III

"Oh, look at this queer Esquimaux!His nose is too pudgy to blaux.His odors are awful;To tell them unlawful.The thought of them fills me with waux."

One day I was getting dinner in my tent and the usual company of natives watching the performance, when there came along a couple of men who had just landed and who, evidently, had never seen an Eskimo before. I overheard their conversation.

"Say, Jim," said one, "just look there. Did you ever see the like?" (A pause.) "Say, do you think them things has souls?"

"We-e-ll," drawled Jim, "I reckon they must have. They're human bein's. But I'll tell you this: If they do, they've all got to go to heaven, sure; for the devil'd never have them around."

Now let me tell you a sequel: Two years afterwards I was a Commissioner from the newly organized Presbytery of Yukon to the General Assembly, which met at Philadelphia. My fellow Commissioner from the Presbytery—the elder who sat by my side—was Peter Koonooya, an Eskimo elder from Ukeavik Church, Point Barrow. Ten years earlier, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, then Superintendent of Education for Alaska, had visited that northernmost point of the Continent and had started a school and mission. Peter Koonooya was one of the fruits. He was a native of extraordinary intelligence, a man of property, owning a fleet of whalingoomiaks. He could read, write and talk English, was a constant student of the Bible, and was considered by the Presbytery of sufficient intelligence and piety to represent us in the supreme Council of the Church.

I am quite certain that Peter always voted exactly right on all questions which were up before that Assembly; because he watched me very closely and voted as Idid.

I was able, then, and in after years, to do these gentle, good-natured natives some good, and other Christian teachers have done much more for them. So it comes about that the condition of the Alaska Eskimo, under the influence of the various Christian missions and schools among them, as compared with that of their brothers and sisters of the same race across Bering Strait in Asia, for whom nothing in a Christian way has been done, is as day to night. They are pliable metal, and the Anvil of the Northwest is shaping them into vessels and implements of usefulness and honor.

The Odoriferous but Interesting Eskimo

Two of Dr. Young's Parishioners

BUNCH-GRASS BILL

AlthoughI had often met him on the streets of Dawson in '98, I had not come into hand-shaking contact with Bunch-grass Bill until my first week at Nome. Of all the social orders whose members gathered together in clubs for humane work during the epidemic of typhoid fever, the first to organize, besides being the strongest and most active, was the Odd Fellows' Club. It was already organized when I arrived and, as I belonged to the order, I was present at the second meeting. The young lawyer who was president of the Club, taking me around the little circle of earnest men, brought me to a black-haired, black-eyed, sturdily-built and singularly handsome young Irishman by the name of Billy Murtagh.

"Billy owns and runs the 'Beach Saloon,' and goes by the name of Bunch-grass Bill," introduced our president. "I don't knowhow he got into the Odd Fellows, under rules which bar saloon-keepers and bad men. But he's in, and we'll not turn him out of the Club, at least so long as this distress continues."

Bill made no reply to this rather uncomplimentary introduction, but shook hands with Irish heartiness and looked at me with level gaze. "I've seen you in my saloon at Dawson," he said.

The others laughed, and the president chided, "You oughtn't to give a preacher away like that, Bill."

Taking a closer look at the young man, a scene at Dawson a year earlier flashed upon me. I was collecting money to pay the passage on the steamboat bound down the Yukon of some poor fellows who were broken and sick, and who must go "outside" or die. I made the round of the saloons and gambling halls, and going into one of these places was curtly refused by one of the partners. The other, who was this young man, came up and quietly said to the cashier, "Weigh him out two ounces ($32.00)."

"Oh, I remember you now, and your two ounces," I said to Bill; and to the others, "I can vouch for his knowing the SecondDegree of the order, at least."

I was made chairman of the Relief Committee of the Club, and found work a-plenty cut out for me. Although the members of the Club did not look with indifference upon any case of distress, yet its prime object was to look up and help the sick Odd Fellows. I prepared a bulletin and tacked it up in the stores and saloons, directing that any cases of distress among the members of the order should be reported to the Committee. As the typhoid epidemic increased in virulence, the Club found its hands full.

A day or two after this first meeting, I was passing Bill's saloon when he called me in.

"I've just heard of a sick man," he reported, "and I think he's an Odd Fellow." Then, after a pause, he added, "But if he isn't that doesn't make a —— bit of difference."

He led the way along the beach for half a mile or more, to an isolated tent, where we found the typhoid case. Billy stayed until he made sure that the man was well cared for in the charge of friends and a good physician. Then he took me aside and slipped a twenty-dollar gold piece into myhand. "Use that for him," he directed.

The next day I had to raise a hundred and fifty dollars to send an old miner who was poor and crippled "outside." I marched at once to the "Beach Saloon." "Billy," I said, "this old-timer has blown in all his dust for booze; and it's up to you who have got it from him to take care of him now."

"That's right," he promptly answered. "There's ten saloons; what would be my share?"

"An ounce," I replied, passing him the paper.

He weighed out the gold dust. "Wait a while before going on. I'll pass the word down the line," he said.

Half an hour afterwards I stopped again at his door. "They're all ready," reported Bill. "If any of them guys don't come across, just tell me."

They all "came across," and thereafter, until I left Nome, all the saloon-keepers met every demand I made upon them without question. When a man had been impoverished or made sick through drink I went to the saloons,only, for his relief. In other cases I made a general canvass.When collecting money for church purposes I went to everybody,exceptthe saloon-keepers and their following.

