MACKINTOSH'S TRADING POST, On the Alaskan Highway - The only white woman resident between Whitehorse and the far interior of Alaska is a little annoyed these days with the engineers who are in charge of the Alaska highway.
First of all, with the whole of the Yukon territory to run a highway through, they chose to run it past her front door. And now - just like a lot of men! they have changed their minds, and are moving this section of the road to the north to straighten out a dangerous curve in the route.
"So now," says Mrs. Dorothy MacKintosh, with a shade of irritation, "I'm worse off than I was before, because then I was on an Indian trail, at least.
Not Even Indians
"But now the Indians won't come here any more, because they're all excited about automobiles and spend half their time hitch hiking on trucks up and down the highway. And whereas I used to be able to count on getting mail three or four times a year, when some Indians went into Champagne, I suppose I'll be lucky now if I ever get any."
Mrs. MacKintosh was one of the pleasant surprises that army engineers discovered when they were pushing the Alaska highway through last summer.
Fifty three miles from the nearest white man, a squaw man living at the Indian village of Champagne, they knocked at the door of a log cabin on the banks of Bear creek, and met a pleasant gray-haired woman in her fifties, who invited them into the tiny back room of her log cabin which serves as a trading post, and brought out a plate of fresh baked raisin cake.
She was Mrs. MacKintosh, "queen" of the Bear Creek Indians.
But more than that, she was Mrs. MacKintosh, A.M. and B.Sc., who won her master's degree from Columbia university with a thesis on the philosophy of education, and took her bachelor of science degree from the same university for her work in separating the vitamins B and G.
Alone Last Four Years
For nine years she has lived in one of the most remote sections of the Alaska-Yukon country. For four years, since her husband's death, she has lived alone. Once
a week, or once in two or three months, a prospector on his way to the Dezadeash mountains, or returning after a summer's work, has stopped to buy a few supplies in the little back room with its log rafters neatly papered, and its oil barrel stove, and its half dozen shelves thinly lined with canned goods.
Otherwise there were only the Indians in the tiny village on Bear creek, or the other Indians from Kloo lake traveling the trail to their winter trapping lines.
Lonesome, "Why, yes," says Mrs. MacKintosh thoughtfully, "I suppose you would call it lonesome. But I have never been one who needed a great deal of companionship. So I have enjoyed having time to myself."
But she hasn't had so much time to herself since the first regiment of army engincers moved into this area a year ago.
The fame of her raisin cake - and the fact that her's is the only private eating place on a stretch of highway hundreds of miles long - has made her log cabin a favorite stopping place for soldiers and others who man the trucks on the highway.
Prices Unchanged
And the price hasn't changed with the expanding business. It is still twenty five cents for coffee and three slices of raisin cake.
As the only white resident within a hundred miles save for the squaw man at Champagne, Mrs. MacKintosh has an unofficial status with Indian tribes in the country as the representative of law and order.
Disputes between Moose Johnnie and Big Lake Charlie over the ownership of traps usually end at the back door of her cabin, and the village on Bear Creek - its population varies from two to 16 as the hunting and trapping seasons shift - depends on her for information on game laws.
In late October, one Shorty usually knocks at the cabin door to say, "Set traps now," and Mrs. MacKintosh shakes her head. "Six days yet," she tells him. And Bear
Creek heeds her word.
But now she is wondering if she will be left a queen without subjects. The new highway, it seems, has made a great hit with the Indians. Always preferring to ride something other than Shank's mare, they will follow the highway northward when it is relocated, she suspects. So will prospectors.
"And then," says Mrs. MacKintosh, "
I suppose it really will be
lonesome here."
