The Wild by Christopher Golden Page B

he had survived and thus become its master.
    When at last they rounded a bend in the river and came in sight of Dawson City, Jack laughed out loud. Merritt slapped Jim on the back with such vigorous bonhomie that the lanky teacher nearly tumbled overboard.
    Dawson wasn’t much to look at. After Dyea, Jack would have expected more from this newly fabled land than thesprawl of tents on the riverbank and the blocks and blocks of shabby one-and two-story buildings, muddy streets, and gutters running with filth. If anything, the place looked grittier and less substantial than Dyea, despite the massive extent of Dawson. But he steered toward the half-collapsed docks, and his friends dipped their oars into the water to help guide the boat, and he began to understand.
    Whatever people wanted to call it, Dawson wasn’t a city at all. There might be saloons and gambling halls, music and whores, a newspaper and a dentist and other signs of civilization. There might be buildings and board-walks of wood, and bank vaults filled with money. But those things were only by-products of the reality of Dawson. Smoke swirled away in the chill breezes and the sun shone down, dogs pulled sleds full of goods along worn tracks, and people by the hundreds rushed or milled about, all of them on their way to dig for gold, or pray for gold, or beg for gold, or sell their bodies and souls for gold.
    Dawson wasn’t a city. It was a mining camp, rough and grim and alive with greed and jealousy. And hope. Yes, that, too. It’s a wild place, Jack thought. Dreams could be built or crushed there, entirely dependent upon destiny and courage. But the courageous man makes his own destiny.
    With that thought resonating in his mind, he bent the tiller up out of the water, grabbed a rope, and leaped to thedock. Merritt and Jim paddled against the current as Jack tied off the Yukon Belle .

    Dawson wasn’t a city. It was a mining camp, rough and grim and alive with greed and jealousy.

    â€œQuick, now, boys,” Merritt said, already dumping the furs onto the dock. “Get the gear out of the boat. The Belle ’s sinking.”
    Jack saw that it was true. Jim had been forced to give up bailing in order to paddle, and the water sluiced into the boat between planks, filling the bottom. Without someone emptying it out, the boat would be at the bottom of the Yukon in minutes. Jack didn’t mind. The Yukon Belle had done her job.
    â€œShe got us here,” he told Merritt as he hauled a heavy pack up onto the dock. “That’s all that matters. The rest is up to us.”

CHAPTER SIX
CITY OF HOPE AND GREED
    F ROM A DISTANCE , Dawson City had looked grim. Closer in—actually walking its streets and smelling its air—Jack realized it was worse than that. It was a wild place draped in false civilization. Like the rough clapboard buildings lining the streets behind extravagant, colorful façades, its reality was dour and gray. Here is a place that was never meant to be , Jack thought, and even his newfound enthusiasm seemed to wither somewhat under Dawson’s gaze.
    Leaving Jim back at the riverside with their belongings, Jack and Merritt ventured in, hoping to find cheap accommodation and somewhere to store their gear. The smell hit Jack hard: raw sewage, rotting food, the stench of beasts of burden kept out in the open. Beneath that, however, were the aromas of cooking food and spilled drinks,and both made his mouth water.
    They passed a crude sign daubed with the words FRONT STREET , and before them lay the early results of the Yukon gold rush. Rough buildings rose on either side with timber walkways laid before them, and the buildings’ frontages belied the true nature of their construction. Saloons, dress shops, a dentist, outfitters, markets, hotels, a laundry—a whole new town built in this wild place with the river as its real source of life. And yet, where Jack had expected enthusiasm and excitement to hold