Ike’s spirit was soaring as he rode with Meg across the country to the West Coast. He fairly bounced on her shoulders in excitement. It was like the good old days of being alive and mushing with his malamutes. He was on his way back home with a good healer for his dogs. It had been a close call with that Mick. A man with good wolf instincts, thought Ike. No wonder Meg got on so well with him. But her own instincts were leading her just where Ike wanted her to go. It’s a wondrous thing when that kind of harmony is found. Ike remembered it well … the perfect synchronizing between musher and team, when no words need be spoken. Just place your feet on the back of the sled, hang on and the dogs take off knowing exactly where you want them to go.
IKE WAS FAMILIAR with a very extensive past, but the future is unknown to the living and the dead. While Ike was concentrating on the life of Meg, a great change was taking place in his home territory. It began in the 1870s with white men making their way over the northern Rocky Mountains and down the Yukon River towards the junction of the Klondike. Some came through Alaska, up the Yukon River, as Ike had done when he first met the couple who had traded Tarak Amorak for Chiefdog. Few in number, these men were loners, adventurers, and eccentrics, most of them prospectors, hoping to find gold. They were the losers and ever hopefuls who had failed, or had arrived too late, to make the earlier gold discoveries in California or British Columbia.
They got on quite well with the native people, who were composed of various clans. The newcomers called all of the natives Indians, just as the natives called all the migrants from various countries, white men. Some of these migrants considered themselves superior to natives, refused to respect or learn from them, and remained ignorant outsiders. But others had the sense to know they were outnumbered, that they were treading on foreign territory, and were dependent on the goodwill of the native people. Several prospectors showed such respect that they were allowed to mate and marry native women and benefit from membership within a clan.
In the 1890s, there was general peace and quiet along the trade routes of the Yukon and Klondike Rivers … until the discovery of great veins of gold in the creeks feeding the Klondike. It happened in August of 1896, while Meg’s train was making its way towards Vancouver.
It was a typically warm, sunny summer day in the Yukon territory, but a day of ill-boding for Silent Kate of the Wolf Clan, even though it was she who first saw that big chunk of gold. She was a Tagish woman whose name was Shaaw Tl’áa, born of a mother from the Wolf Clan and a Tlingit father of the Crow Clan, a woman whose American husband called her Kate. She was gathering blueberries and then washing up in a stream called Rabbit Creek. As she shook the water off her hands, she noticed something gleaming in the stream. She was used to keeping a sharp eye out for telling signs in water or on the land, for she was an experienced hunter and fisher, as well as a cook, home keeper, berry picker, wife, mother, and gold seeker. It was her husband, George Washington Carmack, who had taught her how to look for gold.
George Carmack was a second-generation gold seeker who had made his way across the southern states and up the west coast of America to the far northwest of the Rocky Mountains. By the time he got to the Chilkoot Trail, which is an arduous four and more days’ hike over the Rockies from the Alaskan to the Yukon side of the mountains, George was fed up with prospecting. He took up with a couple of professional packers whose ancestors had been guarding and working the Chilkoot Trail ever since it had been used by human beings. The one packer was called Skookum, because he was about as tall as a tree and strong as a rock. His clan name was Keish; he was the brother of Shaaw Tl’áa, but Carmack called him Skookum Jim. The other fellow was Kaa Goox, cousin of Shaaw Tl’áa, and Carmack called him Tagish Charlie. Charlie was short, strong, and, according to Carmack, fast as a weasel.
Skookum Jim held the record for weight, speed, and earnings as a packer on the Chilkoot. Carmack would never come close to him in that, but they became friends. Skookum Jim introduced Carmack to his village, his family, and their way of life. Carmack took to all of these enthusiastically, learning the language, wearing Tagish clothing, adopting their culture and skills, and marrying one of Skookum Jim’s sisters. But she, like several in the family, and many in the village, died of influenza, the disease which white men carried. The custom was, that if a wife died, her sister would then marry the widower. Shaaw Tl’áa was in line for this since she herself was a widower, having lost her husband and daughter to influenza.
There was serious grief to be submerged and family complications to be set aside, but Carmack married Shaaw Tl’áa, his Kate, in a Tagish ceremony in 1886. She was a young beauty, about eighteen, with extraordinary strength and skills. The first summer of her marriage, she spent hiking up and down the Chilkoot Trail, packing alongside her husband, brother, and cousin, carrying loads for the Dominion Land Surveyor, William Ogilvie. She carried lighter loads, but also did the cooking, washing, some hunting, and berry picking.
