Sourdough's Trail

From the Klondike the Yukon River brawls across the U. S. border into desolate interior Alaska at the town of Eagle.* Here is tough country. At times spirit thermometers show cold of 70DEG below zero, and lower. The Arctic Circle is only 100-odd miles north; friendly Fairbanks is 200 bitter miles west. Few sourdoughs and no chechakhos live on these rolling tundras, where the ground is frozen several hundred feet down--country in which Chechakho Jack London starved and froze, seeking gold and finding stories.

Tough as a mukluk (fur boot) was Sourdough Edwin A. Robertson, a Maine-born man who had lived most of his 84 years in Yukon country. Fortnight ago, Sourdough Robertson left his lonely cabin on Seventymile River, mushed for Eagle to lay in supplies. The air was deadly cold; spicules of ice rimed the oldtimer's whiskers. Warily he plodded. He knew his Yukon, knew that while the running creeks freeze solid early, little springs that never freeze bubble under the snow all winter; that to crash through an ice-skin meant wet feet that would freeze almost instantly unless he could build a fire.

To be able to build a fire in that country is to be able to live. All Alaskans know that. Sourdough Robertson knew it. The bulging sun, which had popped up over the south horizon for a few hours, slid down again. Night came on. In the distance trotted black shadows--wolves. The oldtimer decided to camp beside a little stream. Something went wrong. He couldn't light a fire. Perhaps his old hands numbed too quickly when he jerked them out of the mittens to strike matches; stayed numb no matter how he pounded them together. Perhaps his little sticks were wet. But his fire would not start. That, quite simply, was death. The wolves came closer, their shadows black on the snow, shadows that merged, sprang apart, drifted closer.

Chechakho London would have approved of Sourdough Robertson, who knew he must die, but begrudged his body to the wolves. A searching party found the oldtimer last week. He had deliberately lain down in the stream, let the freezing water trickle over him as he settled down to sleep. The tracks of baffled wolves were all around, but the body of Sourdough Robertson was encased peacefully in ice.

*Into Eagle, after a 500-mile trek from Herschel Island, mushed beak-faced Explorer Roald Amundsen in December 1905, with news that he was three-fourths of the way around the Northwest Passage--goal of explorers since 1576.

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