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ON DYEA BEACH

In a drizzle of cold rain forty men stood on Dyea beach and viewed with disfavor the forty thousand pounds of sodden, mud-smeared outfit that had been hurriedly landed from the little steamer that was already plowing her way southward. Of the sixty-odd men who, two weeks before had stood in Patsy Kelliher's "Ore Dump Saloon" and had seen Jim McBride toss one after another upon the bar twenty buckskin pouches filled to bursting with coarse gold in his reckoning with Kelliher, these forty had accomplished the first leg of the long North trail. The next year and the next, thousands, and tens of thousands of men would follow in their footsteps, for these forty were the forerunners of the great stampede from the "outside"—a stampede that exacted merciless toll in the lives of fools and weaklings, even as it heaped riches with lavish prodigality into the laps of the strong.

Jim McBride had said that each man must carry in a thousand pounds of outfit. Well and good, they had complied. Each had purchased his thousand pounds, had it delivered on board the steamer, and in due course, had watched it dumped upon the beach from the small boats. Despite the cold drizzle, throughout the unloading the forty had laughed and joked each other and had liberally tendered flasks. But now, with the steamer a vanishing speck in the distance and the rock-studded Dyea Flats stretching away toward the mountains, the laughter and joking ceased. Men eyed the trail, moved aimlessly about, and returned to their luggage. The thousand pound outfits had suddenly assumed proportions. Every ounce of it must be man-handled across a twenty-eight mile portage and over the Chilkoot Pass. Now and then a man bent down and gave a tentative lift at a bale or a sack. Muttered curses had taken the place of laughter, and if a man drew a flask from his pocket, he drank, and returned it to his pocket without tendering it to his neighbor.

When Carter Brent had reached the seclusion of his room after leaving Kelliher's saloon, he slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrawing his roll of bills, counted them. He found exactly three hundred and seventy-eight dollars which he rightly decided was not enough to finance an expedition to the gold country. He must get more—and get it quickly. Returning the bills in his pocket he packed his belongings, left the room, and a few minutes later was admitted upon signal to the gambling rooms of Nick the Greek where selecting a faro layout, he bought a stack of chips. At the end of a half-hour he bought another stack, and thereafter he began to win. When his innings totaled one thousand dollars he cashed in, and that evening at seven o'clock he stepped onto a train bound for Seattle. He was mildly surprised that none of the others from Kelliher's were in evidence. But when he arrived at his destination he grinned as he saw them swarming from the day coaches ahead.

And now on Dyea beach he stood and scowled as he watched the rain water collect in drops and roll down the sides of his packages.

"He said they was Injuns would pack this here junk," complained a man beside him, "Where'n hell be they?"

"Search me," grinned Brent, "How much can you carry?"

"Don't know—not a hell of a lot over them rocks—an' he said this here Chilkoot was so steep you had to climb it instead of walk."

"Suppose we make a try," suggested Brent. "A man ought to handle a hundred pounds——"

"A hundred pounds! You're crazy as hell! I ain't no damn burro—me. Not no hundred pounds no twenty-eight mile, an' part of it cat-climbin'. 'Bout twenty-five's more my size."

"You like to walk better than I do," shrugged Brent, "Have you stopped to figure that a twenty-five-pound pack means four trips to the hundred—forty trips for the thousand? And forty round trips of twenty-eight miles means something over twenty-two hundred miles of hiking."

"Gawd!" exclaimed the other, in dismay, "It must be hell to be eggicated! If I'd figgered that out, I'd of stayed on the boat! We're in a hell of a fix now, an' no ways to git back. That grub'll all be et gittin' it over the pass, an' when we git there, we ain't nowheres—we got them lakes an' river to make after that. Looks like by the time we hit this here Bonanza place all the claims will be took up, or the gold'll be rotted with old age."

"You're sure a son of gloom," opined Brent as he stooped and affixed his straps to a hundred-pound sack of flour. "But I'm going to hit the trail. So long."

As Brent essayed to swing the pack to his shoulders he learned for the first time in his life that one hundred pounds is a matter not lightly to be juggled. The pack did not swing to his shoulders, and it was only after repeated efforts, and the use of other bales of luggage as a platform that he was at length able to stand erect under his burden. The other man had watched without offer of assistance, and Brent's wrath flared as he noted his grin. Without a word he struck across the rock-strewn flat.