George and Kate got on well in their early years. He had so much respect for her and her culture that he was called by some from his culture, Squawman George. The only thing he apparently disliked about her culture was the habit of living and sleeping in communal family housing. He insisted on building a separate log house for Kate and himself. They built their first one in the small community of Dyea, on the inlet at the foot of the Chilkoot Trail.
As time went on, Carmack also acquired the name Lyin’ George. This was because his lust for gold had returned. He moved into the Yukon territory, prospecting for gold in summer, hunting and trapping in winter, with Kate at his side, sometimes also Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie. George staked a claim near the small mining community at Fortymile on the Yukon River in 1890, when he had found a little gold. George’s enthusiasm for his ventures and the worth of his claims was so over the top that he was called Lyin’ George.
His interest in his own culture also showed signs of returning when they had a baby girl in 1893. Kate was at that time running a trading post they had started near Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon, while George worked on the construction of a Christian church, called St. Andrew’s. He had their baby baptized there. Nick-named Graphie Grace, she was taught English by her father.
Kate missed her own parents and village as she moved amongst these miners’ settlements. She was always busy, helping George to dig or sift for gold, tending Graphie, and doing the domestic work. She lacked the time and facility to mix with the few other women in the settlements. Some of those women did nothing but dance and sing and lay with men. They spoke English. Kate understood English well enough to get the gist of things but she did not like to speak the language since she was sometimes laughed at or not understood.
The language was tricky because it had several names for one thing. Prospectors, miners, gold seekers, all the same kind of man. Some tried to come up the Chilkoot Trail with a strange animal that looked like a giant dog. Mule, donkey, ass, they called it. Three words for the same animal that could not get up the trail, was too big to feed, too stupid to hunt for its own food, and too weak to withstand the winter storms. And then that same word, ass, was applied to humans and human parts. Sometimes both at once. When George got angry at Charlie, he called him a stubborn ass. He would say, “Get your ass on out of here,” and “Asshole!” Then there was the “ass end of the tea kettle.” Except water came out of a tea kettle and only from the one end, that looked like a man’s front piece. It was all too confusing, and funny in a way people who spoke this English didn’t realize.
Kate enjoyed telling native wives these funny things that a white husband said. It made them wonder and think and laugh. It made them enjoy her. It took away the loneliness she felt in the long periods away from her people, alone with her child, awaiting the return of George and Jim and Charlie from their long hunting trips. It was so much better than the feeling she had in the company of white people. White people didn’t hurt her. George saw to that. But she couldn’t bear the way they laughed at her, from inside their faces. That’s where they tried to keep their laughter when she failed to speak the way they did. She stopped trying. Then she got the name Silent Kate. Fine. It suited her well, when she was amongst them.
In the summer of 1896, George took her and Grace to the native fishing camp at the junction of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers. She could communicate well enough with the Han women there, and she had the company of Skookum Jim and Charlie and his young brother Koolseen, whom George called Patsy. Kate was in a good mood as she collected berries in her cedar bark basket that morning of August 16th. George and Charlie were still sleeping. Jim had gone farther up Rabbit Creek. There was an unnatural tension in the air, the kind of tension that comes when men stir things up. George was always stirring the fire, couldn’t sit still or silent for long like her people. That used to interest her about him, but it could be tiresome. He had stirred things up many dawns ago by telling everyone about his dream.
“It was a dream full of fish,” he said. “Teeming with fish. Ordinary greylings, but so many the river couldn’t contain them. They were leaping into the air. Then suddenly, two giant, golden, gleaming salmon swam upstream in the midst of all the small greylings. These two salmon stopped, right in front of me. I was at the river’s edge. The eyes of these two salmon were pure gold, round like twenty dollar gold pieces. Their scales were golden nuggets. They stared at me like messengers. They were summoning me.”
“What for?” asked Jim.
“Don’t know for sure. Must be there’s gold. Or one hell of a fishing spot that I’m supposed to find.”
