PLEURISY AND THE PASS
July 26.—Rain! We’re shivering in the ever-wet blankets, at the last rotting cottonwoods—tree line. You could cut the tobaccoey air in the tent, made by King’s and my pipe-tobacco-and-botany-paper cigarettes. Thus we pipe on, and rag-chew, about what Brooks did, Herron did, and we’ll do.
The country doesn’t at all gee with Herron’s map, and Brooks has discreetly left a blank where he got lost. From here, three valleys open into the peaks and snowy haze veiling Simpson Pass. The northernmost ends with the main source of the Keechatna, Herron’s “Caldwell Glacier,” for through the scud we can see a clear green river, like a pillar of malachite, streaking its smooth and ashen desolation. The central valley is narrow and unglaciated; the southern, which Brooks followed and went wrong in, getting lost for five days, is broad and has a siltless stream. If it leads to Simpson Pass, Herron’s “Fleischmann Glacier” (he must have come from Ohio, scattering all these Buckeye politicians’ names about) whose moraine he crossed, should lie in it; but glaciers should have silty streams. Fred tells how Brooks’ topographer lost his temper with Herron’s map, tore it up, and turned south out of this southern valley. It does seem the most logical to explore; yet the central valley, since we have found axe marks leading into it, ought to be tested, too.
Jack has just been very funny. Someone took his blankets left drying by the fire, and he let out ten yards of curses, shouting that if he found the man he’d “lick him, if I have to take a club to him." Came Miller’s voice from the silk cone, “I got three blankets from under the tree.” Looks to me as if the Professor’d swiped them and forced Miller into the breach. He was in the tent, too. No one fought.
Later.—The Professor and I have climbed the ridge between the two iceless valleys. He wouldn’t go far, sauntering to pick blueberries, uming and ahing, clearing his throat, (Jack says that he must have some “fashionable" disease in it) losing the trail, choosing the worst places through the alders, and showing no sense of locality. He wasn’t so hot to find that short cut north of Herron’s Pass he was talking of when the beasts played out. He seemed even content to follow Brooks.
Once, squatting in the desolate dripping furze, high in the unearthly storm, he said: “I’ve spoken to Jack once or twice about these outbursts of his.
Have you seen how queer his eyes are lately? They’re like a man’s who is going insane.” I have noticed the hollow pallor of his cheeks, but they never hinted madness to me. Jack hasn’t been able to lift a flour sack for days. No one dares now even comment on his words or actions, for he explodes at the simplest remark. “The fact is,” ended the Professor, “I’ve decided that Jack has pleurisy, anyway, and not neuralgia.”. . .
The hollow river thunders. Fitful light thrills the valley into vast mosaics of green and gold. Never have I seen such jagged mountains, sheer slopes so blasted with broken black rock.
July 27.—Jack lay moaning by me all night, his hands pressed tight to his chest.
I took Miller and a baking-powder tin of burned beans, unsalted (the horses ripped open the salt sack this morning, and almost cleaned it up) to search the middle gorge. Just as we separated from the pack train, which went south through the broad valley, I saw Jack staggering up behind, his fists on his chest, gasping with pain. I ran ahead, and shouted to the Professor to stop and see Jack. “Yes, we’ll let him have a tent alone, to-night,” was all he said, never budging from L. C.
Miller and I struck off west. Far below in these hateful peaks where we struggled, up, up, along sliding talus, across snow-bridges, roared a feathery stream in a Titanic crack. Clouds rolled up from the coast, lit by strange flashes of sunlight, now dissolving, now creating more dizzy rock slopes, fingered with the startling green of alders, or blighted by mournful ice pushing down atrophied flanks from the endless storm.... Four miles, and we crossed a bigger snow-bridge. We divided the beans and our three biscuits, and shivered on water-swept talus among waxy alpine flowers at the range’s heart. The gorge was blind; at least you’d have had to “lift yourself with toes and fingers" to reach the Kuskokwim valley, now our goal—as Herron writes that his Indians told him before deserting. We retraced our steps, and took up the whole day’s journey of the pack-train. At last we sighted Big Buck nosing at the moss in a bend of the big south valley; then the Professor’s cone house, and Simon alone, nursing a wet willow fire. Again the Moth-eaten Bay had played out!
Hungry as we were, Simon, when he saw us coming, though he had eaten only an hour back, seized the frying-pan and covered the only hot place in the tiny blaze to make himself pancakes. Gosh! Alcohol, sacred for use on the mountain, had to be used to light it, after even Jack, said the kid, had given up hope for a fire.
