The river was to be my road to the American side of the border, and though it wasn’t frozen solid to the bottom, I figured the ice was thick enough to travel on. Dawson and all its glories fell away behind me and it was good to get away from the stink of unwashed men and all the babble about gold. Yet in some ways I was sorry to leave it behind, because I am a man who likes company and the sounds of a saloon, the clink of whiskey glasses and the slap of cards. I guessed Hella had started out by now and I smiled when I thought of her mushing behind the dog team, all bundled up in furs with that determined look in her eyes. At first there was a lonely feeling when I thought of her, but that was soon forgotten when Fox, my lead dog, barked furiously and started the team to one side of a weak place in the ice. After that I kept my mind on the business at hand, which was staying alive in a land where anything could kill you. Anything at all.
The sun came out, if you can call it that, in the middle of the day. It looked like runny egg yolk against the leaden sky. I was sorry to see it weaken and vanish, because in the days to come it would not appear at all. In time to come there would be nights that were brighter than the days. On such nights, if the sky wasn’t overcast, the moon, stars and Northern Lights would shine with a brilliance that could almost hurt the eyes. There was no one else on the river, not that day anyway, and though my arms ached, I was beginning to get the feel of a dog sled again. In my army days I had done a considerable amount of it, and whenever I got leave I explored the Canadian side of the line. It wasn’t that I liked it so much but it gave me a chance to get away from the fort. I learned a lot about the country and unbeknownst to the post commander, or any of the men, I built a shack under the lee of a cliff in a deep draw. There I would spend time with an Indian girl and a bottle from the trading post at the fort …
I decided that McClure was an honest man after all, for Fox was all the dog the Scotchman said he was. The big bastard had intelligence that went far beyond anything I’ve ever seen in an animal; that takes in a lot of men too. I’ve never been one for dogs, not having the need of one, but I was beginning to like that barrel-chested husky.
The miles passed in swift silence on the river and soon daylight was gone. I fed the dogs dried meat and we all rested, me most of all. Then we traveled on in that strange light that comes in the early hours of night in the Northland. Day changes to night in a way that is hard to explain; one shade of gray replaces another. Just when it should be getting dark it gets bright again, if the clouds aren’t heavy, and if it gets bright enough, you can travel far into the night, or all night if you feel like it.
I didn’t feel like it. That night I made camp in a stand of trees, and got a fire started with the kindling I’d brought along. There was plenty of dry deadwood under the snow and I fed the dogs before I ate. I had several hundred pounds of dog meat on the sled and they were putting it away at the rate of two pounds a day per dog. I cooked up a supper of fat bacon and beans and made a pot of coffee. The night was cold and clear, but I didn’t feel too bad sitting by the fire all wrapped up to the eyebrows. Of course this was the easy part of the trip; I didn’t have an old man in a coffin to worry about. It was not my intention to return by way of Dawson and Skagway. There was something about Soapy Smith that still made me uneasy. There was another port, a little place called Valdez, higher up the coast. The only trouble was it was on the other side of the Alaska Range. If the mountains had been crossed by any white man I hadn’t heard about it. Maybe Indians had done it, but I hadn’t heard about that either. But I couldn’t see that there was any other way to go if I wanted to avoid Soapy and his gunmen. If I did make it to Valdez, it would be clear sailing after that.
The huskies had made burrows in the snow and were curled up for the night. Contrary to what you might think, a hole in frozen snow makes a warm place to sleep. I built up the fire, then dragged a dead log to top it off. The log would burn all night and I wouldn’t have to fuss with the fire in the morning. Except for the wind and an occasional whimper from the dogs, it was as quiet as the first day of Creation. I hurt all over, especially in the upper arms and shoulders. I’d be stiff in the morning, but a few hours on the trail would take care of that. In a way it was a good feeling to test myself against the wilds. For months I hadn’t done much of anything but buck the poker tables; there had been too many all-night sessions with too few dollars at the end of them. I hadn’t suddenly got religion, nothing as drastic as that. What I mean is, I was breathing clear air and I was bone-tired from hard work. I think I fell asleep before you could count to ten.