The day before my second meeting with the Odd Fellows' Club—a rainy, blustering day—I came to Bunch-grass Bill with a greater demand.

"It is you I want this time, Billy, not just your money," I said. "There is a sick Odd Fellow in a tent almost a mile from here. He is alone and lying in a puddle of water. Get your gum-boots and find three or four other stout men and come with me."

Bill agreed at once, found a man to tend his bar, secured a squad of strong and willing men, a stretcher from the army post and a good physician and went with me on the errand of mercy. He worked all day in the mud and rain. He carried the sick man to the warehouse which we had turned into a temporary hospital, visited all the stores in an attempt to find mattresses, and, failing in that, bought eight large reindeer skins and piled them on the floor for a bed, bought underwear, dry blankets and other comforts for the sick man, and laid in a supply of delicacies for the use of the hospital. In all, he spent over fifty dollars and a whole dayof strenuous work upon the case.

When I asked him at dusk if he were not tired he laughed: "Never had a better time in all my life."

That night was the regular weekly meeting of the Club. I made my report, which was quite long, and mentioned many distressing cases, showing an alarming increase of the typhoid. Then I asked for a rotary relief committee of three to be chosen at every other meeting, and a permanent relief committee of two.

"I've found the biggest-hearted man in all Alaska," I said. "His business and mine are not quite the same. In fact I have been all my life fighting saloons and saloon-keepers, and I expect to keep on fighting them until I die. But this man's heart of love for his fellow-men fights his business harder than I can."

Then I related some of the things Billy had done during the past week, and ended my speech by asking that he be put on the permanent relief committee with me. "We two will find the sick and cut out the work for the rest of you," I promised.

The Club applauded, much to the confusion of Bill, who tried his best to shrink outof sight. One of the boys reported next morning.

"Say, Doctor," he began, "you sure scared Bunch-grass Bill near to death last night. Tickled, too. He asked us all to come in and have one on him. He doesn't know anything else to do when he feels good. 'That's a new one on me,' he said. 'I never had anything to do with a preacher in my life. Didn't like 'em. Kept shy of 'em. But if Father Young sees fit to come into my saloon—and he's in it every day—I'll go with him wherever he wants me to go—even if it's to his church.'"

That touched me, for I could sense something of the sacrifice it would involve. It would be far easier for Bill to start on a three-thousand-mile winter mush on snow-shoes, over unbroken trails, than to step inside of a Protestant meeting-house.

From that time on, Bill was my right hand. As the number of typhoid victims increased, he made his saloon an intelligence office, finding and reporting to me all new cases. The example of the Odd Fellows stimulated the various social orders represented in the camp—the Masons, Knights of Pythias, Elks, Eagles, and others—to alike humane work; and Bill looked up their sick members and reported to their committees. He saw that all the sick had medical attention, and guaranteed the payment of scores of doctor's bills. Each steamboat that left Nome for the "outside" carried a number of convalescents and broken-down and moneyless men, and funds had to be raised for their passage. Bill headed nearly all of these subscription lists, as well as those for fitting up the four temporary hospitals we opened and filled with sick men.

Being for over six weeks the only clergyman in that whole region, I conducted all the funerals. One week I had eleven—all typhoid cases. Bill attended them all, looking after the digging of the graves and making coffins, and often acting as undertaker.

Now, I am not setting up my saloon friend as a saint. Quite the contrary. I suppose he had been guilty of every crime mentioned in the Decalogue. He had never known any home life, but had knocked about from camp to camp of the western frontiers ever since boyhood. His ideas of morality, therefore, were very vague. He was said to have been "run out" of several towns in Montana and Idaho. He had a violent temperand, as the phrase went, was "quick on the trigger." Rumor said that he had the blood of more than one man on his hands; although it was claimed, in every case, that he had not sought the quarrel. He sold whiskey and drank it, gambled and swore habitually without a thought of any of these things being wrong. He was simply an uncultured, ignorant, rough-and-ready, Irish-American backwoodsman.

But to those of us in the raw camp of Nome who witnessed Bill's untiring kindness and self-sacrifice during those weeks of distress, his faults faded into the background behind the light of his many good deeds. St. Peter says, "Charity covers a multitude of sins," and surely Bill's charity "abounded" overwhelmingly, putting out of sight much of the evil in his life.

As for me, I shall always think of him as one of the most loyal, devoted friends I ever had, and the saver of my life. For after seven weeks of most strenuous and wearing work, I was suddenly stricken down with the typhoid myself. The blow came when I was fairly drowned in the multitude of my duties. I was raising the money to send out on the steamboat four or five men whomust leave the country or die—poor fellows whose vitality was so low that they could not combat the cold and storms of a Nome winter. I was also preparing another warehouse-hospital. So great was the demand for space for the care of the sick that I had felt compelled to take into my own ten-by-twelve tent three men sick with the disease. So crowded was the tent that I had to sleep under the bed of one of them. Billy Murtagh and others of the Odd Fellows' Club warned me against thus exposing myself to the infection, but there seemed to be no other way. Billy brought me all his remaining Apollinaris water that I might not have to drink the impure seepage of the tundra. Some of the brothers carried me pails of water from the one well which had been recently put down.