"Hurry back," taunted the other, "You ort to make about four trips by supper time."

Before he had covered fifty yards Brent knew that he could never stand the strain of a hundred-pound pack. While not a large man, he was well built and rugged, but he had never before carried a pack, and every muscle of his body registered its aching protest at the unaccustomed strain. Time and again it seemed as though the next step must be his last, then a friendly rock would show up ahead and he would stagger forward and sink against its side allowing the rock to ease the weight from his shoulders. As the distance between resting places became shorter, the periods of rest lengthened, and during these periods, while he panted for breath and listened to the pounding of his heart's blood as it surged past his ear drums, his brain was very active. "McBride said a good packer could walk off with a hundred, or a hundred and fifty pounds, and he'd seen 'em pack two hundred," he muttered. "And I've been an hour moving one hundred pounds one mile! And I'm so near all in that I couldn't move it another mile in a week. I wonder where those Indian packers are that he said we could get?" His eyes travelled back across the flats, every inch of which had caused him bodily anguish, and came to rest upon the men who still moved aimlessly among the rain-sodden bales, or stood about in groups. "Anyway I'm the only one that has made a stab at it."

A sound behind him caused him to turn his head abruptly to see five Indians striding toward him along the rock-strewn trail. Brent wriggled painfully from his pack straps as the leader, a bigframed giant of a man, halted at his side and stared stolidly down at him. Brent gained his feet and thrust out his hand: "Hello, there, old Nick o' Time! Want a job? I've got a thousand pounds of junk back there on the beach, counting this piece, and all you gentlemen have got to do is to flip it up onto your backs and skip over the Chilkoot with it—it's a snap, and I'll pay you good wages. Do you speak English?"

The big Indian nodded gravely, "Me spik Eengliss. Me no nem Nickytam. Nem Kamish—W'ite man call Joe Pete."

Brent nodded: "All right, Joe Pete. Now how much are you and your gang going to charge me to pack this stuff up over the pass?"

The Indian regarded the sack of flour: "You chechako," he announced.

"Just as you say," grinned Brent, "I wouldn't take that from everybody, whatever it means, but if you'll get that stuff over the pass you can call me anything you want to."

"You Boston man."

"No—I'm from Tennessee. But we'll overlook even that. How much you pack it over the pass." Brent pointed to the flour and held up ten fingers.

The Indian turned to his followers and spoke to them in guttural jargon. They nodded assent, and he turned to Brent: "Top Chilkoot fi' cent poun'—hondre poun', fi' dolla. Lak Lindermann, three cent poun' mor'—hondre poun' all way, eight dolla."

"You're on!" agreed Brent, "Thousand pounds, eighty dollars—all the way."

The Indian nodded, and Brent produced a ten dollar gold piece which he handed to the man, indicated that he would get the rest when they reached Lake Lindermann.

The Indian motioned to the smallest of his followers and pointing to the sack of flour, mumbled some words of jargon, whereupon the man stepped to the pack, removed Brent's straps and producing straps of his own swung the burden to his back and started off at a brisk walk.

As Brent led the way back to the beach at the head of his Indians he turned more than once to glance back at the solitary packer, but as far as he could see him, the man continued to swing along at the same brisk pace at which he had started, whereat he conceived a sudden profound respect for his hirelings. "The littlest runt of the bunch has got me skinned a thousand miles," he muttered, "But I'll learn the trick. A year from now I'll hit the trail with any of 'em."

Back at the beach the Indians were surrounded by thirty-nine clamoring, howling men who pushed and jostled one another in a frenzied attempt to hire the packers.

"No, you don't!" cried Brent, "These men are working for me. When I'm through with them you can have them, and not before."

Ugly mutterings greeted the announcement. "Who the hell do you think you are?" "Divide 'em up!" "Give someone else a chanct." Others advanced upon the Indians and shook sheaves of bills under their noses, offering double and treble Brent's price. But the Indians paid no heed to the paper money, and inwardly Brent thanked the lucky star that guided him into exchanging all his money into gold before leaving Seattle.

Despite the fact that he was next to useless as a packer Brent was no weakling. Ignoring the mutterings he led the Indians to his outfit and while they affixed their straps, he faced the crowding men.