I was up and off at first light, holding steady to a five-mile trot for the first hour. Then I slowed down to four and held steady at that pace. Along the banks of the great river the woods were still dark, sort of blue-colored as the morning light faded from one shade of gray to another. The sun was weak when it came, yet it did take some edge off the cold. I traveled all day without seeing another human being. Nothing broke the stillness—not a wisp of smoke, not a sound. But I was getting used to that by now. In a way, traveling in the frozen North is like traveling in the desert. Both are places of great danger, but the sense of desolation is the same.
I made about thirty miles by nightfall, if that’s the right word to describe the changing of the light. Once again it was a bright clear night and I could have journeyed on. In time to come I would travel at night; right then my tortured muscles were begging for mercy. I cleared a campsite using a snowshoe for a shovel, then I built a fire to cook food for the dogs. The dogs always come first even if you have to go hungry yourself. The dogs do the real work and without them you’re in a real bad fix. So far my dogs were working well, thanks to Fox, and I figured I wouldn’t have any serious trouble with them. Yet you can’t ever be completely sure how it’s going to be. Sometimes a team starts out fine, then one or two dogs start acting up. Or a well-behaved dog will turn vicious without warning. Huskies are half wild after all, and only a fool will try to treat them as anything else.
My muscles were so sore I found it hard to cut wood for the fire. After the dogs were fed they dug their burrows and slept. I was falling into the routine of the trail, doing exactly the same things day after day. Cooking supper was the best part of all; the day’s work over, with nothing ahead but a big hot meal and grateful hours of sleep. The routine never changed. First the slab of bacon was put on to fry, then the flapjack was cooked in the bacon grease. The beans came last. As soon as the coffee boiled supper was ready.
It snowed during the night, but I didn’t know it until I woke up. The new snow was deep and soft and I knew there was going to be trouble with it. I had to mush ahead of the dogs, breaking trail with my snowshoes. This cut down our speed by about half. It snowed again in the afternoon and there was nothing to do but make camp and wait for it to clear. I was clearing a campsite when I saw a big lynx watching me from atop a snow-covered boulder. The dogs howled when they smelled the cat, but that was the only excitement.
One day followed another. Early on the morning of the fifth day the dogs set up a howling that woke me from a sound sleep. I knew it could be the lynx still following us in a search for food. I rolled out and grabbed my rifle, thinking I might as well put an end to the pest, if that’s what it was. If it hung around too long the dogs would be nervous and maybe taken a notion to chase after it. I eased my way into the trees holding a chunk of raw meat in my hand. I was about to throw it when far off I saw a tall figure moving along fast on snowshoes. Snow was blowing from the top of the drifts and at first I couldn’t make out much. Then the snow cleared for a moment and there was Hella. She had a rifle and a pack and that was all. I yelled when I saw her and before the echo had gone she unlimbered the rifle. There was something wild and desperate in the way she did it that I knew something was wrong. I yelled again, this time calling her name, and then she recognized me and came ahead as fast as she could move. She would have fallen if I hadn’t caught her.
“Easy, don’t talk yet,” I said, helping her to my camp. There was a bruise on her cheek, another on her forehead, and her eyes had lost their calm look. I got a bottle of whiskey from the supplies and made her drink half a cup before I filled up the rest with black coffee.
“I thought you were so far ahead of me I would never catch up,” she said. “I traveled all last night to find you.”
“Drink the rest of it,” I said. “Then tell me what happened. Who marked your face?”
“Men came to my cabin looking for you,” she said. “They thought you had hired me to work for you. To bring out the body. I said I did not know you, but they had been talking to people in Dawson. They knew about the two men who tried to rob you. They took me by surprise. They grabbed my rifle before I could get at it. I had no chance against them. There were five of them. One, the leader, chewed lemon candy all the time.”
“Lemon drops,” I said. “That’s Sullivan. They all work for a man named Soapy Smith in Skagway.”
“The criminal?”