While I was in the midst of the canvass for funds, and in the bustle of preparation for the departure of the last steamboats, I had a terrific headache for several days. I was besieged day and night by friends of sick men for places to put the stricken ones where they could be cared for. The life of a number of these men seemed to depend on my keeping on my feet. I had notimeto be sick. I kept away from Billy and my other friends, for fear they might forcibly interfere.

But one of the Odd Fellows saw me as I was coming out of a store with a subscription paper in my hand. He looked at me for a moment and hurried to the "Beach Saloon."

"Bill," he shouted, "get a doctor, quick, and go to the parson. I saw him just now staggering along with his face as red as fire and his hand to his head. He's got the fever, sure."

Billy came running down the beach with Dr. Davy at his heels and caught me as I was entering my tent. Without ceremony they picked up the sick man who was in my cot and carried him to another tent near by. Then, in spite of my protests, they undressed me and laid me in my blankets. I was half delirious and stubborn. I fought them.

"This is all nonsense, Doctor," I protested. "I have only a headache. There is no time to fool away. These men must go out on this steamboat, and the money is not raised. Let me alone."

Dr. Davy finished his examination and turned to Bunch-grass Bill. "He has abad case of typhoid," was his verdict, "and ought to have been in bed three or four days ago. Find a house to put him in and a woman to nurse him."

Bill had one of the softest and sweetest voices I ever heard. He came to me and laid his cool hand on my forehead. "Don't you worry about those men, Father," he said gently. "I'll attend to that. Now who do you want to nurse you?"

"Mrs. Perrigo," I replied. "She has just built a new cabin. I helped her with it. Her husband is recovering from the fever."

Soon the good woman was in my tent, eager to serve. I was carried through a driving snow-storm to her cabin. It was a rude affair built of rough boards set upright and battened with narrow, half-inch strips. A single thickness of building-paper poorly supplemented the inch boards. But cold and uncomfortable as it was, it was the only available shelter. I had them bring my tent and make a storm-shed of it in front of the door. There, for more than two months, I was to lie helpless.

My friends told me afterwards of the consternation that my illness caused. I was chairman of all the general relief committees—thoseof the town council, the citizens, the mission, the Odd Fellows. That the leader should thus be laid aside seemed a greater calamity than was actually the case. For Mr. Wirt of the Congregational Church arrived with lumber to erect a hospital, and Raymond Robins, a young man of great earnestness and talent, who has since arisen to national prominence, came with him to help in Christian work.

The night after I was taken to the Perrigo cabin, there was a meeting of the Odd Fellows' Club. Billy Murtagh was present and made his first public speech. As my illness and the general situation was discussed he rose to his feet, the tears streaming down his face. He seemed unconscious of them—or, at least, unashamed.

"Fellers," he faltered, "I'm hard hit. This gets me where I live. Now I'll tell you this: you fellers can look after the other sick folks, and call on me when you need any money. But I want you to leave Father Young to me. I've adopted him. He's my father. All I've got is his. If there's anything in this camp he needs, he's goin' to have it."

Ah, that long, desperate fight for life! The stunning pain in my head, the high fever, the delirium, the nervous terror, the deadly weakness, the emaciation, the chills and nausea! I was badly handicapped in my fight. The two months of wearing work and strain which preceded my illness had exhausted me, body and mind—there was no vital reserve to draw upon.

I was in a little, cold shanty, twelve feet square, crowded and unhealthy. Two people besides myself must live in that tiny room—sleep there, cook there. The savage arctic winter raged against us, howling his vengeance upon our impudence in thus braving him, unprepared. He made every nail-head inside the house a knob of frost. When my blankets, damp with the steam of cooking, touched the wall, he clamped them so tight one must tear the fabric in pulling it free. He made my clothing, stowed under the cot, a solid lump of ice. He asphyxiated us with foul gases when the door was closed, and filled the room instantly with fine snow from the condensation of the moisture when it was opened. He charged constantly upon the thin shell of the house with his high October and November winds, shaking it wildly and threatening to bowl itover. He drove, in horizontal sheets, the fine, flour-like snow, shooting it through batten-crevice, door-crack and keyhole; and, finding myriad small apertures in the shake roof, sifted it down upon my face. He piled it in fantastic whirls around the house, selecting the side on which our one small window was, to bank it highest, so that he might shut out our light. He sent the red spirit in the thermometer tube down, down, down—ten below zero, twenty, thirty when it stormed, and forty, fifty, sixty below when it was still, and the black death-mist brooded over the icy wastes and men breathed ice-splinters instead of air.

The fuel supply for the Nome camp was very poor and scanty. Men were digging old, sodden logs of driftwood out of the snow, and hauling this sorry fire-wood twenty miles by hand. Coal was scarce and sold by the ton for $150.00, or by the bucket for ten cents a pound.

Having had experience with typhoid epidemics and other sicknesses in the Klondike Stampede, I had laid in a good supply of nice foods for the sick, such as malted milk, the best brands of condensed milk, tapioca, farina, and other delicacies; but allof these had been given away before my own illness, and there was a scarcity of such articles in the stores.

But my friends, women and men,—indeed, everybody in the camp seemed interested in me and anxious to do something for me—arose to meet all these emergencies and "ministered to mine infirmities." The Odd Fellows supplemented the efforts of the convalescent, but still shaky Perrigo, and cut the wind-packed snow into bricks and built it around the house, until it looked like a veritable Eskimo igloo. It was much warmer after this was done.

