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Updated: May 5, 2025
A few weeks later, just after the June high-water, two men shot a canoe into mid-stream and made fast to a derelict pine. This tightened the painter and jerked the frail craft along as would a tow-boat. Father Roubeau had been directed to leave the Upper Country and return to his swarthy children at Minook.
Someone bustled in with a torrent of talk, and the pianola was drowned in a pandemonium of shouts and laughter. "Windy Jim's reely got back!" Everybody crowded forward. Maudie was at the Colonel's elbow explaining that the little yellow-bearded man with the red nose was the letter-carrier. He had made a contract early in the winter to go to Dawson and bring down the mail for Minóok.
"Are zese in proper form?" he asked, but the man seemed to have dropped into unconsciousness. Hurriedly the priest added: "Zere is no time to read zem. Ah! Mr. will you come and witness zis last will and testament?" The Boy got up and stood near. The man from Minóok opened his eyes. "Here!"
McGinty seemed more inclined to share his luck with strangers than with the men he had wintered amongst. "Mean lot, these Minóok fellers." But the return of the ex-Governor and so large a party from quietly staking their claims, roused Minóok to a sense that "somethin' was goin' on." By McGinty's advice, the strangers called a secret meeting, and elected McGinty recorder.
"Well, he's been out lookin' at the place where the gold gives out on Little Minóok. There's a pup just there above No. 10 remember?" "Perfectly." "And above the pup, on the right, there's a bed of gravel." "Couldn't see much of that for the snow." "Well, sir, that bed o' gravel's an old channel." "No!" She nodded. "Pitcairn's sunk a prospect, and found colours in his first pan." "Oh, colours!"
The great difficulty was the steering; but it was rip-roaring fun, the Boy said, and very soon there were natives running down to the river, to stare open-mouthed at the astounding apparition, to point and shout something unintelligible that sounded like "Muchtaravik!" "Why, it's the Pymeuts! Pardner, we'll be in Minóok by supper-ti "
When I heard a few weeks ago that, in addition to the boat-loads that had already got some distance up the river beyond Holy Cross " "Going to Dawson?" "Oh, yes, Klondyke mad " "They'll be there before us, boys!" "Anyways, they'll get to Minook." The Jesuit shook his head. "It isn't so certain. They probably made only a couple of hundred miles or so before the Yukon went to sleep."
Not at Minóok alone: at every wood camp, mining town and mission, at every white post and Indian village, all along the Yukon, groups were gathered waiting the great moment of the year. No one had ever heard of the ice breaking up before the 11th of May or later than the 28th.
While no adequate conception of the life can be given to the stay-at-home, yet the men themselves sometimes give a clue to its rigours. One old Minook miner testified thus: "Haven't you noticed the expression on the faces of us fellows? You can tell a new-comer the minute you see him; he looks alive, enthusiastic, perhaps jolly. We old miners are always grave, unless were drinking."
"Well, I didn't think you were that much of a coward turnin' tail like this just because a poor little Esquimaux Besides, she may have got over it. Even the higher races do." And he went on poking his fun till suddenly the Boy said: "You're in such high spirits, I suppose you must have heard Maudie's up from Minóok. "You're jokin'!" "It ain't my idea of a joke.
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