Journey (24 page)

The upward climb was merciless, but no matter how steep the rude pathway sketched out by earlier travelers to and from the gold fields, the pair were consoled by the knowledge that the Yukon could not be far distant, and they did not allow their spirits to flag. At the close of one extremely difficult climb, when Fogarty who carried the slightly heavier load was exhausted, and there was no more goat meat, he went boldly to Lord Luton's rucksack, ripped open the package of cans, took one out and chopped it through the middle, handing Luton one half. Since the meat had been well cooked by steam before packing, they could eat it as it was, but they did so in grim silence, for Luton felt himself aggrieved. At the conclusion, knowing that he must in decency say something lest they go to sleep
embittered, he observed: “Up here we aren't bothered by mosquitoes.”

This wasn't good enough for Fogarty: “Milord, I almost staggered today. My rucksack is far too heavy. We must finish with those cans and you must help me with my burden.”

Very quietly, and with not the slightest show of temper or resentment, Luton replied: “You are right, Fogarty. We need the nourishment and you need help, but if you try to touch these cans I shall shoot you.”

Fogarty did not blink. Putting a finger to his forelock, he said easily: “That's the second time you've threatened that. Once for me crapping, now for me eating. I do seem to run into danger of me life because of me digestion.” He said this with such easy good humor that Luton did not resent the familiarity which would have appalled him a month ago.

On the next evening Fogarty ended the day's climb so famished that he feared he might topple over, and he pleaded: “Milord, let us open another can,” but Luton was adamant: “We shall hoard them against the day we face a desperate crisis,” and Fogarty asked weakly: “Will my death be considered such a crisis?” Luton replied: “I am determined that we shall reach Dawson, you and I. And these cans may be the agency that enables us to do so.” Ostentatiously he used the rucksack containing the cans as his pillow, and fell asleep with the rifle across his chest.

They struggled up the last rocky tor, sustained only by their primordial courage, which all men can call on in extremity but which only a few are ever required to exercise. Fogarty, gasping up the final slope, was in the van, with Luton's extra pack draped about his shoulders, when he saw with mute joy that the apex had been reached. Staring down the forested valley that awaited to the west, he turned and said quietly: “From here on, Milord, it's all downhill.”

Luton affected not to hear, nor did he look ahead to the route that lay revealed before them; he stood with his back turned to his destination, his gaze reserved for the dreadful steeps they had climbed with such pain. As he stood there exhausted, his back bent, even though Fogarty was bearing half his burden, his thoughts wandered down the slopes, beyond the horizon and the hidden Peel River, to the lonely shack in which Trevor had died and from which Harry had walked to his death. It was impossible for him to experience any sense of triumph in having conquered the mountains.

But then Fogarty tugged him away from the doom-ridden past, turning him to face the more promising future, and when he had Luton's attention he repeated his encouraging words: “From here on, all downhill.” Luton, ignoring Fogarty's efforts to inspirit him, continued looking back at the brutal path they had taken, and his shoulders sagged so perceptibly that the Irishman wondered if Luton was weeping. Then, with a sigh that caused Fogarty to shudder, the noble lord said: “There must have been a simpler way through the tangled rivers and the mountains but we were not allowed to find it.” Even at this near-conclusion to their terrible ordeal he resisted accepting responsibility for the fatal choices taken: it was still implacable nature that was to blame.

But as he spoke these words by which he absolved himself, he felt intuitively that he really must present a more resolute impression to his servant, so he straightened suddenly, hoisted his heavy main pack, recovered his secondary one from Fogarty, and stepped boldly into the lead, uttering a command that fairly rang with enthusiasm and authority: “Let's get on with it, Fogarty! Dawson's got to be hiding behind that bend.” Off they strode on the last leg of their journey, elated to know that they had at last penetrated the mountains that had opposed them from the beginning.