The doctors at Nome all prescribed a diet of milk and whiskey for their fever patients. Upon the news of my illness circulating in the camp a dozen bottles of different brands were at once sent to me. Billy came, examined, smelled at, and tasted these liquors, with the air of an expert. Then he bundled all the bottles into a gunny sack and carried them away, saying, "He's not going to have any of this dope. I've got some of the pure stuff, made in Ireland." And he brought me an ample supply for all my needs, and a gallon of pure alcohol for sponge-baths.

The Odd Fellows organized wood-cutting "bees" for my benefit, and daily carried water from the well for Mrs. Perrigo's use. The women collected food and milk from their own stores and those of others, and brought them to me. The fellowship of the wilderness, the finest in the world, had its full exercise for my benefit there at Nome. I doubt if there was a person in all that great camp who would not have given me cheerfully his last can of milk.

As the fever progressed and my condition grew more serious, the daily visitors were restricted to two—Mrs. Strong and Bunch-grass Bill. The lady looked after matters of business, my letters, and information about other sick people. Billy, with his soft, low voice and gentle manner, hovered over me, sitting for hours at my bedside, lifting me in his two big hands with infinite care and deftness. Never did son care for father with more tender solicitude and fuller devotion than did this Irish Catholic saloon-keeper, this "bad man" of the western frontier, for me—a Protestant preacher.

There were many malamute dogs at Nome, great, beautiful, wolf-like beasts, and the "malamute chorus" was much in evidencein the late hours of the night. One, in particular, which was tied up not far from Perrigo's cabin, tuned up regularly every morning at three o'clock with his high-pitched tremolo, waking every dog within a mile, until all were howling, and keeping it up till daylight. There was no sleep possible for me while this concert was in progress, and I used to lie awake for hours, waiting fearfully for the leader to begin, and to cower in my robes with nervous chills coursing down my spine at every renewal of the long-drawn cadence, "Oo-o-o-o-o, oo-o-o-o-o, ow, ow, ow, ow."

My fever would always rise with the commencement of this discordant chorus and increase as long as it continued, and the doctor on his morning visit would find me exhausted and trembling. The words of Clarence would chase each other through my brain:

"With that, methought, a legion of foul fiendsEnviron'd me, and howled in mine earsSuch hideous cries, that, with the very noiseI trembling wak'd, and, for a season afterCould not believe but what I was in hell."

Mrs. Perrigo told Billy of the nuisance. He stayed up that night until the leading canine musician shrieked his solo to the moon. He followed up the sound until he found the dog, roused the grumbling owner, paid the high price asked for the animal, led him down the beach half a mile, and shot him.

An errand of an opposite character also fell to Billy's lot. The barracks which housed a squadron of United States soldiers was less than a block from the cabin in which I lay. Every night at eleven o'clock a bugle of remarkable sweetness and expression would blow "Taps." I would listen for the soothing melody, and when it would sound I would turn over in my robe and obey its command, "Go-o-o to sle-e-ep."

Lieutenant Craig, the commander of the post, ordered the discontinuance of "Taps," thinking it would disturb me and the other sick people. That night I waited, as usual, for the "good-night" bugle, and when it did not sound I grew anxious and distraught. I thought my watch was wrong or the bugler must be sick. I grew excited, restless and feverish, and passed a sleepless night, missing my accustomed lullaby. We told Billy; he went to see the Lieutenant, and the nextnight the lovely, soothing phrase sounded forth on the still night air, and I slept.

Taps.Listen

Taps.

Another cause of nervousness and anxiety arose, requiring the efforts of both Mrs. Strong and Billy Murtagh to solve the difficulty. I was paying my nurse, Mrs. Perrigo, five dollars a day, which was almost all she and her husband had to live on. They had been eating for a year and a half a food outfit designed for only a single season, and there was but little of it left. Mr. Perrigo, who was a Yankee tintype-picture peddler and knew no other trade, had tried his best to be a gold-miner; but, in common with the rest of the forlorn "Kobuckers," had made nothing at all. His wife, who had been a bookkeeper in Boston, valiantly took up the trades of waitress, washerwoman and cook in the Arctic wilderness, but there was but little money in that disappointed crowd. Almost immediately after landing on the "golden sands"of Nome in August Mr. Perrigo was stricken with the fever. With the fearful prices that prevailed, my five dollars a day was little enough to feed them and meet the monthly payments on their house.

I had accumulated $125.00—mostly wedding fees—when I was taken sick. It melted away like a spoonful of sugar in a cup of hot coffee. Every Monday I must have thirty-five dollars for my faithful nurse. I placed in Mrs. Strong's hands for sale my Parker shotgun, my typewriter, my gold-scales, my extra overcoat, all gifts from friends. She got good prices for them, and for the few articles I could spare from my food supply—but still the phantom weekly payment menaced me. When I closed my eyes the figures—$35.00—big and lurid—stared at me, and in my delirious dreams became red goblins, mocking me.

A splendid woman, member of the church which assumed my salary, had given me two beautiful wolf robes. I was lying in the heavier one. I delivered the other to Mrs. Strong. "Sell it for me," I requested. "You ought to get fifty or sixty dollars for it."

A week passed—then another. Mrs. Strong reported she "was holding the robe for a higher price." The crisis I had dreaded had arrived. My money was gone. I had none to meet next Monday's payment.

