Hurrying back to Missy and Tom, he learned that this was one of Smith's men sent to make just that kind of deal. 'If you'd gone along,' Missy said, 'he'd have steered us to some place where he could have knocked us down and stolen everything of value.'
So the Venns remained on the beach that night, guarding their goods and staying clear of the town where they would have been in greater danger. They were more fortunate than two brave miners with experience on the California gold fields, for when they slam-banged their way into town, willing to challenge anyone to molest them, two of Soapy's henchmen calmly shot each through the heart and left the bodies prone and bleeding in the dusty roadway, where they were ignored by passersby in the morning.
How could such blatant murder have been allowed? How could a boomtown clearly a part of the United States exist without law of any kind other than the smoking end of a revolver? Even the railroad boomtowns of Wyoming, the cattle towns of Kansas, the gold towns of California, the fledgling oil towns of the Southwest had not paraded their lawlessness with such flagrant disregard for organized society; some attempt was always made to preserve orderly government, and an honest sheriff or a powerful clergyman could usually be found to lead the community to a more respectable existence.
Alaska was different because its heritage was different. In the Russian days the Slavic forebears of Soapy Smith said: 'St. Petersburg is far away and God is up in heaven.' When the Americans finally assumed power, there was that incredible thirty-year period when the new owners made no attempt to govern, when there were no codified laws or courts to enforce them. No people in the organized states and, least of all, the members of Congress, could visualize the raw anarchy in which Alaska, this latest and potentially most important addition to the Union, was allowed to rot like a melon at the end of a very long vine. Soapy Smith, this tinhorn Colorado gambler whose crimes at Skagway were far worse than the Venns knew about, was the specific creature of the American system of governing its colonies. If he and his henchmen were a hideous blot on the United States, the culprit was not Smith but the American Congress.
In the morning the Venns, with their goods and their money fortuitously intact, sought to hire two of Smith's draymen to haul their gear the nine miles across the low hills to Dyea, and this transaction could also have produced danger and the possibility of losing everything had not Blacktooth Otto, prowling the beach to see what he might promote, spotted Missy and Tom and recognized them as Soapy's friends. Running to town, he burst into the 317 Oyster Bar with the news: 'Mr. Smith, that lady, that boy, yesterday. They're on the beach.'
Commanding Blacktooth and another henchman to fetch horses and a dray, Smith walked slowly down to the beach, greeting citizens as he went and studying with careful eye the various improvements that had appeared in the growing town since his last inspection. He liked what he saw, but he liked even more that vast accumulation of goods on the flats. If four hundred and fifty stampeders had landed in recent days, and if each had brought a ton of goods, the amassed pile of wealth on the shore was almost incalculable, and Soapy intended siphoning off his fair share, say thirty percent of everything.
When he found the Venns he was exceptionally courteous to Missy, whom he admired, and fairly courteous to Buck. He offered them both whatever assistance they needed, and said: 'I do hope you'll be taking our White Pass and not that dreadful affair at Chilkoot.' Buck, almost trembling with apprehension over being so close to Smith and bewildered by the man's graciousness, said firmly but without the least hint of aggression: 'We've decided to try the Chilkoot.'
'You're making a bad mistake, my friend.' Then Tom blurted out: 'We saw those dead horses in your canyon,' and Soapy replied, with just the slightest touch of irritation:
'Horses are not meant for our canyon. Men have no trouble.'
He asked if they would care to take breakfast with him, prior to their march to Dyea, but Missy replied, as if she were still a stewardess on the Alacrity:
'You were far too kind yesterday,' and he bade them goodbye with a flourishing kiss of Missy's hand and a stern admonition to Blacktooth: 'Take special care of these good people.'
They arrived at Dyea, a town much smaller than Skagway but free from the attentions of Soapy Smith and his gang, before noon on 1 April 1898, and there took stock of their situation. 'We can thank God,' Buck said, 'that we escaped Soapy Smith. Only five hundred and fifty miles to go, and most of it a soft ride down the Yukon.'