—

Then on a memorable day in June, Fogarty in the lead position went around a bend and shouted: “Milord, there it is!” When Luton hurried up he felt dizzy and had to shake his head to clear his eyes, for below him, on a narrow ledge of land fronting a great river, stood the tents and false fronts of what had to be Dawson City. Seeing it nailed down in reality, and not a chimera, the two men stood silent. They had defeated scurvy and temperatures of minus-sixty, and rapids up which their boat had to be hauled by bare hands, and murderous mosquitoes, and they had reached their destination after twenty-three months and nearly twenty-one hundred miles of hellish travel.

Neither of the men exulted or gave cries of victory, and neither revealed what prayers or thanks he did give, but Lord Luton, in this moment of extraordinary triumph, knew what any gentleman must do. Instructing Fogarty to conceal their camp in the treed area that sloped away from the river, lest anyone down in Dawson see them before they were prepared, he said: “Fogarty, we'll enter in style.” For two days he kept himself and the Irishman less than a mile from their
destination while they cleaned their gear, dusted their clothes, and made themselves generally presentable. From a tiny military kit which he carried, Luton produced a needle and thread, and for much of the second day he perched on a rock mending the tears in his jacket. Fogarty's beard presented a problem. “It must come off,” Luton insisted. “It would look improper for me to present myself clean-shaven while I allowed you that wandering growth. Would look as if I didn't care.”

“I'd like to keep it, Milord. It was most helpful with the mosquitoes.” But there was no reprieve, and during most of the second afternoon, Fogarty heated water, soaped his heavy beard, and hacked away at its edges, wincing when the pain became unbearable. Finally he threw down the razor: “I cannot,” whereupon Luton retrieved the razor and cried: “Well, I jolly well can.” And for the first time during this long journey Lord Luton touched his manservant voluntarily.

Perching him on a log and covering his heavy beard with as much lather as their last shreds of soap would produce, he grabbed Fogarty by the head, pulled his face upward toward the warm June sun, and began almost pulling the hairs out by the roots. It was a process so painful that finally Fogarty broke loose, leaped to his feet, and cried: “I'll do it meself!” and the rest of that day and into the evening, using the tired old razor which he stropped at least fifty times, he fought the battle of the beard, exposing always a bit more clean Irish skin. At bedtime he looked quite presentable, a lean, capable, rosy-faced man who, as much as Lord Luton, had held the party together.

That night when Fogarty was not looking, Lord Luton took from his pack one of the two remaining cans of meat, placed it on a flat rock, and laid the hatchet quietly beside it. When Fogarty finally spotted it, he was overcome, and after a painful joyous pause in which neither man spoke, the Irishman lifted the hatchet by its cutting end and pushed the wooden handle toward Luton: “It's your can, Milord. You got it here and you shall do the honors.”

When the can was neatly severed, Fogarty ransacked the gear for whatever scraps were still hiding and made one final stew, which he served elegantly to his master: “One spoonful for you, one for me, and, Milord, never on this entire trip did any of us break that rule about eating. We never ate secretly nor at expense to the others.” When Luton made no response, the Irishman added: “And you arrive as you said you would, with your meat to spare. You got us here.” Only then did Luton speak: “It's like dear Mr. Trevor said that night
in the tent. A good poet always has in mind the closing lines of his poem. So does the leader of an expedition. He intends to reach his target.” He fell silent for just a moment, but then his voice hardened: “Scurvy or arctic freeze, pushing or pulling, he does reach his target.”

Real trouble arose at dawn when Fogarty wanted to throw into a nearby ravine the unnecessary gear that he had lugged so laboriously and which was now useless. “Let's toss all this in the ditch, with the last bloody can of meat!” he cried, but before he could do so, Luton restrained him with a warning cry, and when Fogarty turned he could see His Lordship's face was gray with anger.

“Fogarty, we have come so far, so very far. Let us today march into Dawson as men of honor who remain undefeated,” and to Fogarty's bewilderment he spread on blankets what gear their rucksacks could not contain and gave a demonstration of how it should be properly packed, with the corners neatly squared.

When all was in readiness, Luton supervised the placement of Fogarty's pack on his back and then inspected the Irishman's clothes, brushing them here and there: “Let us enter that sprawling mess down there as if we were prepared to march another hundred miles,” and when Fogarty said truthfully: “Milord, I could not go another hundred,” Luton said: “I could.”

