He formed a partnership with an old "sour-dough" miner, who helped him get his papers over the Chilcoot Pass and down the Yukon to Dawson. At the great Klondike camp he quickly sold out his papers at a dollar each, and the magazines at a dollar and a half to two and a half.
Joe spent the winter of 1898–9 at Dawson, selling the two papers published in that city and running a general news stand, in which he sold the reading matter he had sold before but gathered up again from the buyers. Sometimes he sold the same magazine four or five times.
When the Nome Stampede began, Joe got into the good graces of the manager of the steamboat company and got free passage down the Yukon. He shared my wolf-robe on the floor of the purser's room, and we became great chums. The boy was so bright and quick, and at the same time so polite and accommodating, that he made friends everywhere. He was a Sunday-school boy, and distributed my little red hymn-books when I held service in the social hall of the steamboat on Sunday, and his clear soprano sounded sweetly above the bass notes of the men.
"Joe," I asked him one day, "how much money have you made during the last year and a half?"
"Well," he replied, "I sent two thousand dollars out home from Dawson before I started down here, and with what I am making on this trip and what I hope to make at Nome, I think I'll have five thousand dollars clear when I land at Seattle the last of October."
"That's a dangerous amount of money for a small boy to have," I warned him. "Have you lost any of it?"
Joe grinned. "No, I dassen't. Some card sharps tried to get me to gamble at Dawson. They said I could double my money. But my partner [the old miner] said he'd lick me half to death if I ever went near the green tables. I didn't want to, anyhow. Everybody helps me take care of my money."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Why, give it all to mother, of course. She'll use it for me and my sister. I'm going to school as soon as I get home. Mother works in a store, but I guess this money'll give her a rest. She needs it."
A word more about little Joe before I leave him. He made good at Nome in September, and sailed for Seattle the last of October. The last I heard of him, four or five years later, he was making his way through the University of Washington, and still managing newspaper routes in Seattle. His is a case of exceptional good fortune; and yet I know of a number of boys who have made remarkable sums selling papers in Alaska. It is a boy's land of opportunity as well as a man's.
Our voyage to St. Michael was a tedious one—down the long stretches of the Lower Yukon, worming through the sand-bars and muddy shallows of the interminable delta, waiting through weary hours for tide and wind to be just right before venturing out on Bering Sea. Hurrying at last under full steam through the choppy sea, with the waves washing the lower deck and producing panic, uproar and swearing among the men packed upon it—we came to the harbor of St. Michael on the wind-swept, treeless, mossy shore of Norton Sound.
I was still to work my way through a tangle of delays and adventures before I could reach my goal—the great new camp at Nome, one hundred and thirty miles from St. Michael.
I had first to get my outfit together on the wharf, counting the boxes and war bags, pursuing the missing ones to other outfits and proving my claim to them. In the confusion this was a hard job, but I only lost two or three of my boxes. I piled my goods in a corner of the big warehouse of the North American Trading and Transportation Co., and set up my tent on the beach, for I was near the end of my money, and could not pay the high prices charged at the hotels. I got into my camp kit and did my own cooking, protecting my food as best I could against the thievish Eskimo dogs.
Then began a search, which lasted a week, for means of getting to Nome. The gold-hunters were putting off every day in whale boats, Eskimo oomiaks, and small sloops and schooners; but these craft were too small and uncertain for me to risk passage in them. My caution proved wise, for five or six of these small boats, after setting out, were never heard of again.
While I was waiting, the U. S. Revenue Cutter, Bear, came into the harbor, and aboard her was Sheldon Jackson, Superintendent of Education for Alaska, the noted pioneer missionary. He was just returning from a tour of the native schools and reindeer stations. (He was the man who had introduced the reindeer into Alaska from Siberia to supply the wants of the Eskimo.)
"Hurry on to Nome," he counseled me. "You were never needed more in all your life."
At length there limped into the harbor a little tub-like side-wheel steamboat, belonging to the Alaska Exploration Company, whose wharf was a mile and a half distant up the harbor. There was no way of getting my goods across the swampy tundra of St. Michael Island to the wharf. On the beach I found an abandoned old rowboat with open seams. I procured pieces of boards, some oakum and pitch, and set to work to repair the old boat. The steamboat was to sail for Nome the next forenoon. I worked all night. I made a pair of clumsy oars out of boards. Then I carried my goods to the leaky boat and rowed them to the dock. It took three trips to transfer my outfit, and while I was rowing back and forth somebody carried off my most valuable war-bag, containing most of my foot-wear and underclothes—one hundred dollars' worth.
I was a tired man when I stumbled down the steep stairs into the dark and stuffy hold of the little steamboat; and much more tired when, after two and a half days of seasickness, bobbing up and down in the choppy seas like a man on a bucking broncho, I pulled up the stairs again and let myself down the rope-ladder into the dory which was to take the passengers ashore at Nome.
"You can only take what you can carry on your back," announced the captain. "There's a storm coming up and I've got to hurry to the lee of Sledge Island, twenty miles away. You'll get your outfits when I come back. Lucky we're not all down in Davy Jones's locker."
I strapped my pack-sack, containing my wolf-robe and a pair of blankets, on my back, glad to get ashore on any terms. The dory wallowed heavily in the waves, the strong wind driving it towards the sandy beach. Boats have to anchor from one to two miles offshore at Nome. When we reached the beach, a big wave lifted the dory and swung it sideways. The keel struck the sand, and she turned over, dumping us all out, the comber overwhelming us and rolling us over and over like barrels. Drenched and battered, we crawled to land.
A heavy rain was falling as I staggered up the beach with my water-soaked blankets on my back, looking for a lodging-house. The beach was lined with tents, placed without regard to order or the convenience of anybody except the owner of each tent. A few straggling board-shacks were stuck here and there on the swampy tundra. Two or three large, low store buildings represented the various pioneer trading companies. The one street, which ran parallel to the beach, was full of mud. The buildings most in evidence were saloons, generally with dance-hall attachments. The absence of trees, the leaden, weeping sky, the mud, the swampy tundra, the want of all light and beauty, made this reception the dreariest of all my experiences in the new mining camps.
Nome, Alaska, Summer of 1900
A city of tents, twenty miles long
But I long ago learned that nothing is so bad but that it might be worse. I had not at that time seen Edmund Vance Cook's sturdy lines, but the spirit of them was in my heart:
"Did you tackle the trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful,
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven heart and fearful?
Oh, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it;
And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only, how did you take it!"
I soon found a sign