CHAPTER TEN

Down the Chilkoot Chute to Victory

It seemed to Sandy that he had just closed his eyes when he felt rough hands on his shoulders, shaking him. “Time to go,” Charley’s voice whispered.

“What time is it?” he mumbled, raising himself on his elbows.

“Four o’clock,” Charley said. “Other fellers hitching up already.”

Sandy struggled out of his sleeping bag and sat on the edge of the cot, stretching. It was still dark, but when Charley opened the stove door to throw on another log, he could see that the cots that the two brothers had slept on were empty. Yawning, he raised his left foot and kicked the cot where Jerry was still sleeping soundly.

“Rise and shine!” he called to his friend.

They ate a hurried breakfast of hot cereal and scalding coffee, and by four-thirty they were on the trail again. The cold wind in their faces and the stinging spray kicked up by the dogs’ feet brought them fully awake before they had gone far.

When it began to get light, the boys got out of the sled and trotted along with Charley. They kept it up for a mile or so before Jerry developed a bad case of rubber legs and went down on his knees.

“I feel like a dope,” he said, as Sandy helped him back into the sled. “Here we are, a couple of kids, puffing like steam engines, and an old guy like Charley isn’t breathing any harder than if he had run up a flight of stairs.”

“And we’re in pretty good condition from being in school athletics. Can you imagine how some of the other guys in school would make out?” Sandy asked. “The guys who hop in the family car to go down to the corner newsstand and sneak smokes between every class?”

“Yeah,” Jerry agreed ruefully. “The kids in the States are getting soft, there’s no doubt about it.”

“My Uncle Russ always says you should take at least as much pride in your body as you do in your home. Most people wouldn’t live in sloppy, rundown houses, but a lot of them don’t care if they spend their lives in sloppy, rundown bodies.”

Jerry slapped his middle irritably. “Let me tell you, I’m going to work on this flab when I get home. Old Charley here has taught me a lesson. You miss a lot of the fun of life if you’re out of shape.”

Sandy kept up with Charley for another mile, then he got back into the sled. He noticed that the Indian held to a pattern: he would run along for a half hour or so and then hitch a ride on the sled for ten minutes. It seemed as if he could go on like that endlessly and tirelessly.

They stopped at mid-morning to give the dogs a rest and brew some strong Indian tea. Charley wouldn’t drink the coffee in the thermos. “Coffee no good. You ever see huskies drink coffee?” The boys had to admit that they never had. “Indian tea like medicine. Make you strong and healthy. Dogs know.” To demonstrate, he poured a little into a tin plate for Titan, and the big lead dog lapped it up promptly.

“It sure doesn’t look as if we’re ever going to catch those guys ahead of us, Charley,” Sandy commented, dropping a handful of snow into his cup to cool it.

Charley looked down the trail behind them. “They behind us now. Last hill we pass, we go around the long way, maybe mile longer. They go through valley.”

Jerry blinked. “If we came the long way, how come we’re ahead of them?”

The Indian shrugged. “That valley like pocket after big snow. Drifts three, four feet deep. They have plenty trouble getting through.”

Sandy grinned. “What a sly old fox you are, Charley.”

They were traveling high in the coastal mountains of British Columbia now, moving through the Chilkoot Pass. Just before noon, they arrived at a customs check point.

“You’re the first team through,” the mounted policeman who waved them past shouted.

Abruptly, the trail appeared to end at the edge of a cliff. Charley reined the team in and motioned for the boys to step to the rim of the drop-off. Here they saw that, in reality, the trail continued on down a steep incline that resembled the big drop on a roller coaster. For almost 1,200 feet it fell away at a 45-degree angle into the coastal valley below. It was a magnificent spectacle.

Jerry gulped hard. “We’re not going down _that_ in a sled, are we?”

Tagish Charley nodded curtly. “Chilkoot Chute. We take dogs off first. They follow us down.” He walked back and began to remove Black Titan’s harness.

