The Stampede Page #2

"The Stampede" by Rex Ellingwood Beach is an adventure novel set against the backdrop of the Alaskan gold rush. The story follows a group of prospectors and adventurers who embark on a perilous journey in search of fortune and glory amidst the harsh and unforgiving wilderness. As they confront the challenges of nature, rivalries, and their own ambitions, the characters reveal their true natures and the complexities of human desire. With vivid descriptions and a gripping plot, Beach's narrative explores themes of hope, greed, and the relentless pursuit of dreams in a rapidly changing world.

• Short story

								

white man nor Swede that can gain an hour on us, and if he should happen
to--he wouldn't pass."

Be it known that many great placer fortunes have been won by those who
stepped in the warm tracks of the discoverers, while rarely does the
goddess smile on the tardy; in consequence, no frenzy approaches that of
the gold stampede.

Passing Sully's place, they found him and his partner ready and waiting,
their packs on the saw-buck. Crowley glared at his enemy in silence
while the other sneered wickedly back, and Big Knute laughed in his
yellow beard.

Buck's heart sank. Could he outlast these two? He was a boy; they were
reckless giants with thews and legs of iron. Knute was a gaunt-framed
Viking; Sully a violent, florid man with the quarters of an ox. Through
the quixotism of Maynard this trip bade fair to combine the killing
grind of a long, fierce stampede with the bitter struggle of man and
man, and too well he knew the temper of his red-headed partner to doubt
that before the last stake was driven either he or Sully would be down.
From the glare in their eyes at passing it came over him that either he
or Knute would recross the mountains partnerless. The trail was too
narrow for these other men. He shrank from the toil and agony he felt
was coming to him through this; then, with it, there came the burning
gold-hunger; the lust that drives starving, broken wrecks onward
unremittingly, over misty hills, across the beds of lava and the
forbidden tundra; on, into the new diggings.

It neared eight o'clock, and, although darkness was far distant, the
chill that follows the sun fell sharply.

As they swung out on to the river their fatigue had dropped away and
they moved with the steady, loose gait of the hardened "musher." Buck
looked at his watch. They had been gone an hour.

"The race is on!" said he.

Though unhurried, their progress was likewise unhindered, and the miles
slipped backward as the darkness thickened, hour by hour. Straight up
the fifty-mile stream to its source, over the great backbone and into
the unmapped country their course led. If they hurried they would have
first choice of the good claims close about the discovery; if they
lagged Sully and his ox-eyed partner would overtake them, and beyond
that it was unpleasant to conjecture.

"We'll hit water pretty soon!" Crowley's voice broke hours of silence,
for they were sparing of language. They neither whistled nor sang nor
spoke, for Man is a potential body from which his store of energy wastes
through tiny unheeded ways.

True to prophecy, in the darkness of midnight they walked out upon a
thin skin of newly frozen ice.

"Look out for the overflow! She froze since dark," Crowley cautioned.
"We're liable to go through."

On all sides it cracked alarmingly, while they felt it sag beneath their
feet. It is bad in the dark to ride the ice of an overflow, for one may
crash through ankle-deep to the solid body beneath or plunge to his
armpits.

They skated over the yielding surface toward safety till, without
warning, Crowley smashed in half-way to his hips. He fell forward
bodily, and the ice let him through till he rolled in the water. Buck
skimmed over more lightly, and, when they had reached the solid footing,
helped him wring out his garments. Straightway the cloth whitened under
the frost and crackled when they resumed their march, but there was no
time for fires, and by vigorous action he could keep the cold from
striking in.

They had threaded up into the region where spring was further advanced,
and within half an hour encountered another overflow. Climbing the steep
bank, they wallowed through thickets waist-deep in snow. Beneath the
crust, which cut knifelike, it was wet and soggy, so they emerged
saturated. Then debouching on to the glare ice the boy had a nasty fall,
for he slipped, and his loose-hung pack flung him suddenly. Nothing is
more wicked than a pack on smooth ice. The surface had frozen
glass-smooth, and constant difficulty beset their progress. Their
slick-soled footgear refused to grip it, so that often they fell, always
awkwardly, occasionally crushing through into the icy water beneath.

Without warning Buck found that he was very tired. He also found that
his pack had grown soggy and quadrupled in weight, tugging sullenly at
his aching shoulders.

As daylight showed they slipped harness and, hurriedly gathering twigs,
boiled a pot of tea. They took time to prepare nothing else, yet even
though the kettle sang speedily, as they drank from around the bend
below came voices. Crowley straightened with a curse and, snatching his
pack, fled up the stream, followed by his companion. They ran till
Buck's knees failed him. Thereupon the former removed a portion of the
youngster's burden, adding it to his own, and they hurried on for hours,
till they fell exhausted upon a dry moss hummock. Here they exchanged
footgear, as Buck now found his feet were paining him acutely, owing to
the tightness of his rubber boots. They proved too small for Crowley as
well, and in a few hours his feet were likewise ruined.

Noon found them limping among the bald hills of the river's source. Here
timber was sparse and the snows, too, had thinned; so to avoid the
convolutions of the stream they cut across points, floundering among
"niggerheads"--quaint, wobbly hummocks of grass--being thrown repeatedly
by their packs which had developed a malicious deviltry. This footing
was infinitely worse than the reeking ice, but it saved time, so they
took it.

Now, under their stiff mackinaws they perspired freely as the sun
mounted, until their heavy garments chafed them beneath arms and legs.
Moreover, mosquitoes, which in this latitude breed within arm's-length
of snow-drifts, continually whined in a vicious cloud before their
features.

Human nerves will weather great strains, but wearing, maddening,
unending trivialities will break them down, and so, although their
journey in miles had been inconsiderable, the dragging packs, the
driving panic, the lack of food and firm footing, had trebled it.

Scaling the moss-capped saddle, they labored painfully, a hundred yards
at a time. Back of them the valley unrolled, its stream winding away
like a gleaming ribbon, stretching, through dark banks of fir, down to
the Yukon. After incredible effort they reached the crest and gazed
dully out to the southward over a limitless jangle of peaks, on, on, to
a blue-veiled valley leagues and leagues across. Many square miles lay
under them in the black of unbroken forests. It was their first glimpse
of the Tanana. Far beyond, from a groveling group of foot-hills, a
solitary, giant peak soared grandly, standing aloof, serene, terrible in
its proportions. Even in their fatigue they exclaimed aloud:

"It's Mount McKinley!"

"Yep! Tallest wart on the face of the continent. There's the creek we go
down--see!" Crowley indicated a watercourse which meandered away through
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