CITY OF GOLD

Tip and I spent several days at the White Horse Rapids repairing our raft. We found two oars and a pole that had washed ashore, possibly our own, but we had to trade twenty-five pounds of bacon for a steering oar.

We made a new mount for the steering oar from wreckage strewn about, but we did not replace the mast and sail. We would depend upon the river’s current for the remainder of the journey.

Daily we checked the beach for our stove, but if it washed ashore, we never found it. We traded our last bottle of eucalyptus oil for a stove from a man who had three.

“No doubt our own,” Tip said, sighing.

I did not complain, however, because our supplies were intact.

“I knew a man once,” I told Tip, “named Feathers.” I smiled, remembering. “He would love it here. This is his kind of place.”

We pushed off for Lake Laberge, the last of the Yukon lakes, after which rivers flowed all the way to Dawson City and on to the Bering Sea.

“Any more rapids?” Tip asked.

“Just a couple of little ones,” I said, checking my worn map. “About a hundred miles from here. Five Finger Rapids and Rink Rapids. Nothing to worry about.”

On Lake Laberge, as on Lake Marsh, we spent a lot of time on gravel bars. We talked about the gold, and we fished for grayling. I was glad when Tip said she was sick of fish, as it gave me an excuse to go hunting again. One morning early we poled the raft over to the shore. I wrapped myself in mosquito netting, grabbed my rifle, and took off into the woods.

“I will return with game,” I said.

There were animals in the woods—moose, bear, caribou, and rabbits. I had seen them from the raft. Now I could see only their tracks in the damp earth.

Finally, I sat down under a clump of quaking aspens with my rifle cocked, and I waited.

After a while a red squirrel ran down the trunk of a spruce tree, darted in front of me, and scampered up another tree. I fired once.

I ran back to the raft, spattered with mud and pursued by hordes of mosquitoes. But victorious. At least I was smarter than a red squirrel.

Because of the mosquitoes, we pushed offshore and floated slowly down the clear green waters of Lake Laberge. While I had been hunting, the queen had again decorated the raft with woodland flowers. And as we rowed out, a trail of fragrant blossoms followed in our wake.

“I’ll cook supper tonight,” I said proudly. “You just putter around in the garden.” I skinned and cleaned the squirrel, and I put it to soak in salted water.

Tip eyed it suspiciously as it soaked in the frying pan. “Do you know how to cook squirrel?” she asked.

“Of course,” I answered, hoping Pa’s old Wyoming rabbit recipe worked with Yukon squirrel. I rummaged through our supplies, looking for a can of evaporated onions.

That evening, drifting with the current down Lake Laberge, I cooked my first wild game—squirrel smothered in onions. The aroma from that frying pan outdid Wyoming rabbit. I was proud to share it with the queen.

The queen drew away in disgust. “It looks dead.”

“It is,” I said sharply. “Just like the fish we eat.”

She lifted the squirrel with a fork, dangling it by one leg. “It looks murdered.” She dropped it over the edge of the raft.

I lunged at her. “Get off,” I yelled. “Get off my raft!”

I stomped over to a corner of the raft and turned my back on her. We were quarreling like adults.

I heard a splash, not much louder than a fish makes. And I knew Tip was in the water. I was sorry immediately, but that did not help. Tip could not swim. And I could not stop the raft.

“Grab the pole!” I yelled, holding it out to her. She missed it.

I was frantic. I wanted to jump in and save her. But I could not swim either.

“Help!” I cried, looking around for other boats.

Quickly I untied a rope from the supplies and threw it. “Grab it!” I yelled.

Her arms were flailing above the water, as thin and fragile as flower stems in the wind. As the rope skimmed the water, I prayed to God for her life. Then I saw her go under.

I pulled the rope, and she was holding on.

We never quarreled again.

The outlet from Lake Laberge was a narrow, twisting river called Thirty Mile. The boats we had missed on Lake Laberge were all bunching up here.

“You two boys still afloat?” one stampeder called as he rammed into us with his scow. “Thought we lost you back at Miles Canyon.”

“No,” I shouted. “We’re in it for the gold.”