Jack was asleep, King and the Professor off looking for Herron’s Fleischmann Glacier. Simon, for no particular reason, began firing his Colt smokeless to bring them back. Jack woke and cursed us all till the scouts returned, glum and shaking their heads. Yes, they’d seen Fleischmann, but no Pass: the valley ended blind. Should we stay here to reconnoitre to-morrow, or head southeast through Brook’s side valley, which we supposed was the one opening opposite camp—King didn’t remember—at right angles to our gorge? I didn’t believe that Herron went through here drunk, as you might have thought to hear some of us talk. I left camp, saying nothing. In half a mile, Fleischmann Glacier pushed its flat blueness out upon huge slate moraines. I waded its stream, siltless by some miracle, and mounted the bowlder-strewn esker. It appeared to wall a niche in the blind range. I rose, still keeping southwest; the walls seemed to slip apart; my heart was burning; a steeper, darker, valley opened—and, quite against all physiographic law, turned narrowly downward, bent further west among sharper, darker mountains truncated by cloud. The Pass! The Kuskokwim valley, illimitable, untrodden, unto the tundras of Behring Sea.
I ran down to slosh through its head-waters. Yellow and white Arctic poppies bloomed on the mossy shale. It was twilight. Where were the grizzlies that Herron wrote had chased him here? I had no gun. I was ready for them. How chary is life of such triumphs as this; what wonder men go to the devil, seeking in civilization to counterfeit such intoxication! But what had this not cost? In the easy order of the world, helpless man was meant for evil.. . .
We’re shivering in the tent. Jack is in with us, groaning. Some one said in Valdez, I remember, that he looked like the only one of us who could stand the racket on such a trip as this. Oh, very well. Talk of godforsaken camps! The cheesecloth, dog-house door is open; only two ‘skeets are clinging to the roof, too numb and discouraged, it’s remarked, to do business. Across this old glacial valley, the haunting talus still sweeps into cloud. Two fuzzy bunches of alders, insanely green, lie between the dug-like black fans at their base, by the stream’s sudden canyon. Below, there’s a meadow—surely blue with wild forget-me-nots—where gulls from the sea are hovering. Over there a man would seem a fly, yet you’d think that from here you could hear him whistle, but for the wind that’s howling—so does the Alaskan scale of things upset all time and space. Furiously that wind bellies the tent. Like the Biblican house, I hope we’ve got rocks under.
We’re to have one and a half biscuits apiece, already cooked, for breakfast, as a fire with the soaked green willows is impossible anymore. Simon, who cooked them in the frying-pan, has burned all. You see, he likes them burnt.
July 28.—Alcohol lit the willows for breakfast tea, after Miller had tried two hours without it. When sure he wasn’t joshing that they burned, we shivered out of the tent; ate, horse-hunted, packed, and headed for the Pass.
Jack started, walking ahead alone, groaning as he leaned on a pole. The Professor cavorted about, photographing us on a snow-bridge over the glacier stream. Down, down the talus of the Pass we slabbed. The horses balked at mashing hoofs to a jelly, so we herded them on the stampede, clattering all over the two thousand feet slope of chipped rock. Simon with his .22 popped a dozen times at a ptarmigan ten feet away, so Miller jumped in and wrung the bird’s neck. At last the valley bent, and spruce trees—forgotten things—climbed from the coveted valley of Tateno River. Everyone was weary.
Six o’clock, and no camp; impenetrable willows, cross-canyons, packs slipping; and repacking in impossible, boiling river places was a rest. Seven o’clock—lucky the Moth-eaten Bay had no pack at all. Bridget slipped the reflector off his pack, and went bucking up a mountain with Light Buck. Even Fred, as we repacked, talked of the Professor’s getting sense knocked into him some time about horses; and across the canyon, small as an ant, I could see how furious was Jack by his jerky motions. And Miller was sullen.
The immense bed and tiny stream of the Tateno met us at dusk; and camp is among strange red-berried bushes and moss powdered whitely with silt, far from the currants, rank grass banks and lush flowers of the rainier coast country. A new flora, new climate—now for new life!
“Why stop?” said I in my nastiest way, but thinking of the poor brutes. “1 thought you were going to make the Kuskokwim to-night, Professor.” And Jack, apparently mistaking such a josh for a real idea of the Professor’s, went off at half-cock, as usual.
At last we’ve crossed the great Alaskan Range. When we have unwound from its heart, the last stretch to McKinley will be ahead. We follow down this tributary; then down the south fork of the Kuskokwim till it emerges from the mountains; then we turn northeast along their face, through the foot-hill country.
