Alaska (86 page)

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Burns, who whistled for a henchman named Blacktooth Otto: 'Get out the horses and take these two for a ride.'

'Where to?'

'The start of White Pass.'

'They goin' over?'

'Shut up and get goin',' and soon Blacktooth appeared with three rather good horses.

In January 1897, Skagway had consisted of a few scattered houses; by July of that year, it was becoming an exploding tent city; and now, in March of 1898, it was a real Alaskan boomtown, with streets sometimes knee-deep in mud or ankle-deep in dust and with stumps two feet high in the middle; with timbered houses unpainted and often without windows; and with the inevitable false-front stores emblazoned with carefully and sometimes ornately lettered canvas signs proclaiming a score of different services.

In these days the name of the town, derived from Indian words meaning Home of the North Wind, was most often spelled Skaguay, but the variation in name did little to erase the monotony of the ugly place.

Blacktooth Otto was a big stupid man who talked more than his employer might have liked, for as they rode toward a rocky canyon which led toward the pass over the mountains leading into Canada, he first said what he had been directed to say: 'You look, huh? This much better than Chilkoot, huh? You come Skagway you got no trouble.'

But then he shifted to subjects which really fascinated him: 'Last week, five men shot in White Pass. Next corner, you look, huh?' And when Tom, riding ahead in the excitement of his first day ashore in Alaska, followed the trail around a nest of boulders, he saw dangling over the passage the swaying body of a hanged man.

'What did he do?' he asked, his voice close to shaking as he leaned away to avoid striking the corpse with his shoulder.

'Sheriff and those arrested him.'

Tom thought it strange that a legal arrest should have ended in a hanging along a trail, but Blacktooth Otto next revealed that 'the sheriff and those' had also been responsible for the five shootings, but Missy whispered the words which unlocked the mystery: 'Soapy Smith,' and as they rode deeper into the canyon their guide spoke of other incidents which could be attributed only to the nefarious Soapy.

Tom started to say 'Why doesn't somebody . . . ?' but Missy indicated that he should keep his mouth shut, and the boy dropped that question, asking Blacktooth: 'Why did the sheriff and those feel they had to shoot them?' and he explained: 'Mr. Smith looks after everything. Good man, huh?”

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Now the attention of the travelers was diverted from Mr. Smith's curious system of government to a horror much more immediate, because as they entered the first stages of the White Pass trail, which they had to concede was much lower than what the snowy Chilkoot seemed to be in the famous photographs they had seen, the bodies of horses, apparently worked to death among the boulders that strewed the pathway, began to appear, first one with a foreleg broken and a bullet between the eyes, then an emaciated beast that had fallen and found itself unable to rise, and had simply died where it fell.

Tom was sickened by the sight of these once noble animals come to such disastrous ends, but then, at the next corner, they saw a defile which was literally crammed with the fallen bodies of dead horses. He counted seven, their legs at wry angles, their necks draped grotesquely over rocks, and finally they came upon four that had perished one atop the other, and he became sick.

Now a different horror surfaced: a short distance beyond, Blacktooth halted his tour: 'More better we go back.' Two men, partners since leaving Oregon, had come to the end of their expedition and to the end of their horses, for two of their three grotesquely loaded animals had fallen, and each man was kicking and cursing the beast for which he was responsible, and as the men slowly began to realize that these animals would never again rise, they started screaming at them, as if the horses were at fault and not the lack of oats and the poorly stowed burdens and the rocky trail. It was a scene of madness, which revealed the horrors of the trail, and as one of the men whipped out a revolver to shoot one of the fallen horses, his partner, remembering what they had paid for the beasts and still hoping to salvage their services somehow, tried to protest: 'Not my horse, damn you!' whereupon his partner turned his gun away from the fallen horses and shot his companion right through the head.

'We go back, huh?' Otto said, not in fear and not much worried by the incident. Tom and Melissa followed obediently, and for the rest of their journey the boy would have no complaint about the tribulations of the Chilkoot, for he had seen the alternative.

