Dawn presented a terrible sight. Other boats that had followed them were smashed, their occupants nowhere to be seen. The river was like a miniature mountain range, full of jagged, upended ice blocks, some as large as houses, frozen into immobility. As far as the eye could see up and down the Yukon, nothing moved.
Somehow they got to Fort Yukon, floundering over the surface of the icy river, sinking into the snow along the banks. They felled trees and made roaring bonfires and shivered and starved. It was sixty-seven degrees below zero. All around them, branches of trees were exploding as the sap froze, making a perpetual cannonade, when they finally trudged into Fort Yukon.
And there they spent the winter.
It was a winter Roxanne never liked to think about, even years later. Crowded and quarrelsome, the prospectors were jammed around red-hot sheet-iron stoves, eating short rations provided by the hunters who now and then ventured out during the short winter days and bagged an occasional moose. Wedged on the floor beneath one of the bunks, which were built three tiers high to accommodate as many as possible in the cramped cabin, Roxanne sometimes found herself dreaming of Seattle and the wicked wonderful night she had spent with Case. She shivered as she remembered the silken feel of his smooth gambler’s hands on her body, the surging response that she had not troubled to hide and that had delighted him. She wondered now, had Case made it to Dawson? She remembered how one ship had blown up, how others were stranded partway on the journey. And there were all the terrible things that could happen to a man in Alaska. She had heard that many new arrivals had died on the trail or drowned in the rivers.
No, Case was alive, must be alive. He’d be sitting at a green felt table with stacks of chips before him, dealing out the cards, his hard face looking just as it had in Seattle. . . .
And sometimes, on the darkest nights, when the wind howling round the cabin shrieked and penetrated the chinks, when the temperature outside dropped to seventy degrees below zero, she thought of Baltimore. Then the cold she felt had nothing to do with the savage blizzard outside. She thought of Rhodes, who had broken her heart, and sometimes, at the edge of sleep, his green eyes still seemed to be smiling down into hers. She felt—not the lighthearted ecstasy she felt when she thought of Case—but something deeper, something hurtful, a kind of essential hunger that would never be assuaged. At those moments she sometimes reached out for Denby, forgetting that the women were herded together on one side of the room, the men on the other. Then she would bury her face in the rolled-up coat that served as a pillow, and dry sobs would wrack her slender body. But morning would find her dry-eyed and ready to do her share of the back-breaking work that had to be done in order to stay alive in Fort Yukon.
Leighton helped break the monotony of life there. Crouched beside a sheet-iron stove in the evenings, he entertained them with stories of life in Paris, London, Rome. Through his eyes Roxanne wandered London’s foggy streets, heard Big Ben chime, rode through Hyde Park greeting friends, attended a Paris Beaux Arts ball where women wore only high heels and fans, roamed the Coliseum with its dozen of cats, and fed the pigeons in St. Peter’s Square. Through his eyes she saw a glimmering of something else: a gracious way of life with an international flavor she had not known at the Coulters’ Baltimore town house.
How could he bear to leave all that? she wondered.
Even in the daytime, Denby hugged the stove. But she and the golden giant would go out on good days into the stinging arctic air, walking in the new-fallen snow on the snowshoes Leighton had rigged for them. They walked and looked at the jagged surface of the frozen river, at the gale-lashed trees in the pale grayness of the short winter days—and occasionally Leighton shot a white hare. They would flounder back and shake themselves off like dogs, making wet patches on the floor where the snow from their clothing melted, and join the others sitting about the plank floor or—exhausted—curl up and try to sleep.
On days like that Roxanne wondered why Leighton made no move toward her. She was puzzled by him. His eyes told her he wanted her, but when they were alone, he never made any move to possess her. It was as if he blew hot, then cold. The winter wore on, but she couldn’t figure him out.
Then one day the weather was surprisingly nice after a fresh fall of snow, and she and Leighton were trudging through a wonderland of lacy white branches against a silver gray sky, when they stopped by mutual consent on the bank of the frozen Yukon. Here they were far from the fort, and there was a stillness around them as if even time stood still. ‘Their breath was frosty on the chill air. A ptarmigan took wing near them and an icicle broke from a tree branch, falling to the ice with a bell-like tinkle. Clad in her makinaw, long wool skirt and boots, Roxanne leaned against a tree trunk and let the red woolen shawl she was wearing over her head fall down around her shoulders.