He has many dreams, thought Kate. Treats them like visions. One man cannot have so many visions as George does. Not ones that lead nowhere or have no useful story. He’s more like a dream catcher than a good storyteller. But that dream of his did lead us to the fish camp this summer and there are many big salmon stopping in our nets. Enough to feed ourselves and throw to the dogs through winter. It was a good summer all around. Lots of fish in the Klondike, moose in the pasture at the junction of the Yukon, not too many bear to get in the way of berry picking. It was the best time for George, Jim, and Charlie to cut the trees on shore and float the logs down to Ladue’s mill for a good price. The wolf pack that roamed the ridge over Moosehide Gulch and howled from the smooth top of the Dome Mountain was a big one and sounded well fed. Jim said it was a pack of nine.
Then came the day in mid-August when that tall skinny white man with the frowning face and eyes of a crow, Bob Henderson, crashed in on their lunch. Kate had prepared fresh salmon baked in hot ashes. Graphie and Patsy were sitting on a log at the river’s edge above where someone had tied a small rowboat with a much-patched bottom. A shallow layer of river water rested in it. George was sitting round the fire with Jim and Charlie, having a smoke before getting back to work. Kate was checking the sourdough bread she was making in the men’s gold-sifting pans. From the evergreens and white-barked trees at the base of the Dome, a man emerged. They watched him flailing his gold pan at mosquitoes as he made his way through wild raspberry and salmon berry bushes, then tramped across the grass and dirt trails of the fishing bank.
“Well, if it ain’t!” said George, standing up. “Bob Henderson. Haven’t seen him in a coon’s age. Still lookin’. And still not findin’, I’ll bet ya.”
Jim and Charlie rose to their feet. Graphie ran to hang onto Kate’s skirt. Patsy went to stand by Charlie. They all stared at the approaching dark-haired, moustached man loaded down with prospector’s equipment, shovel and pick over his left shoulder.
“Hey, Bob,” said George. “What the hell you doin’ in this neck of the woods?”
Bob nodded in greeting only to George. George the Squawman, Bob was thinking. Siwash George. Lyin’ George, some call him, the way he builds mountains out of mole hills. Sold out completely, he has. Wearing moccasins just like the rest of these Siwashes. That looks like his half-breed daughter over there. Can’t restrain himself, George can’t. Like a lot of the boys, takes up with whatever’s handy. What happens to the squaw and kid if he strikes it rich? Dropped as soon as picked up, I’ll wager. It’s a cruelty to take up with the natives. God meant like to breed with like. Even grizzly bears know that.
“Bob? You bushwhacked or what? I just asked you, what’s up?”
“Just making my way, George. From Fort Ogilvie. Up the Klondike.”
“What for, Bob? Any good prospects?”
“May be. Found something in a small creek that heads up against the Dome.”
They all noticed an unusual gleam in Bob’s eye, a holding back with his words. It was prospectors’ honour to tell other prospectors of a find, of any good prospects. George waited for Bob to come forth.
“I figure,” said Bob carefully, “that creek empties into the Klondike about fifteen miles up from here and I’m looking for a better way to get at it than going over the mountains from Indian River.”
George glanced at Jim and Charlie. Bob kept his eyes averted from them.
“Is it any good of a prospect, Bob?”
“We don’t know yet. We can get a prospect on the surface. When I left, the boys were running up an open cut to get to bedrock.”
“What are the chances to locate up there? Everything staked?” Bob then glanced at Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie, studiously ignoring Kate and the children. Then he addressed George. “There’s a chance for you, George, but I don’t want any damn Siwashes staking on that creek.” He lifted his pick and shovel up onto his shoulder, tramped off to the river bank, and slid down into the boat.
“What’s the matter with that white man!” Skookum Jim jammed his empty pipe into his pocket. “He kill Indian moose, Indian caribou. Dig at gold in Indian country. No like it Indian stake claim? We show him!” Jim spat on the ground. “He no share prospect. No share tobacco. No good, that white man! Damn fool, him!” Jim spat again.
“Never mind, Jim,” said George. “This is a big country. We’ll find our own creek.”
“You go now,” said Kate.
They looked at her but she would not say more. She would never run off at the mouth like her brother, speaking in that pidgin English which made men like Bob Henderson smirk. Kate wished Jim would stick to Tagish words, and habits.
“You’re right,” said George. “Henderson wouldn’t act like that unless he was onto something big. I’ve seen a few men look like that in my day. A good prospect can change a man in no time. We’ll go follow his trail tomorrow. Or next day. We got a lot of fish to deal with now.”
“Go now,” said Jim.
“Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
“Charlie?” said Jim. Charlie shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t care when.
“Let’s all go now,” said Kate in Tagish.
