Jason's Gold

Klondike fever, or “Klondicitis,” strikes many people even before accurate information on the location of the Klondike becomes known. Soon, however, gold rushers understand that their actual destination is not Alaska but Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, where the Klondike and Yukon Rivers meet. Getting there requires a steamer ship from Seattle to Alaska, then a journey over rugged mountains. Just two days after the prospectors arrive in Seattle, the first steamer sets out, loaded with stampeders and their supplies.

Jason journeys west by boxcar. Sharing Jason’s boxcar in North Dakota is an older man who experienced the 1849 gold rush in California. He refers to the Klondike as “going to see the elephant” (10), referencing an old story about a farmer who rushes to see a traveling circus. Having never seen an elephant before, the farmer steers his wagon too close, causing his horses to panic and upend the wagon’s produce crop intended for sale at the market. Jason is unsure about the moral of this story, but he proudly tells the man that he is headed for the Klondike, too.

The older man tells Jason that each gold rusher needs 1,000 pounds of food and supplies, which Jason guesses might cost $1,000. Jason’s father, who died four years before, left Jason and each of his brothers $500. Jason plans to borrow $250 from each brother for his “outfit” (food and supplies), then repay his brothers as investors once he strikes it rich. Jason’s mother died when he was very young, and upon his father’s death, he started to work in a cannery at age 11 for 10 cents an hour; he is determined to become rich and give up wage labor jobs for good.

Jason arrives in Seattle. At Mrs. Beal’s boarding house, his brothers’ home while they worked at the sawmill, he is shocked to learn that Abraham and Ethan left for Alaska two days before. He is even more shocked to read the letter they left behind; it states that they took his $500 to pay for “packing” their outfits—that is, paying others to help carry their combined 3,500 pounds of supplies over the mountains. Jason is speechless.

Jason hides in a canoe in the cargo space of the steamer Yakima. With only $10 from Mrs. Beal, spare clothes, and a book (The Seven Seas by Rudyard Kipling) in his packsack, he has no choice but to travel without a ticket or any supplies. He can hear the horses in the hold nearby, whinnying at the steamer’s loud engines. Trying to stay calm despite his reckless choice to steal passage, Jason sneaks out of the canoe. A young man, Frank “Kid” Barker, calls Jason out as a stowaway but offers to show him around. Jason first looks in on the terrified horses. Kid thinks that there are as many as 400 horses in the tight space. Jason soon realizes that the passengers are crowded too; those who paid for a berth are forced to share it, 10 to a cabin with only space for five to sleep at a time.

Kid says the real money is to be made through new business in Skagway. He insists that Jason join him for dinner with his boss, “Captain” Jefferson Randolph Smith. After a few days of dining together, the Captain says that Kid will start teaching Jason what he needs to know; Jason realizes that he is expected to work for Smith too. This is confirmed when Kid cons a couple into revealing the location of their cash; another of the Captain’s workers then pickpockets it. Kid says that Jason’s new role will be finding out who has cash and where on their person it’s hidden: “You have an honest face—you’ll be good at this” (33). Jason turns down this offer, citing his father who fought at Gettysburg: “He taught me a few things about honor” (34).

Three members of the Yakima crew force Jason off the ship at Juneau. Behind a nearby warehouse, they steal his $10 and beat him unconscious. When Jason wakes, he knows that it was Kid and the Captain who turned him in as a stowaway. He finds his packsack with his clothes and book and approaches a young man at a campfire on the gravel beach. The man, Jack London, is reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and has a friendly smile.

Jack is heading to the Klondike, “grubstaked” (funded) by his sister and her husband, Captain Shepherd, in exchange for Jack helping Captain Shepherd (who is not in good health) on the journey. Jack, Captain Shepherd, and three other men with whom they partnered hired a group of Indigenous Tlingit people to canoe them through the coastal inlets from Juneau to the Dyea River. The men discuss the choice of two passes to get over the mountains: White Pass or Chilkoot Pass. The Chilkoot Pass is 10 miles shorter but much steeper. As the men board the canoes, three steamers heavily loaded with prospectors pass them. When the canoes hurriedly depart, Jack invites Jason along.

North of Juneau, Alaska, two rivers, the Dyea and the Skagway, flow into the sea three miles apart. Before the Klondike gold rush, the “town” of Skagway consisted of two buildings and land owned by William Moore, who staked this claim hoping that potential settlers would buy his property for profit. The nearby White Pass is the longer but lower choice; pack animals such as horses can haul gear on it. At the mouth of the Dyea River, only a trading post stands. The nearby Chilkoot Pass is used by Indigenous Tlingit people as a “grease trail” for trading their harvested fish oil. Because of the geography of the coast and tidal flats near the mouths of the Dyea and Skagway Rivers, steamers must anchor a mile away from the beaches; flat-bottomed scows can be used between steamer and shore when the tide is in.

Approaching Dyea, Jason sees the Yakima and two other steamers. The sight of unloading is chaotic: Passengers drop or lower their “outfits” onto scows, but trunks and food spill open; horses, goats, dogs, and other animals are dropped from the deck to the open water, expected to swim to shore. The Tlingit canoes are able to bypass this disorder and head for the Dyea River. Jason must make a fast choice: “Which way had his brothers gone, Dyea and the Chilkoot Pass, or Skagway and the White Pass?” (46). His brothers likely would prefer the use of packhorses, so he bids farewell to Jack and hops a scow back to Skagway. The scene is worse than the Dyea beach; the tide is out, supplies are mired in mud, horses roam uncaught, and men, in a panic to get moving, whip their sled dogs. Jason hopes to catch some salmon in the river; on the way, he sees the corpse of a man, shot to death, wearing a sign that says “Thief.”