by Gene Curry
We were resting ourselves and the dogs, and Hella was boiling up coffee. It was the middle of the day and the sun was warming up the air just a mite. We had just lugged the sled around a bad ice jam. We were good and tired.
“There used to be a way-station about ten miles from here,” I said. “Man named Ginnis used to feed travelers on the river. If the place is still there we can get real food and a place to sleep.”
“I like the sleeping bag,” Hella said, smiling.
“At least the food,” I said. “You ever eat bear meat? Ginnis used to have bear and moose and caribou. Sometimes small deer.”
“No bear meat for me. This man Ginnis may be dead by now.”
“Then it’s back to bacon and beans till we get to the fort.”
It was on toward nightfall when I saw the lights of the old way-station perched up on a hill, well out of the way of flood water. It looked like the original log building had been added to; anyway there were more lights.
A track had been cleared from the river to the way-station and we got up there with no trouble at all. The name Ginnis was still above the main door and it was lit by a shielded lantern. Along one side of the building was a penned-in shed for dogs and sleds. There were three sleds and three dog teams, but whether they were coming to, or leaving Alaska, there was no way to tell.
When the dogs started barking Ginnis came out to see what was disturbing them. Ginnis had put on a few years; otherwise he looked much the same. The shed for the dogs was divided into sections to keep them from fighting; he showed us where to put ours. He kept glancing at me. Finally he said, “Don’t I know you, mister?”
I grinned at him. “Sure you do, Ginnis. Jim Saddler. Used to be a soldier at the fort.”
“I’ll be damned to hell,” Ginnis said. “I guess you are at that. I recall how you used to bitch about being there. You came back and you brought a pretty lady.”
I told him who Hella was.
“I’ve heard of you, ma’am,” Ginnis said. “In a nice way, you understand. Come on in and we’ll have a chin wag about old times. Got moose steak and fried beans on the stove. Two kinds of pie, apple and blueberry. Canned fruit naturally, but I got a way of fixing it up.”
Four men were eating at two tables and they looked up when we came in. They all had beards, fur hats and lined boots. Their parkas hung on pegs on the wall. After they got through gawking at Hella they went back to the food.
Ginnis pointed to a table in a far corner. “Make yourself to home and I’ll go get your supper. How you like my new place, Saddler?”
“Looks like you’re doing good,” I said, grinning at him. “You always did make plenty of money. How much do you charge for a meal these days?”
“Used to charge five,” Ginnis said, dropping cut wood in a huge stove. “Now I charge ten, fifteen. Depends what and how much you eat. You folks I’ll go easy on. A lot of coffee first, am I right?”
“You couldn’t be righter,” I said.
Ginnis brought in the biggest coffee pot you ever saw, then went back to the kitchen for the steak and beans. “I’ll sit with you, you don’t mind,” he said.
Ginnis was a Southerner, from what part I didn’t know and never asked, and he had been in Alaska for well over twenty years. I always had the feeling that he was hiding from the law because of something pretty bad. Murder? Bank robbery? A vengeful, hated wife? Something like that. Maybe Ginnis wasn’t even his right name, which was nothing new in Alaska, where half the citizens were trying to live down something in their past. But he’d always treated me right, even to making loans to tide me over till payday. There was an enlisted man moneylender at the fort—every fort has one—but I hated the greedy bastard and wouldn’t do business with him. I wondered if Ginnis knew anything about the judge.
I asked him, keeping my voice low.
Ginnis wasn’t the kind to show surprise. “A traveler told me about him dying up in Dulcimer. You got something to do with him? Guess you do at that. Didn’t think you’d come to root for gold. Hard work’s not in your line. You want to know what I know. What I know is the judge is dead and plenty of hardcases are glad of that. Too many men from California up here. Men the judge put in the pokey for too long. Me, I keep away from judges, so it’s no matter to me.”
“But the judge is all right,” I said.
“He’s not all right, Saddler. He’s dead.”
Hella laughed and some of the men looked up, some with subdued lust, some with sentimental longing. Women are scarce in Alaska, and Hella was the kind of woman for a lonely man to dream about.