July 29.—The first day we rest, and are not forced to.
At breakfast we made out four sheep crawling like legged snow-balls over the mountain back of camp. Off starts Fred with the Professor’s .44. At noon, while ripping off the outer sacks from the flour, and laying all the grub in the sun—though it rains now and then—we hear shots, and count thirteen snowballs on the mountain skedaddling over a ridge, some down into a canyon, some up, some straight along; at last appears Fred wearily and doll-like up there, lucklessly following after. Down another gorge he sneaks; up merrily dash the four sheep on its far side. Shots sound; not a moving speck yonder. Appears Fred at last in camp, cursing the Professor’s gun as “worn out” and “leaded.” We try target practice, and it won’t hit within two feet of the stump. So we called beans mutton, and ate glumly, as a snow-squall sugared the red peaks all about, and the aneroid marked us 2590 feet up, the thermometer 510. Summer’s scarce this year.
Jack seems better, but only Fred dares ask after his health. He moves about glumly, eating little. “I’m afraid we must leave him behind—with grub, of course—till we return,” the Professor has just said to me. “It appears a cruel thing to do, but what else is there? Jack appears to be played out. He hasn’t any more heart.” It does seem so. But shall we return this way?
July 30.—Again we ford river channels, traveling south down the Tateno River to within three miles (we guess) of the Kuskokwim; shallow channels, so we let Simon, who is now trained properly, shin behind the Light Gray and save his feet. King seizes Big Buck, Miller the Brown B horse, Jack the Roan, I Whiteface. Each in turn we undo our beast’s tie-rope, stone our charges through the treacherous current, follow wavering with the bowlders dragged along bottom. The Professor is the most comical spectacle ever, shinning with much leg motion behind his junk on L. C., leaning forward as if sick, his knees stuck in, his rubber feet out. He rides if the water’s over his boot-soles. He can’t decide where to ford, but leads L. C. in circles about each bar, till I shout nastily from behind, “Well! Well! Which way? Which way?”
Here in camp in rain, moss, and forest, for tundra has spread everywhere, and there’s almost no grass, he has again begun harping to me about Jack. “I think Jack had better go back,” he said. “He won’t get any better wading all these rivers, and even if he does, he won’t be of any use to us on the mountain. If he rests here a day or two, he’ll feel apparently all well—well enough to cross the Pass and raft down the Keechatna. The pains in his chest will stop. He hasn’t anything very dangerous; it’s not septic pleurisy—” he went on in his conciliatory, querulous voice, accenting the last word in each phrase. The Professor is a sort of mild and gentle Teutonic Cedric or Ethelbert, long-haired and fair. After all, I can’t be out of sympathy with him. But I suspected he simply wanted to get rid of Jack, as his usefulness as a horse-rustler is about over, and we haven’t any too much grub. He even announced that Jack was going back. The crowd heard it in silence.
I wish I knew more about pleurisy. The risk of sending any sick man across that dismal Pass alone, to swim and reswim that mad Keechatna, and raft two hundred miles, seems revolting and inhuman.
But here in the tent, Jack has brightened up at the prospect, and seems almost his old self again. He’s pointing out childishly, and laughing in a queer way at one splash of mud on the wall that looks like a pig, one like an Uncle Sam. I’ve rustled spruce boughs for his bed, and told him that whatever he does must be of his own accord. He began magnifying the difficulties of a return in his childish way. “How does the Professor figure I’ll take a back pack up that Pass with these pains? That’s all I don’t like—that Pass. He oughter told me I had the pleurisy before we crossed it. Won’t I get worse wading those streams? And how can he spare enough rope for a raft? Suppose I lose one? The only man I knew had these pains spit blood and died on Copper River in ‘98,” etc. He suggested he take the Moth-eaten Bay, who can only pack forty pounds, but would carry his blankets and clothes, take him across streams till water is deep enough to raft in, and his saddle would supply rope for the logs.
Later.—I put that very strongly to the Professor. He won’t see it, cruelly, I thought, and said we’d need the Moth-eaten Bay to trade off packs in resting the other horses. But he can’t ever carry enough for that, and as the grub goes, we need fewer horses, and this one is almost sure to starve going down the Kuskokwim, where King says there’s no grass at all. “Well, I’ll see what King thinks,” the Professor evaded at last. I’ve tipped off Fred to kick at Jack’s going back without the horse. I shall.
July 31.—First, the impossible happened. The Professor yawned out of bed before breakfast, and laid aside for Jack’s return the small skillet, a can of milk, and a tin cup.