Sandy grinned at Jerry. “You ever been on a bobsled?” Jerry shook his head mutely. “Well, after this it’ll be a cinch.”

When the dogs were unhitched, the boys climbed aboard the sled, and Charley pushed it to the edge of the chute. It teetered briefly, then nosed down the incline.

“Alaska next stop!” Sandy yelled as they picked up speed. A rush of air choked the words off in his mouth, and his stomach rose up in his rib cage with a sickening sensation that was ten times worse than he had ever experienced in an elevator.

Faster and faster the sled shot down the slope, swaying from side to side, as Charley, riding the tail, shifted his weight skillfully to steer it. Behind it the dogs skidded and scrambled down the chute, barking and yelping excitedly. The sled reached the bottom and glided down the trail almost half a mile before it came to a halt.

“What a ride!” Jerry exclaimed.

“We must have skidded halfway to Skagway,” Sandy said. He got out of the sled and looked back at the Chilkoot Chute. “Gee, it doesn’t look so bad from here, but when you’re on it, you’d swear it was a perpendicular wall.”

The dogs finally caught up and Charley hitched them to the sled again. “We win now easy,” he said matter-of-factly.

As they approached Skagway, they passed cabins, farms and other signs of civilization. A group of children playing in one yard gave them a lusty cheer and chased after the sled. Farther along, other children tagged on to the caravan along with three dogs.

Then, up ahead on the outskirts of the city, they saw a big crowd of people. “Finish line,” Charley informed them.

When the sled came into view, a tremendous roar went up and continued unabated as they shot past a man waving a flag. The next thing Sandy knew, they were engulfed by a sea of well-wishers, and men were pounding him on the back so enthusiastically that it took his breath away. At last he spied his father and Professor Crowell fighting their way through the throng.

“Dad!” he called out happily. “We made it.”

Dr. Steele reached the boys and threw an arm around each of them. “Congratulations! This was quite a race, I hear.”

“Charley is the guy who rates the congratulations,” Sandy answered.

Professor Crowell pounded Tagish Charley on the back ecstatically. “I’m the proudest and happiest man in the world. I haven’t felt like this since my twin girls were born. Thank you, Charley.”

Charley knelt down and put his arms around Black Titan, who was accepting praise and pats from all quarters with the dignified reserve of a true champion. “Dogs win the race. Charley just come along for ride.”

Later, back at the hotel, after a warm bath and a good supper, the boys recounted the adventures they had had during the race.

“Bless my soul,” Professor Crowell said to Jerry, “now you really have an idea of the rigorous life that the sourdoughs led. Does it still sound appealing to you?”

Jerry forked the last piece of homemade apple pie from his plate. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just a city boy at heart, sir,” he declared emphatically.

“How was your visit to Fairbanks?” Sandy asked his father.

“We had a fine time,” Dr. Steele said. “I gathered some priceless material for the pamphlet I’m preparing on the Pleistocene Era.” He smiled. “But promise you won’t tell Quiz Taylor, Sandy.”

Sandy laughed. “I know what you mean, Dad. My solemn word, I won’t mention it.”

“What’s on the agenda now, Dr. Steele?” Jerry inquired. “Are we going home?”

“Not for another few days, Jerry,” Dr. Steele said. “The professor and I want to fly up to Valdez and look over some old mining sites.”

“Where’s Valdez?” Jerry asked.

“The most northerly ice-free port in Alaska. It used to be the shipping point for copper ore until the Kennecott mines closed down in 1938. We had planned an exciting outing for you fellows—” he hesitated and looked wryly at Jerry—“but inasmuch as Jerry says he’s a city boy at heart, well, maybe we’d better forget it.”

“What kind of an outing, Dad?” Sandy asked.