"Sell the robe for what it will bring," I directed Mrs. Strong. "I must have the money."

"I'll sell it on Saturday," she promised.

Monday morning Mrs. Strong marched in with a large canvas money-bag in her hand. With Mrs. Perrigo's assistance she counted out the money, which was mostly in silver coins. Then she wrote in large figures, "$158.50," and pinned the paper on the wall by my head.

"Where on earth did you get that money?" I cried.

"Why, for the robe, of course."

"You never got all that for it."

"Yes, I did," she affirmed.

Then the truth dawned upon me. "Mrs. Strong!" I exclaimed, "you raffled the robe!"

"Yes," she laughed. "What are you going to do about it?"

Then she explained. Finding it impossible to get a fair price for the fur blanketshe and Bunch-grass Bill had laid their heads together. They knew that I would not consent to a raffle, so they kept the matter quiet. Bill displayed the robe in front of his saloon. Shares were offered at fifty cents each. My lady friends of the mission sold tickets. Bill bought fifty and others of my friends did almost as well. Their purpose if they won the robe was to give it back to me.

What could I do? To rebuke their kindly deception would be ungracious indeed. With brimming eyes I thanked my friends, and Mrs. Perrigo got her money.

But the greatest of Bunch-grass Bill's many acts of kindness towards me remains to be told. As Dr. Davy had said from the first, mine was "a bad case." I had seven and a half weeks of high fever before it broke, whereas the usual limit of fever was three weeks. I reached the extreme of emaciation and weakness. I could hardly lift my hand. When they bundled me in a blanket like a baby and hung me on the hook of a big steelyard I weighed sixty pounds! I was long in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and reached its utmost boundary, until the very waters of the dark riverlapped my feet.

"Well, Bill," said Dr. Davy with a sigh, as he was returning one morning from his call upon me, and stopped, as was his custom, to report to the "Beach Saloon," "I'm afraid it's about over. I don't think Dr. Young can last much longer. He can retain nothing on his stomach. We've tried all the brands of condensed milk in the camp to no avail. Everything comes up the instant it is swallowed. There are many internal complications, and he may go off any hour in one of those deathly convulsive chills."

"Big Wilbur," who reported the scene to me afterwards, said that Bill's face "went white as chalk, and then flushed red as fire." He jumped at the doctor as though he were going to assault him.

"By God," he cried, "he's not goin' to die. We'll not let him, Doc. See here: When I had the fever at Dawson, what saved me was cow's milk. Now, there's a cow here. You come with me, and we'll go see her."

"That cow," explained Wilbur, "was a wonderful animal. Her owner sold twenty gallons of milk a day from her, and she didn't look as if she gave one. Bill knew theowner was doping the milk with condensed milk and corn-starch and water and other stuff. So he strapped on his two big guns. He's great for bluff, is Bill. Doc. and I went along to see the fun. We found the owner in the stable 'tending to his cow. Bill didn't beat around the bush any.

"'You look here' he said. 'Your cow's givin' too darned much milk. Now this man I want it for is my father, an' he's got enough microbes in him already. Doc. here, analyzed your milk; didn't you, Doc?' (Doc. Davy was game, and nodded.) 'He says you put tundra water and all kinds of dope in it. I'm goin' to keep tab on you, an' if you dope my milk—well, you knowme! It don't make no difference what you charge—a dollar a bottle or five dollars a bottle—my father's got to have pure milk. Understand?'"

For three months Billy went to the stable every day and superintended the milking. At a cost to him, sometimes, of three dollars for a pint bottle, and never less than a dollar a bottle, the "bad man" brought me every day, with his own hands, a bottle of fresh milk. When Bill and the doctor came in with that first bottle Mrs. Perrigocarefully raised my head and gave me a brimming glass of the rich milk. I drank it all and dropped off to sleep. I needed no more whiskey. The turning point of my illness was that glass of cow's milk. Bill's big bluff saved my life!

To show the rough, yet fine sentiment of the man, let me tell one last word about the lone cow. She went dry before spring, and, as the camp was crazy for fresh meat, the owner butchered her. One of the Odd Fellows told me. Said he, "Bill just went wild when he heard of it, and we had all we could do to keep him from going gunning for the man who killed the cow that saved your life. Why, that man would lay down his life for you, and laugh while he was doin' it."

I would I could tell of Bunch-grass Bill's conversion and entire reformation, but this is a true story, and I never heard that he ever got so far as that. This much, however, I am proud to tell. One day in the spring of 1900, when the army of gold-seekers was beginning to land on the "Golden Beach," I was standing with Bill near his saloon. On a sudden impulse I spoke to him.

"Billy," I said, "I love you, but I don't like your business. It's a bad business. See what it has done to lots of good fellows around here. You are too big for that game. I wish you'd drop it and do something that's clean—that doesn't hurt anybody."

Bill made no reply, and I supposed my words had been fruitless. But in a few weeks one of my friends informed me that Bill had sold out and had gone to gold-mining.

"That's good!" I exclaimed. "Did he give any reason?"

"Yes," the man replied, "Bill said you told him to."