“Where?” said George. “Sounds like Henderson came from Gold Bottom Creek. Where else would be good?”
“Rabbit Creek,” said Jim and explained in Tagish. “It comes down from the mountain close by here. It’s a good trail for gold. Better than the one Henderson came from.”
“You figure Rabbit Creek?” said George to Kate and Charlie. “We could follow Henderson on Gold Bottom.”
“Rabbit Creek,” said Charlie. Kate nodded in agreement.
“Rabbit it is, then.” George removed his brimmed hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “But I’m not setting off until tomorrow.”
“Go now,” said Jim. “Lots of time before dark.”
“Indians are supposed to be lazy,” said George. “How come I wind up with ones like you.”
Kate then packed up food and some fur-hide bedding from their shelter in the fish camp. It was good to get away from the strong smell of fish being smoked and laid out to dry. Though she knew that the farther from the smoke and the parched banks of the Klondike they moved, the closer they would be to damp ground and mosquitoes. George poled her and the children in a small boat, two miles upstream to the mouth of Rabbit Creek. Jim and Charlie walked along the banks, moccasins squishing in the bogs. When it became too shallow for the boat, they got out to find a place to set up camp.
They trudged along the creek’s bed of silt and mushy earth. Sharp spiked plants, thorny scrub bushes, and mossy tufts grew up from the oozing black earth. Slippery rock lay beneath. Grace had to be carried. Kate had to lift her skirts like a saloon girl. Their moccasins were soaked through. Mosquitoes swarmed around, biting their hands as they fended them off their faces. Everyone but Jim decided to head for higher ground. He trudged on upstream.
Jim had been fascinated by the prospectors he met, fascinated by their belief in hidden stashes of gold beneath rocks, in creek beds. He understood the power of money that was paid to him for packing on the trails and he understood that gold was its source. He liked to buy things, like white men’s clothing for himself and his relatives. He liked a good hunting gun and tools. He liked to buy drinks at a bar. He wanted to find gold, but he didn’t have the patience to sift through water, sand, and pebbles for long.
The others set up camp in the woods on drier ground. Kate put mud packs on Grace’s face, her more tender skin swollen with mosquito bites. Rain was not likely at this time of year and the sun would set for only a few hours. Kate made strong tea and another meal of salmon and sourdough bread. “Wouldn’t mind some fresh berries with this,” said George. “You get us some tomorrow, Kate? I’m going to get some shut-eye now.”
She nodded that she would. She took the children into the bushes to relieve themselves, making them chatter on route to ward off bears. She settled them onto their fur hides and tidied up the camp. Jim returned, waking everyone with his excitement. He had found a sprinkling of gold dust.
“Fool’s gold,” said George. “That bit of dust won’t buy you a chew of tobacco. Find any veins? Chunks? Pieces?”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” said Jim. “After a sleep I’ll find more. Rabbit Creek, it’s good.”
“Good place to run logs,” said George. “It would be dead easy to cut them down right here. Roll them into the creek. Float them down to the Klondike. Ladue will give me twenty-five dollars a thousand feet. Now that’s smart gold!”
Jim finished off the salmon and tea and went to sleep. Kate tidied up then lay down to sleep beside George.
Jim got up at first light. “I’ll find us a moose, if I don’t find more gold,” he said. “I’m fed up with fish.”
George, Charlie, and the children slept on. Kate took her cedar basket and a gun to go find a berry patch. Likely to meet bears amongst the berries at dawn. But she did not. Probably, she surmised, because of the pack of nine wolves she saw running through the foliage towards the woods. They ran single file in orderly formation. An impressive looking pack. Strong, no stragglers. She put her gun behind her back. It was an honour and a good omen to see wolves. The lead wolf slowed down, stopped briefly and eyed her, then carried on, all of them keeping pace with the leader but also keeping an eye on her until they were out of sight.
Kate filled her basket then went to a slippery rock part of the creek to take a drink, and wash her hands and face. That was when she spotted the gleam in the water. She waded in to it. Dug under the surface with her knife and dislodged a piece of gold. Not gold dust, but a chunk of gold, big as a stone in the palm of her hand. More gleamed beneath the water amongst the rocks.
She ran back to their camp. Stepped quietly over to her husband George. Touched his shoulder. He awoke. She smiled and placed in his hand the chunk of gold.