“That’s the one. Tell me the rest of it, Hella. They beat you. What else did they do?”
“They raped me, all but the leader. Then they killed my dogs so I could not follow you. They said if I tried to follow you they would kill me. What does it all mean, Jim?”
Quickly, I told her what I knew. “Smith must have changed his mind after I left Skagway. Smith may be working on his own or the Slocum brothers sent a man to talk to him. You see any sign of Sullivan and his men on the way here?”
“I saw them on the river. They were not making such bad time. I passed their camp in the night. We must move on and keep on moving. I am all right.”
Hella stared at the embers of the fire. “What happened to me, will that make a difference to you?”
I kissed the bruise on her cheek. “What do you think?” I said. “Before this is over I’m going to make them pay for it.”
“Good,” she said. “And I will help you.”
She ate while I harnessed the dogs. “You will sleep in my bag on the sled,” I said. “Don’t argue about it. You’ve been traveling night and day with no sleep and hardly anything to eat. Get in my sleeping bag and sleep. Sleep all day and we’ll keep going through the night.”
“Yes, Jim,” was all she said.
In minutes she was asleep and her face lost most of its tension. Her weight hardly slowed down the dogs; anyway, they had eaten her weight in food since we left Dawson. The dogs were toughening up fast, their pace increasing all the time. I wondered how far Sullivan’s party was behind us. The more I thought about Soapy Smith, the more I was convinced that he was working for the Slocum brothers. Or they thought he was. Soapy trusted no one and couldn’t be trusted himself. He might sit in on the Slocum brothers’ game, but he’d find a way to cheat them if it meant more money.
What we had to do was find a good place to ambush Sullivan and his men. There were five of them, so the odds weren’t too bad. I didn’t know how good Hella was with a rifle. I guessed pretty good. It was too bad she was mixed up in this, but there was no going back on it now. The bastards had killed her dogs, and I could make up for that with money, but I couldn’t make up for the rest of it. And I couldn’t buy back her life.
Hella woke up in late afternoon and smiled up at me. “I feel so much better now. Soon we will be coming to a place where there are ice jams and sometimes open water. The current keeps the water there from freezing. We will have to go around it. There! You see that big rock. There used to be a danger flag there but it blew away or someone stole it.”
We got around the bad stretch of river and the rest of the day passed quickly. Hella got off the sled and we stepped up the pace. She took over the sled and urged the dogs on with strange yipping sounds that she must have learned in Finland. I thought I’d been handling the dogs pretty well but, Hella had me beat all to hell. The dogs seemed to know a real professional musher was in command and they broke out into a six-mile pace that ate up distance.
Hella saw me scanning the riverbank. “You are looking for a place to kill them, yes?”
I nodded. “We have to get them with the first shots. If not they’ll circle us. It could go on for hours. How good are you with the rifle?”
“Very good,” Hella said without false modesty. “I have killed many kinds of game.”
“You ever kill a man?”
“I have never had a reason.”
“Will it bother you? You can’t hesitate at the last moment. That could get us killed.”
“I will not hesitate, not with these men. I would like to torture them.”
“All we want to do is kill them. We’ll wait another day until they’re good and tired. Maybe some of them are hardened to this country, but Sullivan isn’t. We’ll catch them right at the tag-end of the day when they’re worn out and hungry.”
“If we kill them there will be no more trouble, yes?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m beginning to think you should get out of this. You can get a sled and a team in Fort Yukon and head back to Dawson.”
“I will not do that,” Hella said. “I will go with you to the sea. We will cross the Alaska Range together. Then when you leave on the ship I will decide what I am going to do. It will be good to do what never has been done. Will they put our names in the newspapers?”
I grinned at her. “Most likely. They’re always looking for something new. We’ll be famous, at least for a few weeks. If you come to San Francisco you’ll be famous there too and part of the biggest funeral for years.”
“But what about this woman, this loving friend? I would not want to be the cause of fighting.”
“Don’t worry about her. We get together now and then. I never lasts long. That’s how we are.”