When I was returning to Alaska in 1901, I bought a nice buffalo smoking-set at the Pan-American Exposition and took it to Alaska for Bunch-grass Bill. I did not see him, as he was mining at a distance, but I heard of his pride and pleasure as he displayed the gift and talked affectionately of "Father Young." He left Alaska that summer, and I have heard vaguely of his presence in the Nevada gold-fields. But wherever he is, I pray that God may bless and save the Irish saloon-keeper, who loved me and saved my life.

MY DOGS

Mushingwith dogs in Alaska is the worst and the best mode of traveling in all the world—the most joyful and the most exasperating—according to the angle from which you look at it.

Once I was preaching a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments to the miners at Council, a town on Seward Peninsula eighty-five miles east of Nome. I had come to the Third Commandment; and I bore down pretty hard upon the useless and foolish habit of profane swearing.

When I was going home from the meeting, a group of young men stood on the corner waiting for me.

"Come over here, Doctor," called one of the men. "I have a bet with Jim, and I want you to decide it."

I crossed over to the jolly group. "What is your bet?" I asked.

"Why," he replied, "I've bet Jim five dollars that you have never mushed a dog-team."

"Well, you've lost," I answered. "I have driven dogs many times—and never found it necessary to swear at them, either."

Before I go on with my story, perhaps I would better explain that word "mush," as it is used in the Northwest. The word is never used in Alaska as you use it in the East, to denote porridge, or some sort of cereal. There we say "oatmeal" or "corn-meal," or simply "cereal."

In Alaska the word has but one use. It is a corruption of the Frenchmarchez, marche, which the Canadiancoureurs du bois, or travelers of the woods, shout at their dogs when urging them along the trail. Frommarcheto "mush" is easy. So now, throughout the great Northwest, Canadian or Alaskan, when a man is traveling he is "on a mush." When he is speaking to his dogs, either to drive them out of the house or to urge them along the trail, he shouts "mush!" If he be a good traveler, he is a "great musher." Of all the pet names they used to give me up there, the one of which I was proudest was "The Mushing Parson."

They tell a story, which has the ear-marks of truth, which illustrates this universal use of the word "mush" in the Northwest.

Two miners, who for years had been in the mining camps of Alaska, at last came "outside" to Seattle. In the morning they went to a restaurant for breakfast and took seats at a table. A rather cross-looking waitress came to take their order. "Mush?" she asked. The miners looked at one another in surprise and alarm. The woman waited a while, and when they did not answer she supposed they were deaf and had not heard her question. "Mush?" she screamed. The two men arose and fled. When they got safely to the sidewalk, one said to the other, "Now, what the Sam Hill did she fire us for?"

There are three principal breeds of native dogs found in Alaska—the Husky, the Malamute and the Siberian Dog—all descendants of wolves, with wolfish traits and the wolf's warm coat and powers of endurance. Of these the Malamute is the largest, descended, as he is, from the great gray wolves of the Arctic regions. The Husky seems to be derived from the red wolf of the McKenzie River Valley; while the Siberian Dog has for ancestorthe smaller, shorter-legged, heavier-furred Arctic wolf of the Siberian coast. The smaller and more worthless dogs of the southern Alaska Coast, if descended from wolves, must have the coyote as their progenitor—having his lighter and slimmer body and his sneaking, thievish, cowardly disposition.

Everywhere, however, the dog is largely what his master makes him, and these northern wolf-dogs have greatly improved since they have fallen into the hands of white masters. More intelligent breeding, greater care in feeding and more careful training, have made them what they are—the finest, most enduring and most dependable sleigh-dogs in the world.

The dog is by all odds the most valuable animal of the Northwest to the white miner and settler. He is the miner's horse, bicycle, automobile, locomotive, all in one. Life in those wilds would be almost unendurable without him. The miners appreciate this, and cases of cruelty and mistreatment are very rare. In the days of the early gold stampedes thecheechackosor tenderfeet, who knew but little about life in the wilderness, and still less about the dogsof the wilderness, sometimes were guilty of abusing their dogs; but this very seldom occurred, and the old-timers always frowned upon, and sometimes punished, cases of cruelty. I remember once holding, with joy, the coat of one of these old-timers at Dawson in the strenuous winter of 1897-8, while he administered a very beautiful and artistic thrashing to a newcomer who was guilty of beating his dogs with a heavy chain and knocking out the eye of one of them.

But I cannot better give you an idea of what dog-mushing in the Northwest is than by sketching a trip I took to a meeting of the Presbytery of Yukon in March, 1912. I was at Iditarod, a new gold-mining town in the western interior of Alaska. The meeting was to be held at Cordova on the southern coast, seven hundred and twenty miles distant. To reach Cordova I must cross four mountain ranges—the Western, the Alaska, the Chugach and the Kenai Ranges; and traverse four great river valleys—the Yukon, the Kuskoquim, the Susitna and the Matanuska. There was first a very rough stretch of rudely marked trail five hundred and twenty miles to Seward. There I would take a steamboattwo hundred miles to Cordova. Let us betake ourselves together to this big miner's camp, and talk the matter over in the free, familiar way of the Northwest:

A young fellow of Scotch descent hailing from the north of Ireland, William Breeze, known far and wide as an experienced "dog musher," is to be my companion on this trip. He is bound for Susitna, three hundred miles from Iditarod, on a prospecting trip, and will take care of my dogs, boil their feed at night and do the heaviest part of the work.