That worried him, and he began shouting at his boat to go faster.

The Thirty Mile River began a series of rivers similar to the chain of lakes earlier—the Teslin, the Big Salmon, the Little Salmon, and the Lewes. On the cold, clear waters of the Lewes River were the rapids.

This time I was not taking any chances. I lassoed a stubby spruce and beached the raft miles before the Five Finger Rapids. I tied down our stove and all the oars, except the steering oar.

“You can walk around the rapids,” I said to Tip. “No need for both of us to get wet.”

“No thanks.”

“You can follow along the river bank,” I said. “All the way—even at the rapids.”

She shook her head.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Bears?”

“No.”

“What then?” I was trying hard to be patient. She had been asking about the rapids for days. Now she just sat on top of the supplies, hugging her knees, looking at me with her big eyes, the color of glacier water.

“You like them, don’t you?” she asked. “Rapids.”

I looked at her, surprised. “Yes. It’s in my blood. How did you know?”

“Well”—she smiled broadly—“it’s in mine, too.”

We sailed fearlessly toward the Five Finger Rapids, four ominous black rocks towering in the middle of the river. The water surged around them in five channels—like fingers.

I grabbed the map in my pocket and read: HUG THE RIGHT CLIFF.

With all my strength I steered to the right. And we headed straight for the rock wall.

“We’re going to hit,” Tip screamed.

Just when I thought we would crash, a crosscurrent turned the raft and bounced it through the middle channel as if pulled by a rope.

I was speechless with fright.

Tip hollered, “Now how far to Rink Rapids?”

“I will ask the Mounties,” I said, reaching for the crumpled map.

That started us laughing, and we laughed all the way to Rink Rapids, however far that was. We laughed as we pitched and bumped over the treacherous falls, I suppose because Tip was thirteen and I was now fifteen—and we were indestructible.

At last we reached the main stream of the Yukon River, wide and swift enough to carry us without oars or sail. For the rest of the journey to Dawson City we steered only to dodge islands. And laughed. And dreamed about the gold.

We had almost forgotten that others were also dreaming of the same gold, and as we drew closer to the City of Gold, the race became deadly.

Partnerships that had survived the Lake Bennett saw pits and the Yukon waterway were now dissolving. Men threw each other overboard, they sawed boats in half, and they fought onshore while their boats drifted away.

At the mouth of the Pelly, a tributary pouring into the Yukon, was a Split-Up Island. And a few miles downstream, near the Stewart, was a Split-Up City.

Tip and I watched partners, livid with anger, cutting sacks of rice and flour in half, their contents spilling out over the sand. One group laid out six blankets on the beach and divided all their supplies, pouring the contents of the sacks into big mixed-up piles. When the men realized their supplies were wasted, they ran around frantically, trying to find new partners.

Several men asked to hitch up with Tip and me, and they promised us everything. We said we were too slow.

It was a humorous sight, but sad. We did not laugh at the antics of those adults as we once had.

As the journey neared its end, all the stampeders held their crafts to the right bank, moving cautiously around each bend of the wide river. No one wanted to miss the City of Gold now.

Tip and I had not won the race with our raft, but neither had we lost. As far ahead as we could see, and as far back, the right bank of the river was lined with boats.

It was the end of June 1898. I had been on the gold trail for ten months. And I was 2,500 miles from where I’d started.

I remembered the old miner at the San Francisco harbor, dragging his heavy suitcases. I recalled the gold piece he had given me, and how I had lost it in Skagway. I would not be so foolish again, I vowed.

I looked at Tip, perched on top of the supplies, peering up the river. She would notify me, she said, when she spotted Dawson City. Her black bangs hung so long over her eyes that I wondered how she could see anything.

Slowly we sailed around a broad curve in the river, and there on the right the roaring Klondike River surged into the slower-moving Yukon. It forced our raft back into the middle of the river.

“Land ho!” Tip called, jumping from her crow’s nest.

“Man the oars,” I shouted. In my excitement, I stumbled over my own feet.

Just ahead at the junction of the two rivers, shimmering in a misty marsh, was the end of my rainbow, my City of Gold—Dawson City.