“I will have to think about all this,” Hella said.
Hella might have been thinking as far ahead as Frisco. My own thoughts were concerned with the telegraph line that went by relays to Fort Yukon. The line went all the way downriver to the sea. I had thought of going out by that route; it was just too far. Going over the mountains to Valdez would be a tougher journey, but it was hundreds of miles closer. Besides, I could be sure of getting a ship at Valdez; ore ships from the States made regular calls there.
I thought about the telegraph line and wondered if trouble was ahead of us as well as behind. McClure said Fort Yukon and Dulcimer were crawling with badmen from all over, so it would be easy for Soapy to hire on a few. The best we could hope to do was get in and out fast. If somebody hadn’t stolen the judge’s body by now, we would load it in the dead of night and head for the coast. Along the way we would have to depend on our rifles for food. I wondered how much the judge weighed. I hoped his corpse wasn’t as heavy as President Taft’s. I smiled at the grisly thought. I had forgotten to ask.
That night it was bitter cold, worse than anything I’d come across so far. It would be just as cold the next day, Hella said. I had no reason to doubt her; she knew the country a lot better than I did. We didn’t make camp until about midnight, and by then the dogs’ muzzles were covered with ice and my own fast growing beard was as stiff as a thorn bush. The air was full of frost crystals and it was painful to breathe. The dogs dug in as always and we ate our supper in weary silence. Neither of us felt like talking.
“It’s going to be a tight squeeze in that sleeping bag,” I said. “You want to try it?”
Hella smiled and nodded. “I have never been in a sleeping bag with a man. Or with anyone. It will be warm.”
In that temperature, at least fifty below, it would have been madness to take off any clothes except the outer ones. Luckily, the bag was a roomy one and we were able to take off our bulky lined coats and boots. We wrapped the boots in the coats and put them a safe distance from the fire. I built up the fire until it was shooting sparks high into the air.
Below us on the river an ice-jam made cracking sounds like rifle fire. The noise kept on for a while. It was good to lie in the sleeping bag with the firelight in our faces. Then, cramped or not, our hands began to move around. I unbuttoned Hella’s trousers and she unbuttoned mine. It’s amazing what you can do if you really want to do it. I knew Hella was thinking about the men who had raped her. I thought about it too, and wanted her to know that _ it made no difference to me. But I did it slowly. Women who have been raped sometimes panic and I didn’t want that to happen. I was gentle with her as I’ve never been with a woman before and the slight rigidity of her body softened as my hands moved over it. She shifted her position so I could get between her legs and after that she made love as naturally as she had in the cabin. The dogs heard us moving around and growled at this unusual activity. Hella laughed and I knew she was going to be all right.
“Let us sleep now,” she said. “Those men are still far behind. Tomorrow we will kill them and the world will be a better place when they are dead.”
The ice-jams grew worse after that; they were higher and closer together. Stretches of open water were more dangerous; it was all bad. A dozen times Hella, with her quick eye, spotted danger where I did not. Most dangerous of all were the places where a thin sheet of ice was covered with snow. If the heavily loaded sled started to go into the water there would be no holding it back, not unless you wanted to go along with it.
At times we had to portage for miles and in places this was hell because the banks of the river were high and covered with ice. If Hella hadn’t been there I’m not sure I could have managed. Or if I did manage, it would have cost me many hours of valuable time. Without Hella the sled would have to be unloaded over and over. I asked Hella why we didn’t leave the river altogether, she said the river was still the fastest way to go. No matter how tough the river was, it ran right to Fort Yukon.
During the early part of the day there were great banks of fog on the frozen river. Then howling, icy wind blew the fog away and kept on blowing after the fog was gone. The gale stung our eyes. Still, I was toughening up all the time. The hard pace Hella set for the dogs didn’t bother me now. Hella herself was a wonder, running tirelessly behind the sled, never out of breath, never faltering for a moment.
With only a few hours of light left I saw the place where we were going to kill them. There was an ice-jam that could only be crossed with a lot of effort; beyond it, fifty yards away, was another jam of almost the same size.