Dr. Steele lit his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “We won’t be using the plane for several days, and we thought you might like to visit Kodiak Island. One of the instructors from the university will be spending a week there, hunting bear, and he said you boys would be welcome to join him.” He winked at Sandy. “But I’m not sure your city friend here would be up to it.”

“That’s all right,” Sandy said. “Jerry can stay here at the hotel until we come back.”

“Not on your life!” Jerry snorted. “I want to take one of those bearskins back to my mom.”

Tagish Charley looked up from his plate solemnly. “Kodiak bear plenty bad killer. Maybe he take your skin back to his mamma.”

Everyone except Charley laughed.

The next morning they boarded the big Norseman plane and headed northwest up the coast for Valdez. As they flew over the glacier-ribbed mountains, the boys were awed by the wild beauty of the country beneath them.

“It’s so primitive,” Sandy remarked. “I don’t think man will ever tame it.”

“Yes, he will,” Dr. Steele said. “As surely as he tamed the American West. We just didn’t pay much attention to it until after World War Two.”

“A land of untold riches,” Lou Mayer mused. “Gold, copper, silver, coal, lead, tin, mercury, platinum—Lord knows what else.” He looked over meaningfully at Dr. Steele.

“Things are certainly moving fast,” Dr. Steele went on, a little too quickly, Sandy thought. “Oh, yes, Son, in another fifty years Alaska will be as civilized as California.”

“But not nearly so warm,” Lou Mayer added.

Professor Crowell smiled. “I don’t know, I like our northern winters. They make for greater intimacy among families and friends. When the temperature is fifty below zero and the snow is piled up to your window sills, there is literally no place like home. You discover that being together in front of a warm fireplace can be just as enjoyable as running off to the theater, bridge clubs, night clubs, bowling alleys and all your so-called civilized diversions. The trouble with so many young people these days is that they try too hard to have fun.”

Jerry scratched his head thoughtfully. “Professor, you know, you’re right. I can’t think of any time in my life when I’ve had more fun than I did the Christmas Eve we spent at that little weather station.”

Dr. Steele took out a small wallet calendar and consulted it. “Which reminds me that tonight is New Year’s Eve.”

“Isn’t it funny how you keep forgetting about the holidays up here?” Sandy said. “I guess they see the old year out pretty quietly. Not like the States.”

Professor Crowell’s eyes twinkled through his glasses. “Don’t bet on it, son. Some of the New Year’s parties I’ve been to in the North make your Stateside celebrations seem like pink teas. In the old days, I remember some shindigs that went on continuously from Christmas right through New Year’s.” He smiled nostalgically. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them were still going on.”

“But we’ll be spending our New Year’s on Kodiak,” Jerry reminded them. “I was looking at it on the map. It’s just a dinky little island.”

“Not so dinky,” Dr. Steele said. “It’s about a hundred miles long, you know. And I think you’ll find that its citizens have just as much holiday spirit as the people in the States.”

“Do many people live on Kodiak?” Sandy asked.

“It’s not too heavily populated,” Dr. Steele admitted. “Once it was the center of the Alaskan fur trade. The Russians settled in the town of Kodiak in 1784, and it wasn’t until much later that they moved their headquarters to the mainland.

“Nowadays it’s hard to make a living on Kodiak. I think the only major occupation is salmon fishing. There’s rich farming land at the south end of the island, but the natives have always had difficulty raising sheep and cattle. Too many hungry bears around.”

Jerry squinted down the barrel of an imaginary rifle. “Well, there’ll be a few less after we get there, eh, Sandy boy?”

Tagish Charley, who had been staring moodily out of the window, turned his quizzical black eyes on Jerry. “You shoot big as you talk, everything be fine.”

“I think you better go along and take care of these fellows, Charley,” the professor suggested.

“That would be great,” Sandy said. “How about it?”

Charley appeared to consider the proposition for a moment, then looked gravely at Sandy from beneath his black eyebrows. “Charley like to go to Kodiak. But better not. I stay and look out for professor.”