That was the morning of August 16, 1896. Kate would remember it as the day when her husband, her family, and the land itself began to change. With her husband, she couldn’t tell if it was more like him putting on a mask or taking it off.
It began with the dance of joy. George and Charlie whooping it up as they dug and chiselled away at the vein of gold she had found. Soon Jim joined in with more gold he had found farther up. The children jumped up and down with them. And then the deliberations. Claims must be staked. How many could they? In whose names?
“A woman can’t stake a claim,” said George, looking at Jim and Charlie. “And I’m not sure about you boys.”
“I am your wife,” said Kate in clear English.
“Wife. Woman. It doesn’t matter.” He was so intent on the gold nuggets in his hand, he didn’t look at her. “I’ll stake a claim for you. And for you boys.” He looked at them. “Just in case they give us an argument about being Indians. I’ll make sure you get your share. You know that, eh Jim? Charlie?”
They nodded solemnly.
“And Kate.” George looked at her. “You’re my wife.” Graphie ran to him. He picked her up and swung her around. “And my little girl.”
He set her down. “Better get going, boys. I’ll take Kate and Graphie and Patsy. Leave them at the fish camp. Then paddle on down to Fortymile and get as many stakes as I can for us on this creek. You guard the claims? Deal?”
“Deal,” said Charlie.
Jim pondered. “Two can paddle faster than one to Fortymile. You take Charlie with you. Me, I stay and guard the claims.”
“All right, Jim. You come with me, Charlie?”
“Deal,” said Charlie. “Better deal.”
“And whoooppeee!” George slapped his knee with his hat, grabbed Kate and tilted her up and down trying to get her to dance a jig with him.
When they were poling back down Rabbit Creek George was bursting with realizations and plans. “We are rich! Unbelievably rich!”
“What’s rich mean, Daddy?” said Graphie.
“It means, my little girl,” George mused, “it means that you will see the Outside. I will take you and your mother to San Francisco. We will land with suitcases full of gold. You will have silk dresses. Your mother ball gowns. We’ll buy books. And a piano! You’ll learn to play the piano. You can go to boarding school and learn fine manners.”
“Patsy too?” said Graphie. “And Uncle Charlie?”
“If they want.” George lingered over the pole. “We’ll drink champagne, Kate. You’ve never had champagne.”
“Me too,” said Charlie. “I drink that too.”
Kate stood on the bank of the Klondike River at the fish camp watching George and Charlie get into the canoe to go downriver to Fortymile. They started to paddle, then George, looking across the river to an old prospector’s camp, suddenly shouted, “Whoa, Charlie! Let’s go across to the other side first.” He yelled over his shoulder to Kate. “Got to tell my old friend Eli, about the prospect.”
It was the easiest time of year to paddle across the Klondike, with the water at its lowest level, the currents weak. But it would cut into the time getting to stake their claim. Kate approved. He’s a good man, she thought. Better than that old crow, Henderson, who won’t share and has no respect for us. But George was acting like a wolf about to move on, to a new territory. He said he would take her with him. She did want to see this place called San Francisco. She would follow him anywhere. She was his wife. But the Outside was beyond the mountains. It floated on the endless ocean leading away from the Chilkoot Trail, where white men went when they left their native wives and never came back. That is why the spirit of fear had landed on her shoulder like a sharp-clawed hawk.
George and Charlie paddled into Eli’s landing. Eli slid down the bank to grab the front of the canoe.
“Hello Carmack. Charlie.” Eli nodded to him. “There’s a lot of commotion over on your side of the river. What’s up? You look as though you found something.”
“Well now, Eli,” said George. “That I did.” Once he had both feet on the ground, George put his hand in his pocket and waited for Eli to speak.
“You follow Henderson?” said Eli. “I heard talk of something over near the Dome. But you and your Indians come down a different direction. Henderson was talking of something on a creek he’s named Gold Bottom. Anything in that? I don’t think my legs can take me up another dead end this summer.”
“Would you call this a dead end?” George produced the large gold nugget from his pocket.
Eli squinted, looked George in the eyes, then held out his hand. “You mind if I feel the weight of that?” George placed it in his hand.
“Where did you find this, George, my friend?”
“Up Rabbit Creek, Eli. You have to see it to believe it. There’re great slabs of gold in the bedrock of that creek. Great slabs, I tell you. I’ve staked all I can by law. Two for myself as discoverer and one each for Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie here.” He nodded to Charlie who nodded to Eli. “We’re off to Fortymile now to register them. You get yourself up there and see for yourself. Jim’s there. He’s guarding our claims.”