Then Fred and I began a five-mile horse-hunt. Somewhere on the weary tundra we met Miller, who said, “Jack is better, and coming with us today.” “Seems to me,” drawled Fred, “Jack takes on a little more about being sick than he ought. You never can tell from a man’s looks how he’ll stay it out up in this country.”
In hours, we found Bridget and the Light Gray hiding on a remote summit; we packed; floundered out upon the measureless silt flats of the Kuskokwim, south fork, flowing due west; and followed its current. It was too deep to ford anywhere, so we labored seven miles down the north bank, wading slews in its flooded desert bed.
Camp is on a mossy spruce-flat. Rabbits are so thick they almost trip you up. Miller has shot a mess with his revolver.
The horses are vainly nosing about for swamp grass in dry tundra-puddles between us and a theatric mountain. So light is the snowfall, the ground here is always frozen, and dry sphagnum replaces lush grass. Crossing to here from the Keechatna is like going suddenly from England to Arizona. Southward, great canyons cut away toward the mist-ringed ice of regions utterly unknown; up-river drowse black, glacier-mantled peaks. Overhead spring the Terra Cotta Mountains (discreetly named so by Herron), clear-cut and youthful. The gray river-channels roar like falling rain in the dry sunlight, through dazzling silt and saffron willow flat. Yonder, a slow-eating fire blights the forest with insane designs. Its smoky spires meet undulating clouds above, suspended there like sea-grass in bright water....
Jack seems better adjusted to this queer crowd; and better physically, but still discouraged. For some time he’s dropped his old sour-dough scorn of our green ways. It’s a good beginning, and must keep up if he travels on. But a trip for its own sake is never enough for him, who has never worked for anything but daily wages. I wonder why not? Possibly some subjective reason that I can’t be bothered with these days. He seems to have deceived himself about the rewards of this exploration; and self-deceivers tire me; must not be taken too much to heart. Irishmen, anyway, can stir up amazing sympathy about nothing, and in the end fizzle out.
Simon, even as he complains of indigestion, eats his third cup of apricots, resugaring them which are already sugared in cooking. The Professor is a-sweetening up, too. Sometimes I think that they’re peas from the same pod.
August 1.—After the magnificent horse-hunt—the Dunnage Bay found last under the very bench where the Professor was junking—Jack began confabbing, discussing, as most persons consider in silence, the pros and cons as to life, death, and his precious health, in going back across the Pass, or keeping on. We gathered about him and the Professor. I thought his talk a bit hypochondriacal; it bored me; that Jack might keep on only to escape the name of quitter. I resolved not to take his ailments too seriously, and went twice to the river for a drink, as he spun on.
“Here’s another thing,” he would keep beginning, “now I figure it this way,” as to pains in your kidneys, snow, wading streams, and raft rope.
I suggested that the crowd vote whether he went on or back, to show our preferences, not to bind him. All said they wanted him to stay with us, though the Professor’s arguments were for a return. He seemed anxious to hustle Jack off, while pretending great solicitude. Miller refused to vote, mistaking opinions for advice; saying, “It’s a question Jack ought to settle for himself.” Fred conditioned his vote by saying that Jack must never be left alone—while we’re on the mountain, for instance—if he kept on. The Professor consented to let him have the Moth-eaten Bay, if he would return. Lucky for him he changed his mind; Fred and I were ready with a piece of ours if he hadn’t, knowing how well life and death were at stake.
So, Jack decided to go back, after keeping us two hours, telling how he didn’t want to delay us. Simon tried to skimp him on the sugar of his ten day’s ration, and I delighted in making the kid double the amount. He wanted Jack to sign a statement that he’d left us voluntarily, which the Professor and I tabooed. That must be an Arctic wrinkle. Beside the skillet and the milk can, he took our spare axe, a baking-powder tin, and a cup. The adieux, as he packed the horse, were conventional.
And we have traveled twelve miles to this willow flat. A hot sirocco roars down the reddish mountains, swaying our drift-wood fire to singe your hair ten feet away, and chokes the beans with floury silt. In a gulch we passed the skeleton of Brooks’ first played-out horse, the head lugged fifty yards away by bears; and right there the P. R. floundered feet-up, and was chopped out.
To-day’s verse was original, suggested by Simon’s repeating the Willie-and-the-Poisoned-Tea rhyme; and by Jack’s departing:
Three argonauts went
North for gold,
Starvation came;
Jim died of cold.
Said Jack to Bob in merriment,
“Let’s eat, and have more room in the tent.”
No one seems to miss Jack much. His name hasn’t been mentioned. That rabbit stew was great.