Dr. Young and his Dog Team

Iditarod, February, 1912

And now let me introduce you to my team. It is one of the finest teams in all the North. There are five pups of the same litter, now six or seven years old. They are a cross between the McKenzie River husky and the shepherd dog, and have the long hair and hardy endurance of the former and the sagacity, intelligence and affection of the latter. Being brothers, they know each other and are taught to work together, although this fact does not hinder them from engaging in a general free-for-all fight now and again. However, if attacked by strange dogs the whole five work together beautifully, centering their forces with Napoleonicstrategy and beating the enemy in detail.

The leader is black, white and tan, marked like a shepherd dog. He has been named "Nigger," but I have changed his name simply to "Leader." It sounds enough like the original to please him and keep him going. He is a splendid leader. He has a swift, swinging pace, and can keep the trail when it is covered a foot deep by fresh snow and there is no external sign of it. He has that intelligence which leads him to avoid dangers, and he will stop and look back at you if there is a hole in the ice or a dangerous slide, awaiting your orders and co-operation before he essays the difficult problem. His knowledge of "Gee" and "Haw" is perfect, the tone in which you pronounce these words and the force with which you utter them telling him just how far to the right, or to the left, he is to swing. "Gee!" spoken in a short, explosive, loud tone will turn him square to the right, while "Ge-e-e, ge-e-e-e," in soft lengthened syllables, will make him veer slowly and gradually. His sense of responsibility is very great, and his censorship of the conduct of his fellow teamsters very severe. He will not tolerate any shirking on their part andtakes keen delight in their correction when they deserve it. But he will fly at your throat if you touchhimwith the whip.

The "swing dogs" just behind him are "Moose" and "Ring," colored like Irish setters. They have exactly the same gait, are the same size, and almost the same coloring, "Ring" a little lighter than "Moose" and with a white collar around his neck which suggested his name. "Moose" is a little gentleman, the loveliest dog I have ever known. His traces are always taut, and when you utter his name he will jump right up into the air, straining on his collar. He knows the words of command as well as the leader, and has never, perhaps, been touched with the whip. I think chastisement would break his heart, for he would know it was unmerited. He is my pet, the one dog of the team that I allow in my cabin, and my companion in my short journeys through the camp. He is remarkably clean and dainty in his habits, his coat shining like polished bronze. He would guard my person or my coat with his life, the most faithful, intelligent and affectionate dog I have ever had. I love that dog.

"Ring" is also willing, but has not the intelligence or the good nature of "Moose." He is a scrapper and apt to embroil the rest of the team in a general fight. But he will work all day at his highest tension.

"Teddy" and "Sheep," the "wheel dogs," are not so valuable as the other three. "Teddy" has the longest hair and the lightest weight of any, and the least strength; but he is a willing little fellow and a very keen hunter. Make a noise like a squirrel or a bird, and he will prick up his ears and dash down the path after the game, and when a real rabbit or ptarmigan crosses his path he will tear madly along until the game is passed. You can fool him every minute of the day, and Breeze has a way of imitating the little birds that keeps "Teddy" working his hardest.

"Sheep" is a malingerer. He is a clown, and so comical that you cannot help laughing at him, even when you know he deserves a good thrashing. He is fat, heavy and awkward. In color he is a light, tawny yellow, with long hair like "Teddy," but labors under the serious disability of having a different gait from the others. They are pacers; he is a trotter. When they are swinging rhythmically along at a five-milegait, "Sheep" has to lope, his trot not being equal to the occasion. He has a way of playing off sick or fagged; but if game appears, he forgets all about his pretenses, his lameness is all gone in a second and he is the keenest of the team. Also, when nearing the camp he forgets his weariness and pulls harder than any of the team. It is necessary to let him see the whip constantly, and occasionally to feel it, and he is the only one of the team that necessitates its use at all.

About once a day, on the trail, a funny scene has to be enacted. We may be laboring up a long hill, or wallowing through deep snow, the difficult ascent requiring every man and dog to do his best. "Sheep" will get tired, and, with a backward look at me to see if I am noticing, will let his traces slacken. I give him a touch of the whip, and, although he can hardly feel the lash through his thick coat, he yelps and pulls manfully for a short distance; but presently his trace chain sags again. Soon "Leader" notices the heavier pulling and, knowing where the blame lies, turns his head, shows his teeth and growls at "Sheep," who jumps into his collar and pulls like a good fellow.Soon he forgets and lets up again, getting a fiercer growl from "Leader." A third time he is a slacker. Then "Leader" stops and begins to swing around carefully so as not to tangle the harness. "Moose" and "Ring" and "Teddy" all stand still and look at "Sheep." That unfortunate trotter lies down on his back with his feet in the air and begins to howl in anguish. I sit down on the sled and wait—I know what is coming. "Leader" reaches "Sheep" and for about a minute there is a bedlam of savage growls from "Leader" and piercing shrieks from "Sheep." I notice that "Leader" does not take the culprit by the throat, but only pinches the loose hide on his breast and side. That cannot injure him, so I am not uneasy. The punishment over, "Leader" resumes his place. "Sheep" gets up and shakes himself with an air of relief. I take the handle-bars and call "Mush." For the rest of the day "Sheep" pulls for all he is worth; but the next day he forgets and has to be trounced again.

I am conscious that this story may have a "fishy" flavor for some of my readers, but I can assure them it is true.

But mine are all fine little dogs, not as large as the malamute, but with more courage, spirit and intelligence. The long hair protects them from the cold and they will cuddle down in the snow contentedly, curled up like little shrimps, and let it cover them.

