To appreciate Powell's gifts as a story-teller let us examine his recounting of the hanging of Doc Tanner. This double murder and hanging in early Valdez grabbed national headlines and is often recounted in books, diaries, letters, and journals of the period. Some versions may be more historically accurate than Powell's, but none achieves the dramatic effect and hence memorability of Powell's retelling.

Powell's account goes beyond mere history; his interest is in the thematic possibilities inherent in the story itself. Whereas most accounts tend to sympathize, characteristically, with the murder victims, Powell undertakes the more difficult task of attorney for the defense.

The outlines of the various accounts are similar in most of the details. A party of greenhorn, eastern gold rushers without any frontier experience hired or financed in Seattle a seasoned frontiersman to accompany them on the Copper River Trail. The gunslinger and prospector was known as "Doc Tanner." During mid-winter, there was a falling out between Tanner and his grubstakers over two issues: the lack of promised supplies and allocation of work. Tanner appears to have complained about both. As a result, an informal meeting was held and a decision made to ask Tanner to leave the party. Tanner overheard this conversation, got his gun, entered the tent and tried to shoot the leader of the party plus two others. He missed the leader, the man he most wanted to kill, and killed the other two. Tanner surrendered. A miner's meeting was called for that night. After several hours' deliberation, Tanner was sentenced to hang at sunrise. He was hung from a cottonwood tree, and the site became known as "Hangtown."

Powell's interpretation of Tanner's character and plight is tailored to a number of themes he develops throughout his book. Whereas one account treats Tanner as an enraged alcoholic, others disagree but depict him as a swaggering gunslinger. Powell, on the other hand, refers to him as "the quiet-mannered Tanner" and sees the citified eastern grubstakers as "indolent and overbearing" exploiting Tanner by condemning him "to perform the drudgery." Powell further notes that under mid-winter conditions the party's banishment of Tanner was the equivalent of a death sentence.

Powell then switches to dialogue to present the drama of the trial. He allows Tanner to speak in his own voice and dialect, and to present his own case. Powell's depiction of him in this scene borders on the archetypal. Tanner is the strong, silent frontiersman facing not only the truth but death with the calmness only a hero could muster.

. . . the Judge said:

"Tanner, step forward."

Tanner walked to the front and quietly began rolling a cigarette.

"What is your name?"

"Well, Judge, I guess this-here name of Tanner will answer me for the rest of my days, which, from the looks of this crowd, seem to be very few," answered Tanner, looking straight at the Judge.

"Did you hear Thorpe tell his story just now?"

"Well, I guess I did."

"What have you to say to it? Did he tell the truth?"

"Yes, I reckon he did," drawled Tanner.

"Do you mean to say you killed those men without a reason or cause?"

"Well, Judge," he replied, "that is just according to the way you look at it. You see, this-here bunch of shoemakers picked me up at Seattle when I was broke, and because they financed me a few dollars to enable me to get up to this God-forsaken country, they thought they owned me. They seemed to think that I should do all the dirty work, and I stood for it, but when I overheard their plans to chuck me out, like a dog, and cut me off from camp-me, a white man, with nothing but this cold white world about, and from that herd of mavericks from Massachusetts, too, why,-then some kind of buzzin' gets into my head and I saw red, and I just swiped out my gun and let 'em have it."

At this statement he quietly began puffing his cigarette.

"Is that all you have to say?" asked the Judge, after a moment's silence. "Have you any folks, or is there anything you wish to tell about yourself?"

"No, I reckon not," replied Tanner. "I have been kicked from hell to breakfast ever since I can remember, and there are none to sit up nights worrying about me; so if you fellows are going to hang me, better go ahead and have it over."

This is great story telling. Notice the economy of detail Powell employs in depicting the archetypal Tanner. Quietly and calmly rolling a cigarette, he looks the judge straight in the eye coolly acknowledging the facts of the case and his own immanent death but not his guilt. When the judge queries him about his motives, Tanner takes to the high ground and puts forth a compelling argument already prepared by defense attorney, Powell. He had been tormented and exploited by these easterners who now wanted to banish him, which was tantamount to a death sentence. His actions were purely in self defense. Furthermore, there was no question of premeditated murder for he had acted seeing red with a "buzzin" in his head. Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, your honor. Add to this Tanner's avowed history of child abuse in his last statement, and you have a case in which few modern juries could resist acquittal.

Life however is not always fair, and Tanner is condemned to death by hanging. His last words are ironic indeed. "You are hanging the best pistol shot that ever came to Alaska." Proud to the very end, Tanner boasts of the very skill that accounted for his demise. Powell himself was much enamored with guns and prided himself at being a crack marksman with a pistol.

The final contrast occurs as the cowardly accuser, Thorpe, trembling and frightened, cannot muster the courage to place the noose around the neck of the manly Tanner. Throughout the book, Powell laments the number of helpless greenhorns on the Valdez trail-men who were totally out of their element-while admiring quiet, rugged frontiersmen like Doc Tanner.

Powell concludes his account striking a tragic theme he repeats a number of times in the book. "The true name of Tanner will never be known, but like many another man whose identity has been lost in the western swirl, his friends will never learn what became of him."

While Powell often captures the pathos of the frontier existence as in his relating of anonymous fate of Doc Tanner above, he deftly balances the tragic with the comic. And it is this constant counterpoint between the serious and the humorous that gives the book much of its charm.

Whatever the reader's sense of humor, he will find passages in Powell to satisfy it. Powell's humor ranges from the grossest slapstick comedy to clever word play and puns, from gross exaggerations to subtle understatement, irony and satire.

Like the description of Big John's wild ride behind the mule, Private Garrett's practical joke on Powell and his companions crossing St. Anne's Creek in the dark is pure slapstick. One after another Garrett lures each member of the party to jump the creek promising that if he makes a good jump he would only get his feet wet knowing full-well each would plunge into water above the waist. Later, around the campfire when the men remonstrate him for his practical joke, Garrett accuses them of "being the most ungrateful crowd of poor jumpers he had ever assisted." Yet, Powell's humor is often more subtle and indirect. When describing how the Lowe River was named, Powell states "Lowe River was formerly known as Valdez River, but Lieutenant Lowe fell into it once and thereafter changed its name from its mouth to its source. According to this precedent most of the rivers in that part of Alaska should be named Powell." This kind of understatement is often followed by the grossest of comic exaggeration as for example when describing the Copper River mosquitoes:

It is very probable that many of those mosquitoes could whip a wolf. They are the embodiment of bravery. I have seen a single mosquito attack a full-grown dog. It has been said that the Alaska mosquitoes differ from others by having a white spot between their eyes about the size of one's hand. I have met no baldfaced ones up-to-date, but the Colonel asserts that he met one on the trail, and fortunately for him, the monster was eating a squirrel at the time.