“You’re a good fellow, George, to come across the river to tell me this.”
“One old prospector to another,” said George. Eli began to gather up his equipment. George and Charlie got back into the canoe and paddled fast towards the junction of the Klondike and the Yukon River which would take them to Fortymile.
They could still be seen from the fish camp side. Graphie and Patsy ran along the bank following the sight of the canoe until they ran out of breath.
“When they get to the bend,” said Graphie to Patsy, “my dad will lift his paddle into the air and wave to us. He always does that.”
But this time George did not. He was concentrating on speed. Charlie at the rear had to make his J-stroke extra strong to keep them on course.
Fortymile had two main log buildings. One was McPhee’s Saloon. The other was The Northwest Mounted Police Headquarters, where claims could be registered, mail picked up, and disputes settled. George went there first with Charlie in tow. Charlie did not correct George in claiming to be the discoverer of the gold because he believed that Kate could not register a claim and he trusted George and the authorities in these unfamiliar matters. The police inspector had no reason to question George and thought justice was served in granting Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie claims. That done, George and Charlie went straight to the saloon.
Charlie enjoyed a saloon. Liked to have a shot or two. Show the white men he could handle it. Just like he could handle more weight on the trail than they could. He could move faster too. But he didn’t go into saloons much, because George didn’t. George was their guide in a saloon just as he and Skookum were George’s on the trail. When George had become one of their Wolf Clan, he didn’t go into saloons much. Most of the time they didn’t have the money for it anyway. Today they did. They sure did.
George led the way. Pushed open the saloon swing doors and strode over to the bar, plunked his closed fist upon it. He ordered two whiskies for himself and one for Charlie. He swallowed both of his then turned his back to the bar and leaned against it. He held up his hand to get the attention of the downhearted miners leaning over their tables, over the backs of chairs, up against the rough-hewn plank of the bar. Charlie pushed his shot glass towards the bartender for a refill. The bartender ignored him while George spoke.
“Boys,” said George Washington Carmack, “I’ve got some good news to tell you. There’s a big strike up the river.” “Strike, hell!” somebody shouted. “That ain’t no news. That’s just a scheme of Ladue and Harper to start a stampede upriver.”
“You’re dead wrong, you big rabbit-eating malamute!” George shouted back at him. “Neither Ladue nor Harper knows anything about this.” He pulled out his pouch full of gold and dumped it on the gold scales placed near the bartender. “How does that look to you, eh?” George leaned back against the bar, his chest out, his thumbs in his pockets.
“Me, I got claim too,” said Charlie to the bartender.
“Is that so, Carmack?”
“Ever heard Tagish Charlie tell a lie?”
“We’ve heard you, Lyin’ George!”
“Yeah, Squawman! Is that some of that Miller Creek gold what Ladue gave you? Ain’t worth nothin’.”
“Weigh it up,” George shouted. “And give my partner another drink. Hell, give everyone of these washed-up miners a drink. Give ’em two! Come on McPhee, weigh it up. We’ll see who’s lyin’ and who ain’t.”
Bill McPhee checked and double checked the measure on the scales.
“Never seen gold this heavy and yellow before. Not in my lifetime. Nowhere around here. Boys, maybe you’d better be givin’ Carmack the benefit of the doubt.”
“Naw. Been fooled too many times. Carmack’s never been a serious prospector.”
“Never bought drinks on the house before, neither.”
“Where exactly did you find this, Carmack?”
Kate and others from the fish camp gathered on the river bank. They saw a swarm of boats coming up from Fortymile. Mostly flat-bottom boats, being rowed at a racing pace. All those white miners with squashed hats and dirty clothes, shirts that were wet under the arms and smelled worse than pungent meat that could make you retch. Miners without wives to look after them and keep their male piece satisfied. They looked like mangy dogs, some with beards such as only white men can have.
They were racing against each other. Hollering from boat to boat. Laughter. A good-natured race. They were after some prize. They could be so like children, these white men, when they were excited and drunk. They shouted, yee-hawed, slapped themselves, and stomped their feet. You had to be careful when they were drunk. Best hide. Or they’d take you. Rough as they could. Hurt young girls and not care. No animals mated with cruelty as they did. Or so Kate heard from the stories passed around. It was not her experience with George. He touched her face and stroked her hair in the affectionate way that mated wolves licked each other on the snout and pawed each other’s ears. And he put his arms around her when he came home from days away. It was a white man’s particular way of greeting that had frightened her at first. But now she looked forward to it.