I pointed. “We’ll cross with the team, then take the team out of the river so they won’t start barking when they hear Sullivan’s dogs. We’ll be behind the second jam. As soon as they come over and are heading down for the flat we start shooting. No mercy, you understand. If they put up their hands, kill them anyway. It has to be done if we’re to have a chance.”
Hella said quietly, “I am glad to do it. We may have a long wait.”
“This is a good place. We’ll do it here. Come on now. Let’s get the dogs across.”
We manhandled the sled across the two ice-jams. The wind was still blowing hard. I hoped to hell it wasn’t going to snow again. In that country the weather can change ten times a day and all of it is rotten except for a few weeks in summer.
“You watch the river, I’ll take the team ahead,” I told Hella. “If you see them coming, fire one shot, then pull out. There won’t be time to get set up if they’re that close.”
Hella nodded. “One shot.”
“Don’t waste time trying to kill somebody,” I said. “Just fire a shot and get the hell out of there. I don’t want to get you killed. You’re too good in a sleeping bag.”
“Thank you, Jim,” Hella said and lay down behind the ice-jam.
I looked back at the river and it was wide and empty. The wind was blowing away our tracks in the snow, but they would be sure to see the cuts left by the sled runners on the ice. I wondered what kind of men were with Sullivan; a few of them had to be old Alaska hands; the ex-pimp would never dare tackle the Yukon River with inexperienced men. By himself, Sullivan wasn’t much of a threat, not unless he got right behind your back with a knife or a gun. But the others might be able to smell out an ambush; there are men who can do that.
“Nothing,” Hella said when I came back after leaving the team and sled in a stand of pines away from the river. I tied the dogs and gave them plenty of meat to keep them quiet.
“We will hear the dogs first,” Hella said. “Do we kill the dogs too? I hate to kill the dogs, but I will do it if you say so.”
I sighted my Winchester along the desolate river. “We’ll take their sled and dogs if we can.”
“What about the Mounties?”
“I guess the bodies will be found sooner or later. But we’ll be in American territory in a few more days. Anyway, it has to be done.”
“Listen,” Hella said, cutting me off. “Did you hear it?”
I hadn’t heard anything, so I shook my head. “You still hear it?”
“Not now,” she said. “It came on the wind, but now it’s gone. I heard something.”
We lay together behind the wall of ice. Hella had a new Marlin lever-action, a fine weapon and just as good as the Winchester.
“I heard it again,” Hella said. “The barking of the dogs. They are coming.”
I still hadn’t heard it. “How far back?”
“A few miles. The sound carries a long way across the ice. You would hear it clearly if not for the wind. They will be here in about thirty minutes. Will you fire first?”
“When they are coming over the top we’ll fire together. But wait until they’re all over. I don’t want a stand-off. Sullivan is the one to kill because he’s bossing this outfit. Sullivan is the one with the lemon drops.”
Hella’s jaw was hard as she sighted along the rifle. “I know who he is. He watched while the others raped me. He sucked on that filthy candy all the time they were raping me. He spat some pieces on the floor close to my head.”
“Don’t get too mad or you’ll miss,” I warned her. “Think of them as targets and you’ll be all right.”
“No,” Hella said. “I will not think of them as targets. But I will not miss.”
While we waited I heard the dogs for the first time. It sounded like they were coming pretty fast. I wondered how the fat-gutted Sullivan was holding up. The ex-pimp had spent most of his dirty life indoors, beating up on girls; this couldn’t be to his liking at all. But you didn’t talk back to Soapy Smith when he wanted something done.
Hella pointed far down the river. There was a bend and they came around it, a single sled and dog team. Three men ran beside the sled in snowshoes; one man was mushing. I grinned when I made out Sullivan riding the sled, all bundled up against the cold. The vicious bastard didn’t know it, but he was really riding a hearse.
I slid lower on the ice and pulled Hella after me. “We’ll hear them coming across,” I said. Sullivan will have to get off the sled to cross the ice. The others all have rifles. Sullivan will try to use a pistol.”