As if he could not help himself, Leighton leaned down and covered her soft mouth tenderly with his own, wrapping her in his big arms. Her lips warmed beneath that gentle pressure, and she gazed up at him with troubled blue eyes as he suddenly pulled away from her.
His voice was husky. “I shouldn’t have done that, Roxanne. It was treacherous of me,” he muttered and stalked away, leaving Roxanne struggling to catch up with him. But her heart, which had felt frozen by the long winter, lightened. What Marge had told her back in Sheep Camp had been true after all. The golden giant loved her. For a treacherous moment she wished he were not quite so honorable, wished that he had crushed her in his arms and made a nest for them in the snow. Her cheeks grew hot thinking of it. She wrapped her shawl around her head, and they tramped back together, but she could not meet Leighton’s eyes as they reached the fort, where Denby waited disconsolate by the fire.
That was the only time during the whole long winter that Leighton took her in his arms, and by spring she was convinced that his honor was too strong—he would never touch her again.
With the coming of spring the ice broke on the Yukon, and, except for floating chunks and occasional ice jams, the river’s channel was clear again. As if they were one body, the whole heterogeneous mass of humanity that had wintered in Fort Yukon was on the move again. Denby and Roxanne and Leighton made it upriver with the others, back to the town they’d fled so precipitously the fall before—Dawson City.
They found Dawson agog with war news. During the time they had been at Fort Yukon, the battleship Maine had been blown up in Havana harbor, and the United States was now at war with Spain. They also found Dawson girding itself for a different kind of onslaught, of staggering proportions. Five thousand people were reputed to be camped on the shores of Lake Bennett, waiting for the thaw, at which time they would surge downriver into Dawson. Another five thousand camped at Lake Lindeman and along the upper Yukon. Countless thousands already were attempting the White Pass and the Chilkoot, and there were lines of river steamers crammed with eager stampeders heading up the mouth of the Yukon. All this in addition to the ragged hundreds who, like their own party, had been stranded below Dawson the previous autumn.
The Klondike 1898-1899
Chapter 24
Once again they were in Dawson. This time, instead of facing starvation in the chill subarctic night, they faced starvation in the long subarctic day.
Their money had run out. Leighton muttered something about a check from a trust fund that was sure to come and stalked off into the forest to hunt. Meat was as good as cash in Dawson, with its inpouring hordes. Denby gave Roxanne a helpless look, and she returned it.
They were walking about the unprepossessing shack town of Dawson worrying when they heard a shout: “Hey, Roxie!”
Roxanne turned to see big Marge, her face split with a grin, bearing down on them. She had just got into town, having spent the winter camped with thousand of others on the shores of Lake Bennett. But she had made money all winter doing laundry and, after buying dogs and sleds, had started downriver before the ice broke. She had some bad moments on slushy ice, but she had made it. She and a new husband, acquired on Lake Benne
tt and married to her by a real preacher—’course they had no license, but she guessed it was legal. Anyway, they were living together fair and square! Marge gave a shout of laughter that caused passing miners’ heads to turn.
Roxanne turned to meet the new husband. He was a shy little schoolteacher from Oregon with a shock of iron-gray hair and a surprisingly sweet smile, who gave his big bride a look of pure adoration. Roxanne wanted to laugh at their incongruity and to cry at their simple and obvious love for each other.
“How are you and Denby making out?” Marge wanted to know. “And where is that big feller?”
“Leighton has gone hunting,” said Roxanne.
“Gold or moose?”
“Moose.”
“Right sensible of him.” Marge nodded her head. “That’s what you should be doing too, boy!” She slapped Denby forcefully on the back and he looked pained. “You found any gold yet?”
“We just got here,” explained Roxanne. “And the fact is, Marge, we can neither go nor stay—we have no money.”