I laughed too. “I mean the body, Ginnis.”
“Body’s in its coffin in Dulcimer, all froze solid and standing up agin the wall of an open woodshed. Saw it myself ’cause I had dealings with a man in that miserable town. Men come from all over to take a look at it. And do other things, from what I hear. Don’t like to say what, with the lady present.”
“That’s pretty bad,” I said, thinking of hardcases pissing on the old coot’s coffin. Still, they hadn’t burned it or put it through an ice-hole in the river.
“I’m going to bring the body out. The two of us.” I nodded toward Hella, who was eating moose steak like the big woman she was. “You think they’ll try to stop me, the hardcases?”
“Why not just burn a hole in the ground and bury it?” Ginnis asked reasonably enough. “Ground will freeze over it like stone. The badmen wouldn’t take the time to dig it up again.”
“They want the judge back in Frisco,” I said. “He was a very important man.”
“He’s not important now. I’ll go get the pie.”
He came back with a steaming apple pie and a hunk of hard cheese. I was beginning to feel good in spite of it all.
I said, “You think we can make it over the mountains to Valdez? You been in this country about as long as any man.”
“I guess anything can be done,” Ginnis said. “I’d just hate to be the one to try it. You want a suggestion, Saddler? One that’d make it easier and save you much hardship and grief?”
“I’m ready to listen.”
“Go on back to Frisco, find a dead tramp someplace, put him in a cheap pine coffin, batter it a bit, say here’s the judge. He’s been dead a long time, will be dead a lot longer by the time you get him back. They’d never open the coffin after all that time.”
I said, grinning, “He’s frozen solid. The idea is to keep him frozen in a block of ice all the way back so his widow can have him unfrozen so she can prove who he is.”
“Doesn’t she know what he looks like?”
Hella laughed into her coffee cup. “It’s a legal matter, Ginnis.”
“I get it,” Ginnis said. “A money thing. Then why not just cut off the head and freeze that? Then they can compare it to a photograph.”
Ginnis was pleased with all his ideas.
“They can’t let a head lie in state,” I said. “They want the whole corpse for a big funeral.”
“This is a depressing conversation, Mr. Ginnis,” Hella said, attacking a big wedge of pie.
Ginnis nodded. “I agree, missy. I’ll go get us a drink.” After Ginnis got a bottle of rye from the kitchen he and Hella had a drink but I held off until the four men paid and left. Then I heard the sound of their teams moving out and I went out to see if they really were going away. The night was clear and I could see them moving upriver toward Dawson. I stood and watched them until they disappeared before I went in and joined the others.
“What’s eating on you?” Ginnis asked, already bright-eyed and merry with whiskey. “Nobody fools around my place, never have.”
“Just being careful,” I said.
“What kind of trouble you in?”
I had my first drink, a big one. “You know most everything that goes on in Alaska, anyway this end of it. You know if any of Soapy Smith’s boys operate around Dulcimer?”
“Course they do,” Ginnis said. “Soapy’s more than the King of Skagway. He’s
the King of Crime all over the territory. If the governor was elected instead of appointed, Soapy’d rig the election certain sure. As it is, the governor, such as he is, hasn’t done one thing about Soapy. What you got to do with him?”
“I think he’s got ideas about the judge’s body.”
“What kind of ideas?”
“Steal it maybe.”
Ginnis said, “You only had two drinks this far, Saddler, so it can’t be that. Now why would Soapy want to steal a corpse?”
I told him about the judge’s brothers, his widow, the money. “Soapy’s the kind to do anything.”
“Truly said. I don’t know what to think, though. Mark my words now. You’ll have a bad enemy—the worst—if you go against Soapy Smith. It’s been tried and the men who tried it are all dead. On the Yukon side of the line you might get some protection from the Mounties. On this side ...”
Ginnis shook his head, then drew his finger across his throat. “Forget this dead man and go into the sledding business with your friend here. Or hunt for gold. Or open a saloon—that’s where the real gold is. Failing that, go back to the States and stay there. The old soap merchant can’t bother you there.”