We must take along enough feed for the dogs, to last them from salmon stream to salmon stream. The staple of their feed is dried salmon; it goes a long way for its weight. We start with a hundred pounds of it, and fifty pounds of rice and tallow. This, boiled into a savory mess and served once a day (when they stop for the night), keeps the dogs fat and hearty. We shall replenish the supply at intervals, for five dogs will eat an immense amount of food, and must have all that they can eat at their daily meal.

The sled is a basket-sleigh with handle-bars and brake at the back and a "gee-pole" in front, with an extra rope when we have to "neck it" to help the dogs. My wolf-robe is spread on the floor of the sleigh for my accommodation in the brief intervals of riding. For dog mushing in Alaska does not mean luxuriously riding in your sleigh wrapped up in your fur robe while the dogs haul you along the trail. When Dr. EgbertKoonce sledded twelve hundred miles from Rampart to Valdez in 1902 on his way to the General Assembly, I told the Assembly of the feat. A good friend from Philadelphia said: "It must after all be a really luxurious way of traveling, wrapped up in your furs and reclining in a comfortable sleigh behind your dogs." I turned to Koonce and asked him how much of that twelve hundred miles he rode. "About two miles," he replied.

I shall ride more than this on my way to Seward, but there will not be many places where I can ride half a mile at a stretch without getting out and running behind the dogs. The beauty of "dog mushing" is that you are compelled to work as hard as the dogs. You are not on a well-beaten boulevard; you are wending your way around trees and stumps, over hummocks, up and down hills, along the sides of the mountains, and must keep your hands on the handle-bars, lifting the sled on the trail when it runs off and often breaking the trail ahead with your snow-shoes. When the dogs are on fairly good roads they swing along uninterruptedly and you run your best behind. If there are two of you, one holds the handle-bars and the other sprints along,either in front or behind the sleigh. You will get pretty tired the first two or three days, but after your muscles become hardened and you get your second wind, you can run at your keenest gait two or three miles at a time.

But let us get started. All preparations are made, the supply of dog-feed loaded, our robes and blankets put aboard, heavy canvas corded around the load and our snow-shoes strapped on top. We shall not need a gun, for there will be plenty of game to be had at the roadhouses, and we shall not have time to bother with hunting. We have a long journey to make and everything must bend to getting over the ground. That "ribbon of the trail" must be unwound for five hundred and twenty miles. A company of warm and sympathetic friends foregather to bid us "good-bye," and off we go.

The trail is well beaten from Iditarod to Flat City, seven and a half miles, and I get aboard, with Breeze at the handle-bars. My huskies leap into the harness at the word of command and we make a flying start. They are just as keen to go as we are, and seem to enjoy it as well. I ride perhaps half a mile then jump off without stopping theteam, and run ahead of the dogs up the long hill. I soon find my fur parka too heavy, and discard it for the lighter one made of drilling, in which I do the rest of my mushing to the end of the trail. Moccasins are on my feet, for the trail must be taken flat-footed if one is to have reasonable comfort.

After two or three miles we leave the broad road and strike the trail through the wilderness. Our sled is twenty-one inches wide, light and shod with steel, and the trail, henceforth, will be about twenty-four inches in width, sometimes sunken deep, where snow has not recently fallen and the trail has been well beaten, sometimes only a trace along the snow where the wind has blown it clean and where the trail is hard.

We soon begin to labor up the first divide. No more riding now. The trail is hard enough to dispense with snow-shoes, but heavy enough to make us both walk and labor. I strike the trail ahead, leaving Breeze to the handle-bars. I begin to feel the joy of it. The keen, light, dry air is like wine. The trail winds through the woods, along the edges of gorges, then up a steep mountain. Now the timber ceases and we have rounded, wind-swept summits.I leave the dogs far behind, for it is heavy pulling up the steep. Their bells tinkle faintly from below. I gain nearly a mile on them before they round the summit. I strike my lope down the farther side, but soon hear the bells as they charge down upon me and pass me, swinging on towards the roadhouse.

We only make twenty miles the first day, for it was nearly noon when we started, and we are glad to stop at "Bonanza Roadhouse" as dusk is coming on. How good the moose meat tastes! How sweet the beds of hard boards and blankets! The luxury of rest we enjoy to the full. The dogs are fed, our moccasins and socks hung up to dry, and we crawl in our bunks with sighs of relief. There is no floor in the roadhouse; all the lumber has been whipsawed by hand, the furniture manufactured out of boxes and stumps, the utensils of the rudest. But the luxury of splendid meat and good sour-dough bread and coffee makes us feel that we have all that goes to make life desirable.

An early morning start is necessary. We eat our breakfast by candle-light, fill up our thermos bottle with hot coffee, take a bighunk of roasted meat for lunch, and "hit the trail" by daylight. Twenty-six miles to-day—to "Moorecreek Roadhouse." Snow begins to fall, and soon the trail is obliterated by the fast-coming feathery flakes. Now the snow-shoes must be unstrapped and one of us break the trail ahead. We take turns and swing along at a three and a half mile gait. This is real work, and we reach the roadhouse in the middle of the afternoon, but not so tired as on the preceding day.

These are samples of the journey throughout; but oh, the variety!—no two miles alike—and the panorama of beauty that unfolds before us!

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