“That’s bad,” Marge said. “Dawson’s an expensive town, sure enough. Didn’t take but one look to see that! Me, I’m establishing a laundry. Got me some soap and a fire-builder!” She gave her husband a jovial poke in the ribs; he winced and grinned. “You want to come to work for me, Roxanne? All the miners for miles around’ll bring their dirty long johns in just for a look at you!”
Roxanne cast an apprehensive look at Denby. “Yes,” she said before he could object. “That is, if you can put us up. We have no place to live.”
“You will have! I’m sure not stayin’ in Dawson though. I’m goin’ where the action is! Out to Bonanza; them’s the boys has got the gold to afford to get their long johns washed.”
“Bonanza’s twenty miles away,” said Denby, looking interested.
“The twenty most traveled miles in this part of the world, I’d wager,” said Marge. “And all of them’ll be beatin’ a path to my laundry when we get it started.”
Roxanne smiled at Marge. Before Marge had holloed at them, she’d been considering trying to find Case. It would have been a bit difficult since ladies didn’t enter saloons and she could hardly send Denby on such an errand. Now she was saved from begging Case’s aid, but was almost sorry. She’d wanted to see the gambler again. Those stolen moments in a Seattle hotel room had lingered in her memory and had kept her going when Leighton’s bright smile was absent. Leighton was a man of family who hobnobbed with the wealthy when he wasn’t out slumming with adventurers. But Case . . . Case was like herself, tossed out on the tide of life to sink or find his way, and the rough seas had tarnished not only his eyes but his heart and soul. She felt a kind of kinship with Case that she had never felt with another human being.
Denby cheered up when Marge cried in her big voice, “Well, let’s all stay at a hotel tonight, seein’s we’ve got to rough it in the morning goin’ out to Bonanza!”
The hotel left much to be desired, but it was luxury after their cramped life at Fort Yukon and their miserable journey upriver to Dawson by boat. Morning found them ready to gulp down flapjacks and maple syrup greedily and make the trek to the Bonanza diggings in good style. That journey took them up the Klondike River. Marge had tossed her head disdainfully at Dawson City, built on a swamp and standing like a street marker at the junction of the Klondike and the Yukon. “Carnival kind of town,” she muttered. “Out where they work, that’s where men’ll want their laundry done!” Marge led the way to Bonanza, selected the site, negotiated with the owners and supervised the building, ordering her husband and Denby and Roxanne around with equal good nature.
“She’s sure bossy,” grumbled Denby.
“She’s feeding us,” said Roxanne. “Where would we be without her?”
Having no answer to that, Denby subsided. But he drifted away once the laundry got started and there was constant heavy work to be done. He heard rumors of gold strikes: on the Stewart River, the McQueston, the Pelly. When he got word of a new strike, he was happy for a day or two. He’d make love to Roxanne—short unsatisfying romps when she was so tired she almost went to sleep in his arms. And with his arms about her, he’d coax her to stake him with the money she’d earned. It was a sure thing this time—it was always a sure thing. He’d rush out on wild goose chases that took all the money Roxanne earned. They always came to nothing. Denby would come back tired and disheartened and in a bad temper. He never mentioned seeing Case, for which Roxanne was thankful. She supposed shrewdedly that Denby was afraid that if he saw Case, Case might want his money back.
Between excursions of prospecting with Denby, Leighton packed in moose meat to pay Marge for his room and board and laundry—and for staking him on his trips with Denby. When the big man was there, he carried huge tubs of water and firewood for Roxanne. In the long subarctic days when it was still daylight at midnight, work on Bonanza and nearby Eldorado went on backbreakingly around the clock, and Leighton worked tirelessly to help her. Roxanne was grateful to him. Sometimes, stirring the boiling water with a long stick, she was so tired she could drop. Into that boiling water she thrust an endless tangle of shirts and trousers and long johns stiff with prespiration and dirt. Marge’s laundry did a thriving business.