WHEN THEY RETURNED TO THE ALACRITY

THAT EVEning they faced still another change of plan, for the captain revealed that Soapy Smith had come aboard the ship with a warning that if it dared sail to Dyea to unload passengers heading over the Chilkoot, when it was supposed to land 522

them at Skagway, where the Smith hoodlums could get a shot at them, he, Soapy, would direct his sheriff to prevent the ship from ever landing at Skagway again, and any crew members already ashore would be arrested and held in jail till Lynn Canal froze over. In furtherance of his ultimatum, Soapy posted his armed guard along the shore with orders to nab all sailors on shore leave.

Since it was obvious that Soapy held the commanding cards, the captain had acquiesced, announcing to the passengers who were still aboard: 'You must disembark here. Mr.

Smith will arrange for the transfer of your baggage to the shore and then over the hill to Dyea,' and when some of the men, unaware of Soapy's reputation, began to demur, the amiable dictator smiled, pardoned himself for intruding in this abrupt way, and explained: 'It's a matter of law and order.'

So next morning the Venns had to supervise the unloading of their three tons of gear and its laborious delivery across the sandy flats to the chaotic shore, where vast mounds of goods lay stacked just far enough inland to escape the tide. When they had their gear assembled, quite a distance from town and some nine miles from the sister port of Dyea, Buck told Missy and Tom: 'We're in real trouble tonight. An officer on ship warned us that if Soapy Smith's men can't trick you in town, they'll rob you here on the beach or along the trail.'

Afraid to leave their goods unguarded on the beach, Buck decided to form a mutual protection arrangement with other stranded travelers, and had started to approach a stranger with such a proposal when he caught Missy's frantic signals to desist.

Hurrying back to Missy and Tom, he learned that this was one of Smith's men sent to make just that kind of deal. 'If you'd gone along,' Missy said, 'he'd have steered us to some place where he could have knocked us down and stolen everything of value.'

So the Venns remained on the beach that night, guarding their goods and staying clear of the town where they would have been in greater danger. They were more fortunate than two brave miners with experience on the California gold fields, for when they slam-banged their way into town, willing to challenge anyone to molest them, two of Soapy's henchmen calmly shot each through the heart and left the bodies prone and bleeding in the dusty roadway, where they were ignored by passersby in the morning.

How could such blatant murder have been allowed? How could a boomtown clearly a part of the United States exist without law of any kind other than the smoking end of a revolver? Even the railroad boomtowns of Wyoming, the 523

cattle towns of Kansas, the gold towns of California, the fledgling oil towns of the Southwest had not paraded their lawlessness with such flagrant disregard for organized society; some attempt was always made to preserve orderly government, and an honest sheriff or a powerful clergyman could usually be found to lead the community to a more respectable existence.

Alaska was different because its heritage was different. In the Russian days the Slavic forebears of Soapy Smith said: 'St. Petersburg is far away and God is up in heaven.' When the Americans finally assumed power, there was that incredible thirty-year period when the new owners made no attempt to govern, when there were no codified laws or courts to enforce them. No people in the organized states and, least of all, the members of Congress, could visualize the raw anarchy in which Alaska, this latest and potentially most important addition to the Union, was allowed to rot like a melon at the end of a very long vine. Soapy Smith, this tinhorn Colorado gambler whose crimes at Skagway were far worse than the Venns knew about, was the specific creature of the American system of governing its colonies. If he and his henchmen were a hideous blot on the United States, the culprit was not Smith but the American Congress.

In the morning the Venns, with their goods and their money fortuitously intact, sought to hire two of Smith's draymen to haul their gear the nine miles across the low hills to Dyea, and this transaction could also have produced danger and the possibility of losing everything had not Blacktooth Otto, prowling the beach to see what he might promote, spotted Missy and Tom and recognized them as Soapy's friends. Running to town, he burst into the 317 Oyster Bar with the news: 'Mr. Smith, that lady, that boy, yesterday. They're on the beach.'

Commanding Blacktooth and another henchman to fetch horses and a dray, Smith walked slowly down to the beach, greeting citizens as he went and studying with careful eye the various improvements that had appeared in the growing town since his last inspection. He liked what he saw, but he liked even more that vast accumulation of goods on the flats. If four hundred and fifty stampeders had landed in recent days, and if each had brought a ton of goods, the amassed pile of wealth on the shore was almost incalculable, and Soapy intended siphoning off his fair share, say thirty percent of everything.