At eight in the morning of 21 June 1899, Lord Luton, tall, erect and neatly shaven, led his servant Tim Fogarty, who marched a proper three paces behind, into Dawson City as if they were conquerors. When Superintendent Samuel Steele of the Mounties heard that Luton had arrived, he hurried down the false-fronted street to meet him, bringing several packets of mail and a list of inquiries from London. But Luton could express no interest in such things; his only concern was to dispatch immediate telegrams to the families of his three dead companions. Each message concluded: “His death was due to an act of God and to human miscalculations. He died heroically, surrounded by his friends.”

Satisfied that he had discharged his obligations, he was about to leave the rude shack that served as telegraph office when Fogarty said quite forcefully: “I'd like to inform my people, too.” Luton, striving to mask his astonishment at a servant's presumption, said: “Go ahead,” but Fogarty said: “I have no money, Milord,” Luton asked: “All that money you earned cutting hair? Four customers, almost two years.” Fogarty looked squarely at the man who'd brought him so far from Ireland and said: “I'm keeping that money, as I may need it to
buy me a gold mine.” Luton smiled icily at the cheekiness of his ghillie and told the clerk: “I'll pay for one more. To Ireland.” Fogarty, after careful calculation, sent his wife seven words:
ARRIVED GOLD FIELDS ALL WELL WRITING SOONEST
.

While Fogarty was drafting his message, Steele informed Luton that a generous supply of funds had been received from London “to be delivered to Lord Luton's party, should it ever arrive.” The sender, the Marquess of Deal, had expected his son to reach Dawson in the summer of 1898; he was a year late.

Steele's message reminded Luton of the package of mail he still held, and he tore open a thick envelope addressed in his father's strong hand and quickly read the first page. His back stiffened, and Steele inquired if the letter had brought bad news. Luton stared at the man as if he were not there, folded the page, and slid it back into its cream envelope. His older brother, Nigel, dead in a hunting accident on their Irish estate. Luton's stern, imperial face betrayed no hint of the conflicting emotions sweeping over him: shock at his new responsibilities as heir to the marquisate; grief at news of his brother's death, for he had loved and respected him; and confusion regarding his cheerless victory in having at last reached Dawson despite intolerable defeats along the way. Head bowed, he mumbled: “Mostly it was bitter gall. But there were moments. And every man on our team did behave well. They really did, including Fogarty.”

When Steele asked: “Will you be heading for the gold fields?” Luton stared at him in amazement and said nothing. Gold was not on his mind or even in his consciousness; he could not recall how he had ever become interested in it, and certainly it was no concern of his now. Later, when Steele related the story, he said: “He looked as if he had never heard the word. But then most of the people who reached Dawson from Edmonton never went to the gold fields. They seemed content merely to have got here alive.” Steele's people later compiled this summary of the Edmonton traffic:

There left that town in the years 1897–1899 some fifteen hundred persons, men and women alike, Canadians and foreigners with no distinction. More than half turned back without ever reaching the Klondike. At least seventy perished en route, and they among the strongest and best prepared of their societies. Of the less than a thousand who reached the gold fields there is no record of anyone who found gold and only a few
cases in which claims were actually staked, invariably on nonproductive streams. Most who did succeed in arriving here turned right around and went home without trying to visit the fields, which they knew had been preempted, the most famous case being that of Lord Luton, the future Marquess of Deal, his older brother Nigel having died.

Luton achieved local immortality by the boldness of his actions that day in Dawson. He arrived with Fogarty at eight, received his accumulated mail at nine with indifference, not even bothering to open most of the letters, sent his cables, and at ten, after having given depositions concerning the deaths of three members of his party, spotted the old stern-wheeler
Jos. Parker
anchored at the waterfront. Inquiring as to its destination, he was told: “The young feller at Ross and Raglan can explain.”

Hesitating not a moment, he marched down the muddy street to the store and demanded two passages to Seattle. A bright young clerk said: “Boats from here have too shallow a draft. Ours goes only to St. Michael.”