Soon the weather grew pleasant. Brier roses perfumed the valleys, and the lupins blanketed the upland slopes with violet hues. Everywhere amid the rocks, berries were ripening—raspberries, cranberries, currants and blueberries. Roxanne’s work was now a gasping, perspiring business. The afternoon temperatures sometimes soared so high that she had to stop and fan herself; her worn clothes clung to her wetly. On the hills the snow melted fast, forming thousands of gurgling little rivulets that seemed to rise from the earth itself and that cascaded down into now dense subtropical vegetation. Nearby on Bonanza and Eldorado, men sluiced and worked back-breakingly with shovels to wash free the yellow gold from the frozen muck of last winter’s diggings. This spring cleanup would establish whether a man was rich or poor. Gossip swirled about—some people expected to realize as much as three hundred thousand dollars from the frozen muck they’d dug out last winter.
Roxanne, struggling with the big tubs, fighting mosquitoes that buzzed in thick clouds, her lovely face flushed as she stirred clothes into the boiling water in the midsummer heat, was cynical. Stories, she’d learned, grew big in the Klondike as every man tried to out-brag the other. But plainly some had struck it rich; she saw men toting bags of gold, and Marge was paid off in nuggets. Sometimes they tipped Roxanne in nuggets. All the miners liked her. Some of them were even a little in love with her and followed her wistfully with their eyes. The Dawson blond, they called her, as if Dawson weren’t full of bright blond fancy women, and other shades as well—black, white and brown. By night Roxanne fell into bed so tired she could not move, sleeping under only mosquito netting. Denby rarely made love to her anymore. On the boat and at Fort Yukon life had been too cold and too public. Here at Big Marge’s in the midsummer heat, he was sulky because he’d found no gold.
Eventually, Case heard that Roxanne was there and came out to Bonanza to see her. Unlike the grubby bearded miners, who looked as if they’d slept for a season in their clothes, Case was trim and clean-shaven, his white shirt snowy against his somber dark suit. Even his boots shone. When Roxanne looked up and saw him standing there, she almost dropped her heavy washtub. He didn’t offer to help her with it. Instead he leaned against a tree and looked her up and down. “Hello, Roxanne.”
Slowly she set the tub down and straightened up. “Hello, Case.”
“Why didn’t you look me up?” He sounded almost angry. “You wouldn’t have had to do this.” He nodded contemptuously at the tub.
“It’s honest work,” sighed Roxanne, irritatingly aware of her worn skirt and mended blouse and damp tumbled hair.
A bitter little smile played around his mouth. “So that’s it,” he said. “Still the unbendable little housewife.”
Roxanne cast a sad look around her at t
he slippery mud, the long clothes lines. “I wouldn’t call it homemaking,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “I’m at the Last Nugget, Roxanne.” She knew the place—one of the biggest saloons in Dawson with gambling day and night. “Why don’t you come back to town with me and let me show you around Dawson?”
The thought of going with him tugged at her. “Ladies don’t go into saloons,” she murmured.
Case laughed. “Ladies don’t come to the Klondike,” he said. “They may start out as ladies, but by the time they reach Dawson, they’re women! Come on, that isn’t your reason.”
“It’s Denby,” she admitted. “He’s out on the Pelly, and I wouldn’t want him to hear when he gets back that I’d gone into town with you. You see, Denby doesn’t know—about us.”
Case gave her a mocking look. “Isn’t it time he found out? You can’t spend your life washing clothes on Bonanza Creek!”
She thought she owed him an explanation.“I’ve got to get Denby on his feet—somehow. I keep hoping he’ll discover gold.”
“So you can leave him?”
Her already hot face flushed still darker. The thought had crossed her mind. It was one thing to leave a down-and-out husband, quite another to leave a prosperous young miner.
Case gave her a thoughtful look. “Then I hope he discovers gold too, Roxanne. Suggest to him that he might strike it rich at the Last Nugget.”
“No—I don’t mean that way, Case.” Her voice was hurried, embarrassed. “That would be—” She stopped helplessly. Denby had to make it honestly—not by being hoodwinked by her lover into believing he had a winning streak at cards. “Did you bring your laundry?” she asked weakly.
Case gave her a blank look. “Did you think I came out here twenty miles to bring you some dirty shirts?” he asked bitterly. “You can come in to town when you’re damn well good and ready, and we’ll talk!”
These Golden Pleasures Page 29