When he found the Venns he was exceptionally courteous to Missy, whom he admired, and fairly courteous to Buck. He offered them both whatever assistance they needed, and

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said: 'I do hope you'll be taking our White Pass and not that dreadful affair at Chilkoot.' Buck, almost trembling with apprehension over being so close to Smith and bewildered by the man's graciousness, said firmly but without the least hint of aggression: 'We've decided to try the Chilkoot.'

'You're making a bad mistake, my friend.' Then Tom blurted out: 'We saw those dead horses in your canyon,' and Soapy replied, with just the slightest touch of irritation: 'Horses are not meant for our canyon. Men have no trouble.'

He asked if they would care to take breakfast with him, prior to their march to Dyea, but Missy replied, as if she were still a stewardess on the Alacrity: 'You were far too kind yesterday,' and he bade them goodbye with a flourishing kiss of Missy's hand and a stern admonition to Blacktooth: 'Take special care of these good people.'

They arrived at Dyea, a town much smaller than Skagway but free from the attentions of Soapy Smith and his gang, before noon on 1 April 1898, and there took stock of their situation. 'We can thank God,' Buck said, 'that we escaped Soapy Smith. Only five hundred and fifty miles to go, and most of it a soft ride down the Yukon.'

But they were not wholly free of Soapy Smith, because his man, Blacktooth Otto, lingered as they talked, and when they finished, he surprised them: 'I'm supposed to haul you on to Finnegan's Point.' This was a spot five miles farther up the trail, and since one had to cross and recross the little river running down the middle of the footpath, the assistance would be invaluable.

'We'll go,' Missy said immediately, and when Buck questioned her wisdom, she said wisely: 'Anything to get the gear closer to the pass.'

But after they crossed the corduroy bridge that carried them into Finnegan's, a problem arose which had perplexed every newcomer: there was no hotel, no orderly place to store goods, and no police protection. 'Are we supposed just to dump our goods here?'

Buck asked, and Blacktooth said: 'Everyone else does.'

'Who guards them?'

'Nobody.'

'Don't thieves steal them?'

'They better not!' Blacktooth was unable to imagine his boss, Soapy Smith, as a thief, and he supposed that what happened on the trail out of Skagway was always the fault of some careless traveler. Saluting the Venns, he and his partner left the family on the trail, their little mountain of goods piled beside them.

'I'm not going to leave all this here without a guard,' Buck 525

vowed as he began to pitch their canvas tent, but a man who had made many trips along this difficult roadway advised against such action: 'Believe me, pardner, go back to Dyea and get a good night's sleep in a hotel while you have the chance,' and on his own he ran ahead and whistled for Blacktooth to turn around and carry these good people back to Dyea.

The Venns now faced a dilemma: a good bed and a hot meal versus the protection of their cache, and Buck made the decision: 'Sooner or later we'll have to be in one place, our goods in another,' and their adviser said: 'That's talking sense, pardner.

Look at all those other caches. That's how we do it.'

As they rode in comfort back to the hotel they could not avoid staring into the faces of gold seekers coming up the trail, and after a few such encounters, Missy could differentiate between them: 'This group coming next, they're on their first trip to Finnegan's. Bright eyes, looking this way and that, oohing and aahing over the snow-covered mountains. But look at these next three! They've been back and forth a dozen times. How can I tell? They look only at the ground to find the best place to step.'

Before depositing the Venns at the Ballard Hotel, Blacktooth Otto confided to Tom: 'You shoulda been in Skagway last night. Two men shot dead on the main street.'

'What did they do wrong?'

'It was dark. You couldn't see.'

Buck was up before dawn, goading his companions to hurry on to their cache, where a team of smiling Indians awaited them: 'We carry goods, Sheep Camp, five cents a pound.' With horror, Buck calculated the bill would be three hundred dollars for a distance of only eight miles, and from Sheep Camp to the summit would cost twice as much.