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Show ia the Chilkoot packers glided effortlessly past us. With the aid of leather tumplines around their flat foreheads and shoulders, they easily balanced two-hundred-pound packs upon their backs. The Chilkoots were short, swarthy, and cunning, and their drooping mustaches made them appear to be frowning all the time. I thought it possible, however, that charging the stampeders fifty cents a pound for packing supplies, they could be smiling on the inside. Regardless, when they approached us on the trail, swinging their thick walking sticks and frowning like Fu Manchu, we stampeders stepped aside. The trail followed the frozen Taiya River upstream. The first five miles were easygoing, more like a rough wagon road than a mountain trail, and we walked three and four abreast. Some of the men wearing heavy rubber boots, however, lost them in the deep ruts. We crossed and recrossed the river and its many tributaries on ice, and when I saw the many discarded rubber boots and log bridges, I was glad I had taken Mrs. Pullen's advice and waited for freeze-up. Along the trail tent cities appeared, offering food, liquor, and beds. The first of these was called Finnegan's Point-five miles from Dyea-where a Mr. Finnegan and his sons had charged toll for a corduroy bridge until the stampeders brushed them aside. |