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Show Uo It was all packed in fifty-inch-long oilskin bags, to be packed on my back over those mountains into Canada. Just because the Mounties said so. Plus the food, there were Mackinaw coats and flannel underwear and rubber boots and German wool socks. Plus a tent, a saw, a coffeepot, nails, ropes, matches, candles, graniteware plates and cups, a portable Gold Nugget Yukon stove, and a seven-foot-long Yukon sled. And, of course, a pick, a shovel, and a gold pan. It all seemed unnecessary for temporary squatting. And just as soon as I could fill those canvas bags with gold nuggets, I'd be leaving again. "Tell that to the Mounties," a whiskered man next to me said. "I will," I said, surprised. I hoped-since he could read my thoughts-he might ask me to be his partner. But he walked off. And since I could not tell the con men from the stampeders, I didn't ask. Still I wasn' t going to stand around wishing. I tied my tent on my Yukon sled, hoisted a fifty-pound pack on my back-and took off. Me and twenty-five thousand others. I had decided on the steep, sixteen-mile Chilkoot Pass rather than the White Pass with its forty-five miles of switchbacks mostly because the Chilkoot Indians favored it. And as Mrs. Pullen had advised, when they packed, I packed. As I staggered up the trail alongside the other stampeders, |