But they were not wholly free of Soapy Smith, because his man, Blacktooth Otto, lingered as they talked, and when they finished, he surprised them: 'I'm supposed to haul you on to Finnegan's Point.' This was a spot five miles farther up the trail, and since one had to cross and recross the little river running down the middle of the footpath, the assistance would be invaluable.
'We'll go,' Missy said immediately, and when Buck questioned her wisdom, she said wisely: 'Anything to get the gear closer to the pass.'
But after they crossed the corduroy bridge that carried them into Finnegan's, a problem arose which had perplexed every newcomer: there was no hotel, no orderly place to store goods, and no police protection. 'Are we supposed just to dump our goods here?'
Buck asked, and Blacktooth said: 'Everyone else does.'
'Who guards them?'
'Nobody.'
'Don't thieves steal them?'
'They better not!' Blacktooth was unable to imagine his boss, Soapy Smith, as a thief, and he supposed that what happened on the trail out of Skagway was always the fault of some careless traveler. Saluting the Venns, he and his partner left the family on the trail, their little mountain of goods piled beside them.
'I'm not going to leave all this here without a guard,' Buck vowed as he began to pitch their canvas tent, but a man who had made many trips along this difficult roadway advised against such action: 'Believe me, pardner, go back to Dyea and get a good night's sleep in a hotel while you have the chance,' and on his own he ran ahead and whistled for Blacktooth to turn around and carry these good people back to Dyea.
The Venns now faced a dilemma: a good bed and a hot meal versus the protection of their cache, and Buck made the decision: 'Sooner or later we'll have to be in one place, our goods in another,' and their adviser said: 'That's talking sense, pardner.
Look at all those other caches. That's how we do it.'
As they rode in comfort back to the hotel they could not avoid staring into the faces of gold seekers coming up the trail, and after a few such encounters, Missy could differentiate between them: 'This group coming next, they're on their first trip to Finnegan's. Bright eyes, looking this way and that, oohing and aahing over the snow-covered mountains. But look at these next three! They've been back and forth a dozen times. How can I tell? They look only at the ground to find the best place to step.'
Before depositing the Venns at the Ballard Hotel, Blacktooth Otto confided to Tom:
'You shoulda been in Skagway last night. Two men shot dead on the main street.'
'What did they do wrong?'
'It was dark. You couldn't see.'
Buck was up before dawn, goading his companions to hurry on to their cache, where a team of smiling Indians awaited them: 'We carry goods, Sheep Camp, five cents a pound.' With horror, Buck calculated the bill would be three hundred dollars for a distance of only eight miles, and from Sheep Camp to the summit would cost twice as much.
'We'll carry it,' Buck said, and the Indians predicted: 'You be sorry!'
Because this was not yet the sharp incline, Buck proposed that he try to carry sixty pounds, Tom forty and Missy thirty, and in that disposition they started out. Eight miles on level ground with no pack would have been a smart task, but over this rocky trail with its insistent upward grade it became a torment. Nevertheless, because they were eager and in good shape, they made two round trips that day. At sunset Buck was back at his figuring: 'One hundred and thirty pounds a trip between us.
I don't think we can make more than two trips a day. To
move three tons ...' His face grew ashen: 'That's more than three weeks. Hotel bills and all, maybe we better get some Indians,' and when Missy set herself to the task, she found another team, husky young men, who would portage the lot to Sheep Camp for one hundred dollars. After that day's toil, Buck voiced no objection.
Five days later, when they were safe at the Scales, with their gear beside them waiting to be weighed, elevations became more important than distances. It was less than a mile to the summit, but when the Venns stared at that incredible ladder of twelve hundred steps carved out of ice, Tom consulted his map and informed the others: 'When we get there ... three thousand seven hundred feet high,' and Buck shuddered: 'We've got to carry three tons to that height?'
Missy, the practical one, ignoring this talk of the terrifying climb, said: 'You know, a man could land naked at Dyea beach and outfit himself up here at seven cents on the dollar ... or maybe for nothing,' and she pointed to a vast accumulation of stuff that had been discarded: 'A man or woman staring at those steps can decide in a hurry that they don't really need a folding table or a sewing machine,' and forthwith she began to identify those things she was sure they could do without.
