Youâve been wet before, he told himself. Captain Shepard was coughing, and looking even older than his sixty years.
Jason didnât like the sound of this Chilkoot Passâstraight up at the end. âHow much do the packers charge over the Chilkoot?â he asked Jack.
âThirty cents a pound. Weâre just sticking with them as far as they can get the canoes up the river. Maybe Thompson can pay, but the rest of us canât. Thatâd be $600 for one manâs outfit!â
âYouâre going to hump it over yourself?â
âThatâs my plan.â
It made Jason wonder what his brothers had done with their $600 of packing money. âAny idea what horse packing costs over on White Pass?â
âCanât say.â
He couldnât be asking Jack to guess which way his brothers had gone.
His brothers wouldnât have liked the sound of this straight-up Chilkoot any more than he did. Horses couldgo faster. Heâd done some cowboying last fall in Wyomingâhelped an old man pack a sheep camp out of the mountains. A packhorse carrying two hundred pounds could cover forty miles in a couple of days. Thatâs what would make sense to his brothers. Maybe they were still over in Skagway, trying to hire horses!
Jason reached into the canoe and pulled out his pack. âIâm going to try White Pass,â he told Jack.
Jack stopped wading and clapped him on the shoulder. âGood luck to you, Jason! Hope you find your Golden Fleece!â
Jason laughed. âI wouldnât be disappointed if my gold was the hard, shiny kind instead of a gold sheepskin.â
They shook hands. âThank you,â Jason said. âYou really helped me out. Hope we meet againâmaybe in Dawson City, when both of us have struck it rich. Whatâs your last name, so I can ask after you?â
âLondon.â
Jason turned and waded downstream, back to the confusion at the beach. More Indian canoes were starting up the river. He heard someone say that the Dyea River was navigable for five miles upstream. He was happy about that for Jack Londonâfewer miles to have to lug his ton of gear on his own back.
It was three miles over to Skagway, and it couldnât be walked. Fortunately there were scows plying back and forth, and he was able to pile onto one without forking over a dollar he didnât have. The walrus-mustached operator wasnât paying any attention. In the chaos of all these shouting people, the mud and the rain and the dogs shaking themselves in his face, the scow pilot looked like Alaskaâs version of Charon, sentenced to ferry people across the river to hell.
Skagwayâs beach was like Dyeaâs, only worse: piles of gear, stacks of hay and lumber, horses by the hundreds wandering untethered and knocking things over, dogs being whipped, men setting up tents and cooking meals on their Klondike stoves. A hundred yards out on the naked tidal flats, a strange contraption was mired in the mud amid heaps of provisions that had been lost to salt water. It was the two tandem bicycles spanned by the iron bars heâd seen in the Yakima âs hold. The bicycles hadnât even made it onto the beach.
Jason hopped and stepped through the black muck of Skagwayâs main streetâ BROADWAY , a flimsy sign proclaimed. The town was another anthill of activity, with saws and hammers going on all sides and a slowly moving stream of rushers and freight wagons choking the muddy street. Some Klondikers were leading packed horses and some were dragging dogs harnessed to sleds heaped high with gear. The procession passed through a line of thrown-together shacks and the frames of two-and even three-story hotels under construction. Jason counted four saloons, a drugstore in a tent, a blacksmith advertising five dollars a shoe, a restaurant with MEALS â$3 written across the seat of a hanging pair of ragged trousers. Tent sites were being offered at