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Updated: May 3, 2025
At Diamond City, on the Bearpaw, lay our cache of grub, and that place, some ninety miles from Nenana and fifty miles from the base of Denali, was our present objective point. It was bright, clear weather and the trail was good. For thirty miles our way lay across the wide flats of the Tanana Valley, and this stage brought us to the banks of the Nenana River.
"Hendrick," he said, in reply to a proposal that execution should be at least delayed, "the name of the white hunter who has mated with the Bethuck girl is respected everywhere, and his wishes alone would move Bearpaw to pardon his paleface foes, but blood has been shed, and the price of blood must be paid. Hendrick knows our laws they cannot be changed.
"The paleface is right," he said, after a minute's thought. "Only one shall die. Let the prisoners decide among themselves who shall be killed. Go, Bearpaw has spoken waugh!" A few minutes later, and the prisoners, with their friends, were assembled in the cave discussing this new phase of their case. "It's horrible!" said Grummidge. "D'ye think the chief is really in earnest?"
They have shown him that he was going to act in haste; they have told him that the Great Spirit orders all events here, and the Great Spirit himself has proved the truth of what they said; for, when Bearpaw refused to believe the palefaces, He sent Rising Sun to confirm their words, and to convince Bearpaw that he was wrong."
Leaving them he went into the woods to ponder and work out his plans. There he met Paul and Hendrick. "We are going to visit the prisoners," said the former. "You'll find 'em in a more hopeful frame of mind," observed the captain. "I wish they had better ground for their hopes," returned his friend, "but Bearpaw is inexorable. We are to have a final meeting with him to-morrow.
"It is now a matter for our consideration, my friends and warriors," said Bearpaw, in opening the palaver, "whether the palefaces are to spend the winter here and hunt with us, or to return to the Crooked Lake to stay with our kinsman, the white hunter, and his wife, the sweet singer.
It was proposed to use the mission launch Pelican, which has travelled close to twenty thousand miles on the Yukon and its tributaries in the six seasons she has been in commission, to transport the supplies up the Kantishna and Bearpaw Rivers to the head of navigation of the latter, when her cruise of 1912 was complete.
In 1906 there was a wild stampede to this region, and two or three thousand people went in, chiefly from the Fairbanks district. Town after town was built Diamond City, Glacier City, Bearpaw City, Roosevelt, McKinley City all with elaborate saloons and gambling-places, one, at least, equipped with electric lights. But next summer the boom burst and all the thousands streamed out.
He was interrupted here by the sudden entrance of Hendrick and Paul themselves, accompanied by Bearpaw and the sentries. To one of the latter the chief gave an order, and the man, drawing his knife, advanced to Grummidge. The seaman instinctively shrank from him, but was agreeably surprised on having his bonds cut. The others having also been liberated, the chief said:
When the inhabited wilderness has become an uninhabited wilderness, when the only people who will ever make their homes in it are exterminated, when the placer-gold is gone and the white men have gone also, when the last interior Alaskan town is like Diamond City and Glacier City and Bearpaw City and Roosevelt City; and Bettles and Rampart and Coldfoot; and Cleary City and Delta City and Vault City and a score of others; let at least the native names of these great mountains remain to show that there once dwelt in the land a simple, hardy race who braved successfully the rigors of its climate and the inhospitality of their environment and flourished, until the septic contact of a superior race put corruption into their blood.
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