That night the Venns saw, in all its ugliness, a demonstration of why the leaving of unguarded treasure on the trail was possible, for there was a commotion outside and cries of 'We caught him!' and then a deep voice shouting 'We got him red-handed!'
Even those already asleep piled out of the grubby tent hotels there were eleven such places, one worse than the other to witness the drumhead trial of a vagrant named Dawkins who had committed the one unforgivable crime along the trail. Murder in hot blood was acceptable if there was even a shadowy justification; desertion of a wife was not uncommon; and the lesser wrongdoings of a frontier society were tolerated, but on the arctic frontier, where to tamper with a man's cache might mean his death, theft was unforgivable.
Trappers would leave a month's supply of food in some cabin so far removed that you might think no one could ever reach it, but during an unexpected storm some forlorn man would stagger in exhausted, find the can of matches, the carefully cut branches, the pine needles and the food, and he would be saved. He could consume the entire month's supply of food if necessary, but he must replace it. He must cut new branches, ensure that there were matches ready, and leave everything in place for the next emergency. Even if he had to double back fifty miles to replenish the cache, he was honor-bound to do so, and because many a trapper or prospector owed his life to this tradition, it was sacred. In a lawless land this was the supreme law: never violate a cache.
Well, Dawkins had seen stacked at the edge of the Scales an extra parka that would nicely replace his worn and poorly lined affair. The parka had been neatly tied in a bundle and partly hidden in a growing pile of goods, so that no one could possibly believe it had been abandoned, but he had taken it. He had been seen and chased and caught, and now the sourdoughs in the crowd, the old-time Alaskan adventurers as opposed to the newcomer cheechakos, convened a miners' court, a fearsome affair that had become necessary because the government provided no control.
While a lantern was held close to the face of the accused, the men who had caught him stealing told their story, which Dawkins could not refute. 'Shoot him!' a grizzled sourdough cried, and several took up the cry, but a Presbyterian minister, on his way to the gold fields to try to bring a little morality to a corrupted land, protested:
'Men, a sentence like that would be excessive. Show compassion.'
'He showed none. Steal a cache, you murder a man.'
'Give me a gun,' snarled another man. 'I'll shoot him.'
The minister pleaded so earnestly that even some of the sourdoughs reconsidered, and a veteran stood before the clergyman, inches from his face, and offered a compromise:
'We'll give him thirty lashes.'
'Thank God,' the minister said, not guessing what the rest of the sentence was to be.
'But you must apply them. Or we shoot.'
Now Dawkins broke his silence, for he knew the sourdoughs meant business: 'Please, Reverend.'
So Dawkins was stripped, his hands were tied to a stake which took the place of a tree, for there were none amid the snows and a rawhide rope with a wooden handle and a big knot tied at the end was handed to the clergyman, while two sourdoughs said: 'We'll count.'
Ashen-faced, the minister accepted the improvised cat-o'- nine-tails, but recoiled:
'I can't.'
'Lash him,' a sourdough shouted, 'or I shoot.'
'Please!' Dawkins pleaded, and the trembling minister, biting his lip and closing his eyes at the crucial moment, swung the rawhide and brought the heavy knot across the man's back. Dawkins made no sound, and the watchers shouted 'Stronger!' But on the sixth lash, when the culprit's back was bleeding, the minister could see only the form of Jesus Christ being lashed by Roman soldiers on the way to Calvary, and he fell prostrate in the snow, his shoulders heaving as sobs wracked his body.
An old prospector, whose life had been saved by a cache north of the circle, snatched the rawhide, and as the solemn voices counted seven ... eight ... nineteen ... twenty the punishment continued, but before the twenty-first blow fell, Missy Peckham threw herself upon the old man's right arm and the beating stopped. Dawkins, who had fainted, was cut down, dressed in his own parka and revived with snow. When he could walk he was headed down the hill to Dyea and told: 'Get going."He was seen no more.
THE VENNS SLEPT LATE NEXT DAY, FOR IT WAS SUNDAY, but at about eight Buck began to build nine bundles of gear, with the admonition: 'Today we start up the steps. Endless daylight, so we'll try for three trips.' Then he made a most sensible decision: 'Forget what anybody else is trying to carry. For us, lighter loads. Me, fifty pounds, Tom thirty-five, Missy twenty-five.' At this news Tom did some more calculating: 'Oh!
