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Updated: June 20, 2025
There's nothing like a warm shack, with a cache full of grub, when the peaks smoke and the black snow-clouds roar down the gulch. Other "mushers" were ahead of us at the road-house, freighters from Kougarok, an outfit from Teller going after booze, the mail-carrier, and, who do you reckon? Annie Black. First time I had seen her since she was run out of Dawson for claim jumping.
The hard-frozen lean probably defied their best efforts; at any rate, the fat offered less resistance. But where else in the world could men dump quarters of beef beside the road and go off and leave them for weeks with no more danger of depredation than the bills of birds can effect? A few miles from the river the rival road-house signs began to appear.
At two o'clock we arrived at Craft's Road-House, near the mouth of the Neukluk River, where a halt was made for dinner. This was a good-sized log cabin, with scrupulously neat interior, kept by Mr. and Mrs. Craft, but the Mrs. was the presiding genius. Photographs of their restaurants at Chicago and Dawson, and of family and friends, stiffly yet fondly grouped, adorned the walls.
They left their stove and tent and grub-box behind, planning to make a road-house every night except during the long jump from the Imnachuck to Crooked River. They argued that it was worth a hundred dollars to sleep once under the open sky. The fruits of that sporting enterprise were bitter; the trader won his bet, but he never cashed it in.
Some men, you know, don't water their dogs once in six weeks, if at all, and as everything is froze hard in winter, the poor brutes go mad, exactly as in summer in the States, from heat. "One night, Long and I smoked in the little road-house close by, but Hartley went to his bunk in the tent and turned in.
Men went mad that way. He could not think of it. That gasping creature in the road-house spoke all too well of the Bronco's determination. And yet, who of those who had known the Kid in the past would dream that his vileness was so utter as this?
I told him my wife's honor was at stake, but he looked my wife over and his lips curled with an expression which seemed to say, "Impossible." It was all off with us. Parsifal simply wouldn't move until that sobbing Choo Choo Wagon had left the neighborhood, so I went inside the road-house to find the owner. I found him. He consisted of a German chauffeur and eight bottles of beer.
Some of them used to come way up from Los Angeles just to try out a new car along our road with the Honk-honks for pace-makers. We charged them a little somethin', and then, too, we opened up the road-house and the bar, so we did purty well. It wasn't necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer. Evenin's we sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged on my chickens.
We were rejoiced to see signs of native prosperity and advance, and we left Unalaklík with high hope for its future. Here also was real rest and refreshment at a road-house. Road-houses in Alaska are as various in quality as inns are "outside." Our previous night's halt was at one of the worst; this was one of the best.
After camping and road-house experience of nearly three weeks, a comfortable bed and well-spread table, and the general unmistakable ménage of a home-making woman are very highly enjoyed. That night the whole population of the settlement, fourteen persons, gathered in the store for Divine service.
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