“Try, yes. That is what he will do.”
There was something in the way she said it that convinced me she was going to be all right. I hadn’t doubted her courage for a moment, yet courage and a willingness to kill are not always found in the same person. It’s easy enough after the first time, but there has to be a first time. Most people never get that far.
Now they were close enough for us to hear their voices. It was impossible to hear what they were saying because of the dogs, still making a hellish racket. I guessed they had spotted our sled tracks on the first ice jam. I glanced at Hella and she had her gloved finger outside the trigger guard of her rifle. There was more loud talking and then the scrape of sled runners on ice. They were coming over.
I didn’t dare take a look at the man who came first. I guessed he was staring right over our heads. There was a lull in the barking and I heard him say clearly, “Their tracks go on from here. Bring the team across.”
I chanced a look when they were all pulling on the sled. Then there was a sound of the sled being let down to the bottom. The dogs started barking again and maybe they smelled us. They were at the bottom now and about to start for our position.
I nodded to Hella and we both raised up and fired. My first bullet got Sullivan in the face and he fell across the sled with a scream that drove the dogs crazy. Suddenly all the dogs were fighting, snarling like demons. I fired twice and killed two men. Hella killed another man who tried to scramble back over the ice jam. Only one man was left and he ran toward the riverbank. We raised our rifles and killed him together. It was over in seconds and the dogs were still fighting. There was nothing to do but let them fight.
We came down from the ice jam to look at the bodies. There were no wounded, so there was no more killing to be done. Sullivan lay on his side on the ice. A lemon sourball had fallen out of his mouth.
“How do you feel?” I asked Hella.
“Just fine,” she answered. “They are dead and now I can start to forget what they did to me.”
We left them where they lay. Soon the bodies would freeze as hard as stone. If there were wolves around there wouldn’t be much for the Red Coats to find. We took some canned goods and the fine fur robe Sullivan had been covered with on the sled. But we left their weapons. On the trail every extra pound can be the one that kills you. Sullivan was the only one with any real money on him. I took that—five thousand dollars—and gave it to Hella.
“You can buy a lot of new dogs with that,” I said. “Start your own freighting company if you like.”
“Maybe I will,” she said.
The wind dropped and after that it was just biting cold. But cold is a fact of life in that country. If you can’t stand it you have no business being there. The night turned out to be clear and we put many miles between us and the scene of the ambush. We made camp in a grove of trees. Hella had come through the ambush just fine, but now the strain was beginning to tell on her. Her face was drawn and there were tiny lines at the corners of her eyes. I fixed her a big drink of whiskey and black coffee and insisted that she drink another before she crawled into the sleeping bag. I crawled in after her, but she was already asleep. I didn’t mind that because we’d been having a fine time on the snowy trail and there were other good nights ahead of us.
“You should not have let me sleep so long,” she murmured when she woke up hours later. It was about an hour to sun-up. Her hands moved over me in the half-darkness. In their snow burrows the Huskies whimpered in their sleep.
“You needed the sleep,” I said. “We’ll have other times, don’t you know that?”
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “I just know we shouldn’t waste any of the time we have. The other night you were asleep and I woke up and looked at you and wondered how long we would be together. And when I thought of that I was afraid. I do not get afraid so easily so that made me all the more afraid. Do you know what I am talking about?”
“Maybe I do, but what’s the use of dwelling on it.” I kissed her. “Could be the worst part of this is over. If Smith thinks Sullivan is still alive—why shouldn’t he?—we may be able to get the judge’s body out of Dulcimer without too much trouble. Once we get into the mountains they’ll never find us.”
Hella nodded vigorously. “Yes, they will not find us in the mountains. They may not even dare to follow. I wish we were there now. But I wish we did not have to bring along a dead old man. How can a dead old man cause so much trouble? How many deaths has he caused so far?”
“Six,” I said, wondering how many more men would die before the judge was shoveled into his grave.
Three days later we crossed into Alaska.