The swarm of miners rowed on up the Yukon to the Klondike River, shouting comments to one another as they passed the fishing bank.
“What are they saying?” an older Han woman asked Kate.
Kate laughed. “The usual. They don’t like the smell of our dead fish. They think it comes from us.”
“They don’t like the smell of our camp? They should smell their own village. We don’t build small houses with a hole in the floor and fill it full of piss and shit. Nothing but piss and shit. How do they think that smells?”
George neglected to embrace Kate when he landed. But he handed her a blue satin ribbon for her hair and he had a small bag of peppermint candies for Graphie which she shared with Patsy. The rest of his purchases were mining equipment. Three shovels, two new pickaxes, a large tin tub, and a pair of thigh-high, hard-soled rubber boots.
“They won’t fit Skookum Jim,” said George. “He’s too big. But Charlie and me can take turns with these in the creek.”
“No,” said Charlie. “Me, I don’t need them.”
“We’re going to need a lot more than this, once we get going,” said George. “A lot of logs to jack up the banks. Wood boxes. Sluices. Have to build a cabin on the claim before winter sets in. Have to get all that stuff from Ladue ’s store. Right now, this is all we can afford until we get more gold out. So let’s get goin’, Charlie. Would you believe how all those dumb farts sneaked off in their boats, hot footin’ it up to Rabbit Creek after calling me a liar! Lyin’ George. They’ll never call me that again.
“Funniest thing you ever saw. Once it dawned on them that I had the best gold they had ever seen and I tell them, ‘Rabbit Creek,’ and suddenly, McPhee’s is empty and the boats are full. Those too drunk to sit tight got tied up on the bottom until they snored it off. Wasn’t that something, Charlie! We sure put them on the run. Kate, be a good woman and hurry up with the grub. Gold awaits us. Every minute counts.”
Gold awaits us. Every minute counts. Strange talk, thought Kate as she dried more fish, laying in food supplies to take to the men who had gone up Rabbit Creek. As the word spread throughout the valley of the Yukon and Klondike, more boats, canoes and men on foot with pack dogs came travelling past, heading for Rabbit, Gold Bottom, and every other creek in the area.
Kate saw Ladue arrive on the flat swampy land just down from their fish camp. It was a bad site for a camp. Although it was the meeting place of both rivers, the land itself was too wet during the spring when the snow turned into rain and in the autumn before the rain turned into snow. Now, in the season of sun, the ground was hard under moccasins. But soon they would squish and sink in the mud. That land is good for nothing but moose pasture and wolves on the hunt. Ladue had tramped over it as a prospector, a hunter, and a trader. Now he was a trader all the time, had his post just upriver. Kate wondered what he was doing, tramping around on the moose pasture now.
He camped there overnight. In the morning she saw him take down his tent. Load up his boat. He got into it and began rowing upstream towards Rabbit and Gold Bottom creeks, just like all the other prospectors who had suddenly come out of the woods. But then Ladue stopped. He turned around. Landed again on the flat land and pounded a stake into the centre of it. He stood looking at that stake as though it were a very smart thing. Then he set up his tent again. Kate pretended she had not been watching him when he came over to their fish camp.
“Hey, ma’am,” he called to her.
She put her head down, looking onto the twig shelf of smoking fish.
“Kate. Carmack’s woman. Remember me? Ladue. Joe Ladue. From the trading post. You understand English, eh? You trade fresh fish?”
His French accent was difficult for Kate to understand. She called Graphie to her side. Men behaved better when children were at your side and Graphie spoke correct English. Kate beckoned Ladue to follow them to the campfire. Other women gathered and sat down with them. Kate poured tea from the big kettle hanging over the fire.
“I ’ave staked claim,” said Ladue. “Gonna build big lumber mill. Tell your man he come dere, for logs. Soon.” Ladue’s eyes were fired up like her men’s were when they saw gold. “All miners get supplies from me, eh? Ladue. Over dere.” He pointed to Moose Pasture, the home of mosquitoes, moose, and wolves on the hunt. “Dat dere, my land. First ting, big sawmill. Den city. Big city. Dawson City. My land. Me, I gonna call it Dawson City, after my famous government friend, George M. Dawson.”