"Just stay where you are, boys," he said. "This stuff here is my stuff, and for the time being the ground it's on is my ground."

The man who had sneered at his attempt to pack the flour crowded close and quick as a flash, Brent's left fist caught him square on the point of the chin and he crashed backward among the legs of the others. Brent's voice never changed tone, nor by so much as the flutter of an eye lash did he betray any excitement. "Any man that crosses that line is going to find trouble—and find it damned quick."

"He's bluffin'," cried a thick voice from the rear of the crowd, "Let me up there. I'll show the damn dude!" A huge hard-rock man elbowed his way through the parting crowd, his whiskey-reddened eyes narrowed to slits. Three paces in front of Brent he halted abruptly and stared into the muzzle of the blue steel gun that had flashed into the engineer's hand.

"Come on," invited Brent, "If I'm bluffing I won't shoot. You're twice as big as I am. I wouldn't stand a show in the world in a rough-and-tumble. But, I'm not bluffing—and there won't be any rough-and-tumble."

For a full half minute the man stared into the unwavering muzzle of the gun.

"You would shoot a man, damn you!" he muttered as he backed slowly away. And every man in the crowd knew that he spoke the truth.

Three of the Indians had put their straps to a hundred pounds apiece and were already strung out on the trail. Brent turned to see Joe Pete regarding him with approval, and as he affixed his straps to a fifty pound pack, the big Indian stooped and swung an extra fifty pounds on top of the hundred already on his back and struck out after the others. At the end of a half-mile Brent was laboring heavily under his load, while Joe Pete had never for an instant slackened his pace. "What's he made of? Don't he ever rest?" thought Brent, as he struggled on. The blood was pounding in his ears, and his laboring lungs were sucking in the air in great gulps. At length his muscles refused to go another step, and he sagged to the ground and lay there sick and dizzy without energy enough left at his command to roll the pack from his shoulders. After what seemed an hour the pack was raised and the Indian who had gone ahead with his first pack swung the fifty pounds to his own shoulders and started off. Brent scrambled to his feet and followed.

A mile farther on they came to the others lying on the ground smoking and resting. The packs lay to one side, and Brent made mental note of the fact that these packers carried much of the weight upon a strap that looped over their foreheads, and that instead of making short hauls and then resting with their packs on they made long hauls and took long rests with their packs thrown off. They were at least three miles from the beach, and it was nearly an hour before they again took the trail. In the meantime Joe Pete had rigged a tump-line for Brent, and when he again took the trail he was surprised at the difference the shifting of part of the load to his head made in the ease with which he carried it.

Two miles farther on they came upon the sack of flour where the Indian had left it and Joe Pete indicated that this would be their first day's haul. Six hundred pounds of Brent's thousand had been moved five miles, and leaving the small Indian to make camp, the others, together with Brent returned for the remaining four hundred.

This time they were not molested by the men on the beach, many of whom they passed on the trail laboring along under packs which for the most part did not exceed fifty pounds weight.

On the return Brent insisted on packing his fifty pounds and much to his delight found that he was able to make the whole distance of three miles to the resting place. Joe Pete nodded grave approval of this feat and Brent, in whose veins flowed the bluest blood of the South, felt his heart swell with pride because he had won the approbation of this dark skinned packer of the North.

Into this rest camp came the erstwhile head barkeeper at Kelliher's, and to him Brent imparted the trail-lore he had picked up. Also he exchanged with him one hundred dollars in gold for a like amount in bills, and advised Joe Pete that when his present contract was finished this other would be a good man to work for.

Day after day they packed, and upon the last day of trail Brent made four miles under one hundred pounds with only one rest—much of the way through soft muskeg. And he repeated the performance in the afternoon. At Lindermann Joe Pete found an Indian who agreed to run Brent and his outfit down through the lakes and the river to Dawson in a huge freight canoe.

The first stampeders from the outside bought all available canoes and boats so that by the time of the big rush boats had to be built on the shore of the lake from timber cut green and whip-sawed into lumber on the spot. Also, the price of packing over the Chilkoot jumped from five cents a pound to ten, to twenty, to fifty, to seventy, and even a dollar, as men fought to get in before the freeze up—but that was a year and a half after Brent floated down the Yukon in his big birch canoe.