"Three months later, when the snow was about gone, and we thought the time ripe for prospectin', I took my two men and an outfit and gave that blamed old creek a fair trial. We hustled and rustled to beat the band. We shovelled, panned, built dams, and worked like beavers in water above our knees. We moved our tents further up on the bank at midnight at the risin' of the creek durin' a hard rain-but, egad! after two weeks of that sort of thing, no gold could we find. Not a color! We cursed and tore around something fierce among the Queen's English, but it did not help matters a particle.

"There was no gold there.

"When we reported to the little woman she would not believe a word of it. She did not think we had tried to find it. Perhaps we had not gone deep enough. We should have waited until midsummer when we could have done better work; and a lot of other things of like description. When I insisted that we had done the very best we possibly could, and that there was positively no gold there, she still persisted in sayin' she wanted that bunch of claims recorded. In vain I told her it was no use; the creek was no good, and to record the claims was a waste of money.

"While I talked, the little woman stood lookin' in an absent-minded way before her. When I had finished she turned toward me with considerable spirit, and almost with anger said, the tears comin' into her eyes meanwhile, 'I will never again ask you to stake a claim for me, so there! and she ran into the next room and shut the door.

"The claims were never recorded.

"Well, boys, she kept her word, and I wish she hadn't. I would be willin' to let her pick out creeks for me forever, for, say, let me tell you, fellows," dropping his voice and taking the pipe from between his teeth he knocked its ashes out upon the cold hearth, "that creek bed was solid stream tin; pure cassiterite, the best on the Seward Peninsula, and a whole fortune for anyone; but we did not know it.

"Next time a woman like that one tells me to do any recordin' of claims I'll do it, you bet; for somehow, I can't explain it, but there are others besides Eugene Field's kids who are good at 'seein' things at night,' and a woman can sometimes feel things that we fellows can't see in broad daylight.

"Now you have my reasons for stakin' for her yesterday. If any of you fellows want to kick at what I have done, you can just take it out in kickin'-yourselves. Our new ledge is a jim-dandy; and seem' as I cheated the woman out of her cassiterite, I'm bound to make it good in yellow gold.

"But I'm goin' to turn in now, boys, and I'll listen to you to-morrow. Good night."

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