Prisoners of the North Read Online Free Page B

without it, was a man who loved to watch himself lampooned on the stage of the Monte Carlo by Gussie Lamore’s sister Nellie and revelled in his new sobriquet, the Knight of the Golden Omelette. Boyle had neither the time nor the inclination for that kind of frolic. He thought in terms of gigantic nozzles ripping up the overburden from the verdant valleys, and of enormous floating machines clawing their way to bedrock.
    One characteristic of the Boyle style was the speed with which he made up his mind and moved, often under appalling conditions. He threw himself into each new venture with all the enthusiasm of a small boy playing his first game of Parcheesi. Life to Boyle was a game. For him, it was always the race that counted, not the gold and certainly not the prestige. As a born leader, he needed to be first off the mark, ahead of the pack—determined to win.
    He could not idle away the Yukon winter. He needed a hydraulic and timber concession eight miles long, from rim to rim of the Klondike Valley, before someone else could beat him to it. For that he had to go to Ottawa, so he signed the necessary documents and left Slavin to work out the application to the Gold Commissioner while he headed for the Outside before freeze-up. Less than two months after he landed in Dawson he was ready to make his move.
    While thousands of men and women were struggling to reach the city of gold in the face of impossible natural obstacles, here was Boyle headed the other way. To live in Dawson in that first gold-rush winter was akin to living on the moon. For most there was no escape. Only the hardiest, the hungriest, or the craziest dared attempt the daunting journey to the Outside. But Boyle and Swiftwater Bill Gates were planning to do just that. As they set off in Boyle’s collapsible boat, clinging to the eddies along the Yukon riverbank and inching their flimsy craft forward against a current that could reach seven miles an hour, winter was already setting in and pack ice was forming all about them. When Boyle’s eccentric partner (who insisted on wearing a colourful four-in-hand tie beneath his furs) broke through the thin crust at one point, Boyle dragged him, soaking wet, to safety. The craft was just as vulnerable: the collapsible boat kept collapsing and had to be repaired three times before the pair abandoned it at Carmacks Post, 250 miles upriver from Dawson. There they came upon a huddle of men and horses about to give up and return to the Klondike, and it was then that Boyle’s qualities of leadership were tested. At his suggestion, the group agreed to pool their resources and travel together under his command. They called him Captain, a title that certainly fitted.
    They set off for Haines Mission on the coast, following a trail blazed through the mountains by Jack Dalton, an earlier pioneer. In good weather this was a four-day trip; at −25 degrees Fahrenheit it took them twenty-nine days. The horses gave up and had to be shot. Some humans also succumbed and were prepared to die on the spot, but Boyle would have none of that. In the words of one of his biographers, “he drove them like a chain gang,” alternately making promises, cajoling, and insulting them as he spurred them on. They staggered into Haines on November 23 and managed to pick up a ship to Seattle. There, Boyle was presented with a gold watch by his followers who swore that without his leadership no one would have reached the coast alive.

    Joe Boyle and the eccentric Swiftwater Bill Gates (in dress shirt and four-in-hand tie) on their way to the Outside in the autumn of 1897 while the rush was still on .
    It had soon become obvious to Boyle that the day of the individual placer miner was over. The thousands who rushed to the Klondike talked in terms of “digging for gold” as if the ground was knee-deep in nuggets. To their dismay, they were faced with a back-breaking procedure. Seeking out the hidden paystreak by thawing the ground with fire or