For three tons that's going to be fifty-five trips.'
'Fifty-five it'll have to be,' Buck said, but as he was about to heave Missy's onto her shoulders, men came into camp shouting: 'Avalanche! They're all dead!'
It was not a warning. It was fact. From the southern face of a mountain more than two thousand feet above the Chilkoot, a vast accumulation of snow and ice had come crashing down, burying a portion of the trail to a depth of twenty or thirty feet.
'How many trapped?' Buck shouted as he threw aside Missy's bundle and grabbed for one of the shovels.
'Mebbe a hundred,' and the messenger went shouting up and down the camp as volunteers grabbed whatever they could and rushed toward the avalanche, which was much bigger than the frightened crier had said and had engulfed even more people.
They did not all die. Cheechakos who had been on the trail only a few days, men and women alike, clawed at the snow and ice to make extraordinary rescues. Many had shovels, which were ably used, but one thoughtful man from Colorado, learned in the ways of avalanches, had brought a pole, which he used to probe through the snow till he struck something hard. Then others dug like moles where he indicated, often finding only rock but occasionally bringing to the surface someone still alive. This man and his pole saved more than a dozen.
In all, some sixty gold seekers perished that Sunday morning, but not even a disaster of such magnitude could diminish the passion with which the survivors hungered for gold or slow the incessant traffic up the mountain. Hordes from below had been set in motion, and it seemed that nothing could halt them, not even crushing death. Half an hour after the cascades of snow had obliterated the path to the top, gold-savage men had tramped out a new path, looked sideways at the site of the tragedy, and plodded on.
Because the Venns had spent half a day helping with rescue work, it was late afternoon when they eased their way into the line of prospectors climbing the stairs, and once they claimed a place in that struggling chain, there was no way to rest or turn back; they were on a steep, upward pathway to hell. If a man simply had to urinate, he could step aside and do so with no one noticing, but when he struggled to reenter th
e chain, he might try vainly for more than an hour. On Chilkoot, no one helped anybody.
The three Venns, clinging tenaciously to their places, approached the last sixty vertical steps as dusk fell, and for one fearful moment Missy wavered and looked as if she might have to surrender her place in the line, but, gasping for breath and nearly fainting with exhaustion, she clawed her way to the summit, looked back at the swarming humans mechanically following her, and thought: My God! To do that fifty-four more times!
In that act of climbing to the top of a mountain, where goods lay stacked in hundreds of different piles, some of them fifteen feet high, the Venns and the other stampeders entered an entirely new world. Arbitrary and chaotic it was, but it was also a world where reason and law prevailed. For this lofty point represented the boundary between American Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada. It was a line drawn in the snow with no legal authority to justify it; actually, the American boundary should have been quite a few miles to the east, but this high pass became the permanent boundary between the two nations because some remarkably stout-hearted men said it was.
They were a contingent of the North West Mounted Police, sent out to an undefined border to establish an undefined law. Few men in North America ever served their nation or their people better than these, for when they took one look at the preposterous situation that the Americans had allowed to develop, they said simply, but with great force: 'The law is going to be what we say it is.' And this law, eminently reasonable and just, was forthwith adopted, enforced, and accepted.
Indeed, many Americans struggling up the Chilkoot Pass from the moral swamp of Skagway were gratified to find at the crest of the mountain a body of resolute men who said:
'This is the boundary. These are the laws. And you will obey both.' Like wayward children who have been running wild without supervision but know inwardly that reasonable discipline is better, the cheechakos climbing over the pass embraced the law of the Mounties.
The rules as they evolved on the spot were practical: 'You cannot enter unless you bring in supplies for one year, particularly food. You must pay Canadian customs on every item you do bring in. You cannot sail down the first rough lakes and then the Yukon unless you build yourself a stable boat capable of carrying yourself and your gear. And each boat must be numbered so that we can track its successful passage to Dawson.' They justified this last demand by citing a sobering thought: 'When people went down the lakes in just anything and without proper numbering, scores drowned.'