Chapter two

Jake Morgan


Jake Morgan was a rough and quiet sort of a man. He had spent his youth kicking around the Western United States. He was born in central Idaho in the year 1930, he left home at fifteen years of age and worked at various ranches around the area. Jake worked as a logger, a miner, and a mechanic as well as a ranch hand. Deciding that Idaho was not quite what he was looking for and having no family ties, he began to wander. Being a good hand at most anything needing done he worked his way along until he ended up in Southeast Alaska.


“Hey Jake, grab that God damn choker”, Ole Dean Smith, the woods boss could yell about as loud as anybody around. “Yeah, yeah I got it” shouted Jake. The loose snarled choker kept trying to coil up tight and was apt to hit anything in sight. “Alright that’s it, I got it hooked, let’s go” Jake said. “This is our last load on this show”. Smith climbed on the Cat bulldozer and pulled up the winch line. The turn of logs resisted for a moment and then lunged out of the snow and mud. Smith ran the Cat down to the beach below the tide line and unhooked the logs. Jake gathered up their tools and trudged along behind.

“Well Jake, that’s it, the tug boat will be here in the morning for the logs and the machine barge. We’re done here and I got nothing else going just now. What you gonna do after we get to town”? “I dunno Dean, there won’t be any more logging this late in the winter and it will be a while till it dries out enough to do any construction work. I guess I’ll just have to hang around for a while or maybe go King Salmon fishing for a short time.” “Jake, give old man Horton a holler when we get into town, he’s got some hunters coming in for bear soon and might need some help”

This is the point where Jake’s life changed. In 1950 in Alaska things were booming again. Logging, fishing and mining, quite a bit going on but nature is nature and when breakup hits every thing stops. Breakup is the time of the year that the frost is going out of the ground, everything turns to mud and all work grinds to a halt. Jake Morgan didn’t like just sitting around and besides that he needed to eat for the next six weeks or so. When the barge got to town and all the logging equipment was put up Jake went to find Old man Horton.

Now there wasn’t much of an industry in guiding and hunting at that time, the great days of the sixties were yet to come but there were some wealthy hunters around and there were some good guides to take care of them. Horton usually only took out a few hunters each year and took care of things himself but this year he had a party of rich people out of Mexico city and needed some help.

“Hell’s bells, what makes you think you can be a bear guide”? Horton shouted, years of running engines and shooting had made him more than a bit deaf. Jake had dealt with old men like this before and knew how he needed to respond to this. “I don’t think I can be a bear guide you old bastard, but I think I can help you out so you can be the guide. You need someone to run the boat, pack gear and so forth and I need some work till things dry out so I came to see you”. “You ever run a boat before, you look too damn young to me” grumbled Horton. “I been running Cat, logging for Smith most of the winter, run the tug working the log raft and beach logging. He’s the one said I should come see you”.

“Hell’s bells, he don’t know his arse from his elbow, but I reckon if he put up with you all winter I can tolerate you for a few weeks” grunted the old guide.

Jake and Horton spent the next few days getting the gear cleaned up and the boat stocked for the hunt. Old Horton used a forty foot gas boat as a base camp and hunted the meadows and shorelines of Southeast Alaska for the giant Brown Bear who roamed there.

The next morning at the Juneau airport was the first time that Jake met Carlos. It was not love at first site for these two.