I had another drink and it made me braver than I was.
“We’re going ahead with it.”
“Well, we all have to die sometime,” Ginnis said cheerfully. “I’ve had my say and you’ve had yours. One last word: watch out for a half-breed calls himself DuSang when you get to the town of Fort Yukon. That feller’s a Soapy Smith man and it’s rumored he murdered the owner of the biggest trading post in the place. The body wasn’t found so nobody could dispute DuSang’s signed bill of sale for the post. Not that anybody would want to dispute it. Like as not, the half-breed’s boys stripped the poor man and left him for the wolves. Those gray bastards even grind up the bones so there’s nothing left.”
I looked at Hella, who wasn’t one bit put off by Ginnis’s grisly theory. In fact, she was smiling. But even so I wondered if I shouldn’t force her to stay behind. With all her trail experience, getting back to Dawson would be like a stroll down a country road.
“Don’t even think it,” she said, reading my thoughts. “Few wolves are left around here. Most of the wolves are in the mountains.”
“That’s where we’re going,” I said.
“We have rifles,” Hella said. “The wolves will be more interested in the dogs than us. We will build big fires.” Ginnis hiccupped. “I know what I’m going to do. Go to bed. You going to stay the night?
“We’d like to,” I said. “Sleeping in the snow can be wearisome.”
Ginnis said, “I got four for-rent rooms in the build-on. They’re all vacant right now. You can take your pick. Not much of a pick though. They’re all the same. “Finish the whiskey. There’s more in the kitchen. The rooms are through that door.”
“How much for the meal?” I asked him.
“Nothing.” Ginnis turned away with a strange look on his face.
“Why not?”
“I’d as soon not say,” Ginnis answered. Then he barred the door and went to his room in the back.
After his door closed Hella said quietly, “He is sure we are going to die.”
I nodded. “He could be right. You’re not afraid?”
“I am just sleepy and want to go to bed. Come on, Jim. We will drink the rest of the whiskey under the blankets.”
That night was the best one we’d had so far because of the awareness of death, of its possibility. It had taken someone else to say it, to make it plain. I don’t know why that was so, for we had just ambushed the gang of killers on our trail, yet there it was. In bed there was a real wildness in Hella; it wasn’t just the whiskey but the knowledge that we might not have long together. I felt it too so I handled her like a precious object, which she was. Outside the wind howled and the penned dogs barked, but after a while we forgot about danger and death and concentrated on what we were doing.
We were both tired when we started to fuck, but as soon as I thrust into her she revived and so did I. But we fucked slowly—we had a long night ahead of us and we didn’t want to wear ourselves. Our slow fucking gave us as much pleasure as if we had gone at it fast and furious. I took my time as I slid it in and out of her. At times we rested and I lay on top of her, smelling her blond hair. Her hair was whiter than the white of the pillow. We hadn’t had a bath lately, but it didn’t matter.
“I love fucking slowly,” Hella whispered. “Your big cock seems to get bigger when we do it slowly. Doing it the slow way makes me so wet I am afraid Mr. Ginnis’s sheets will be badly stained. Do you think he will be mad at us because of me?”
“Don’t worry about Ginnis,” I said. “He rents rooms on the river and gets all sorts of people. He expects to get his sheets stained. Anyway I’ll leave some money over there on the dresser. He doesn’t want to charge us, but we’ll be gone before he finds it.”
We both came together and when it was over we were as weary as we had been when we arrived. We both longed for sleep; in a few minutes we slept. Hella murmured in her sleep; the words were Finnish. I was only half aware of her voice. Sometimes you are half-aware that you’re asleep and how enjoyable it is. That was it with me that night. Even while I slept I knew there was a warm, beautiful woman beside me in the bed. Once Hella threw her leg over mine and I stroked it. Later I was conscious that I was stroking her pussy. She crooned a little when I did that. A few times she giggled like a young girl.
The night passed that way.
In the morning Ginnis gave us a big breakfast and some supplies and we started out for Fort Yukon, thirty miles away. A gray dawn brought snow flurries and a wind that grew stronger with every mile we traveled. The dogs began to falter and the only thing was to rig up shoulder harnesses, standard equipment on all Northern sleds, and give them a hand with the heavy sleds. We faced into the wind with bent heads, encouraging the dogs with shouts. We went on like this for an hour, then the wind began to die. By then the dogs were exhausted and so were we. The snow kept up but it was light and feathery now, and we were that many miles closer to Fort Yukon.
It took us the rest of the day to reach this new town everybody said was so tough. The old fort was right on the bank of the river, the sprawling raw town was about a mile back from it. Hella was surprised when I said we were going into the fort.
“But why?” she said.
“I want to talk to the officer in charge. The judge was federal. Maybe that’ll make a difference. If there’s going to be trouble in Dulcimer I’d like a few troopers along.” The gates of the fort were open: no Indian trouble in Alaska at any time. But the sentry yelled at us to halt when we started in. There was a small glowing brazier in the sentry hut where he was trying to keep himself warm. He was young and looked miserable.
“You want the town not the fort,” he said peevishly. “Town’s up on the hill. That’s where I’d like to be.”
“We want the officer in charge,” I said. “Federal business.”
“What kind of federal business?” I knew he didn’t want to be rooted out of his hut.
“Just show us where we can find him.”
“Captain Riggs won’t like this,” the soldier said, but he came out in the cold and pointed. “Over there, that new building all lit up.”
“It’s a lot fancier than the old commandant’s quarters,” I told Hella when he passed us through. “In my day the commandant lived in a log hut. This officer’s had the men working hard.”
A sour-faced man in his late fifties, with an unbuttoned tunic and a glass in his hand, came to the door when I knocked on it. He stared at us with unfriendly eyes and took a gulp of whiskey. “What the blazes do you want?” he said in a rasping voice that was as bitter as his face. I could see he was slightly drunk.
“All right if we come in?” I said. “I’d like to talk to you. We’re cold and it won’t take long.”
Reluctantly, he moved out of the doorway to let us in. “Imagine be
ing cold in Alaska,” he said. “Be brief, mister, whoever you are. I haven’t had my supper yet.” There was a big room with rough but comfortable furniture. A log fire blazed in a stone fireplace. Other rooms branched off the main room and cooking smells came from one of them. Over the fireplace was the tinted photograph of a pleasant-looking woman in her thirties; no other feminine touches brightened up the big room. Beside the fire there was a leather-covered armchair with a table pulled close. On the table was a bottle of whiskey, mostly empty.
“You’re Captain Riggs?” I said.
“I’m the officer in command,” he said as if I’d called him a dirty name. He sat down by the fire and put more whiskey in his glass. Here was a man with a heavy chip on his shoulder. He didn’t even ask us to sit down.
Hella went to the fire to warm her hands. I said, “It’s about the body of Judge Slocum in Dulcimer. I’ve come to take it back to San Francisco.”
The ill-mannered captain put away more whiskey. “What’s stopping you?”
I told him what he must have known, that there was hard feeling against the judge. I said there were men there who might try to stop me from recovering the body.
“Rubbish,” he said. “But if you have trouble, what’s it got to do with me? The whole thing is a civilian matter. It’s got nothing to do with the United States Army.”
I wanted to slap his drunkard’s puffy face, but that wouldn’t get us any further along the road. Besides, he was too old. So I held my temper and said, “He was a United States Judge. A federal judge. You don’t think his body should be treated with respect, get a decent funeral?”
“What’s this about respect, mister?”
“They’ve been pissing on his coffin, that’s what,” I said.
“Who the hell told you that?”
“A man who was here, a man who doesn’t lie.”
He glanced at Hella but was drunk enough not to care what he said. Which was, “A little piss won’t hurt him.”
“Then you won’t help me, give any protection if there’s trouble with these hardcases? All I’m asking for is an escort out of town. Then we’ll be on our own.”