Gold Mountain

by Vicki Delany

  A tent was set up upstream, by itself. A man came out, doing up his trouser buttons. Another man entered, after slapping something into the waiting palm of Joey LeBlanc, Dawson’s most notorious Madame.

  Graham Donohue was crouched over a large, flat rock. Several men were with him, and they all held cards in their hands. Someone reached out and scooped up a pile of coins, bills, and a single gold nugget. Graham threw his cards onto the ground in disgust and got to his feet. Then he saw us standing on the other side of the bank.

  He raised one hand in greeting, as if he were waving to me from the far side of Front Street rather than watching me return from the dead. Or at least from the sort of thrilling adventure you’d think a newspaperman would be interested in. He said something and heads began to turn. A couple of people waved. The banjo player stopped playing and Betsy, thankfully, cut herself off mid-note. The donkeys and horse lifted their heads and the three dogs tied to a stake in the ground barked a greeting to Millie.

  Even the dogs didn’t seem too excited at our return.

  “Strangest darn thing I ever did see,” Richard muttered.

  Graham was waiting at the riverbank as we crossed. Noticeably, he did not step foot in the water to approach us. Everyone else gathered behind him. Even Joey LeBlanc and the ugly red-headed whore named Kate, whose skirt was bunched up at the back to reveal a filthy petticoat, joined the crowd.

  We crossed the creek in a few steps. The icy water felt delicious on my aching feet.

  “Glad you made it back, Fiona,” Graham asked. “Did you find it?”

  “Find what?”

  “Gold Mountain.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No such thing.”

  “Where’s Sheridan?”

  “Dead.”

  “Hello, Mrs. MacGillivray,” Betsy said. “We’re just resting here a mite before coming after you. Thought you might need some help.”

  Heads nodded and everyone murmured in agreement. Joey LeBlanc grunted.

  I had trained in the salons of Belgravia and country houses of Surrey on how to greet one’s arch-enemy. I gave Joey a smile. “How terribly kind of you to be concerned, Mrs. LeBlanc. As you can see, I’m well and looking forward most anxiously to returning home.”

  She turned away and growled something at Kate. The two women stalked back to their tent. No one followed them.

  Richard spoke to the crowd. “There’s nothing to see. Nothing but wilderness out there, far as the northern sea. I suggest you people pack up and get yourselves back to town. I’m requisitioning one of those donkeys for Constable McAllen, who’s injured. Any complaints? I thought not. Angus, get the horse and help your mother.”

  The crowd drifted away. “Might try again in the spring,” I heard the banjo player say. “Ain’t a good time to try for Gold Mountain now. Winter’s comin’.”

  Betsy agreed.

  “Nothing there,” someone said. “Coulda told you that. ’Course I never believed in it, just wanted to see how far you fools would go.”

  Everyone else, it appeared, also didn’t believe in it.

  Joe Hamilton approached me shyly, twisting his filthy, tattered hat in one hand. “I’m pleased to see you’re fine, Mrs. MacGillivray. I came with Frank over there. We caught up to Betsy and some of the others on the trail. I wanted to help you, but they all decided they were too tired to cross the creek. Seemed strange to me, but then the donkey wouldn’t come either, and I didn’t want to carry on by myself. I figured young Angus wouldn’t let any harm come to you.”

  I smiled, turning my head slightly against the onslaught of foul breath from his mouthful of blackened teeth. “You were correct about that. Uh, Mr. Hamilton, did you yourself ford the creek?”

  “I told Frank and Betsy we had to hurry, that you needed our help, but they came over all tired. I’ve been carrying wood back and forth for the fires all day. I could have set myself up in business if I wanted to. No one else seems to want to bother.”

  “Come and see me at the Savoy, Mr. Hamilton, when we get back to town. I might have an offer for you.” He didn’t ask what sort of offer, just touched his hat and walked away.

  Joe Hamilton was well-spoken and clearly educated. He drifted around the docks, making a few cents here and there running errands, though he didn’t earn enough money to buy soap to wash either his clothes or himself or purchase a new hat. But he’d always been unfailingly polite to me, and I never heard anyone say a bad word about him. I’d ask Ray to find him a job. Something that didn’t involve breathing on the customers.

  Angus and Richard sorted out their few belongings and re-loaded Millie. Once that was done, my son helped me to mount my old friend Soapy. The horse stamped his feet but didn’t shy away. Richard got McAllen, protesting that he was perfectly fine to walk, while gritting his teeth against the pain, onto an emaciated donkey. Richard carried his rifle; the other had been reloaded and now rested alongside the donkey’s flanks. Graham Donohue shifted his own pack. And thus we set off, at the head of a strange ragged procession, back to Dawson. Home.

  While the breaking of camp was in process I took the two rocks I’d found in the mountain stream out of my pocket, taking care to keep them concealed from onlookers. It was early evening and the light was good. I balanced them in my hand. They were heavy and dull yellow in colour. I pressed my fingernail into the surface of one. It was very soft, and my nail made a small indentation.

  Pure gold.

  I put them away, full of thought.

  I never saw or heard of Mr. Paul Sheridan again. Perhaps he died of the knife wounds I inflicted; perhaps he hadn’t been able to survive alone even in that lush wilderness. Perhaps it was so wonderful he never wanted to leave.

  Perhaps he found Gold Mountain to be as difficult to escape as it was to enter.

  Epilogue

  Corporal Richard Sterling knocked at the back door of Mrs. Mann’s boarding house at seven o’clock on Monday morning. It had been a week since he’d returned from the pursuit of Paul Sheridan and Fiona MacGillivray, and the rhythm of life in the mud-soaked streets of Dawson City had fallen back into its usual frantic pace.

  The previous evening, he’d been called into the office of Inspector Cortlandt Starnes, temporary commander of the NWMP in the Yukon. Sterling had stood at attention while Starnes congratulated him on returning one of Dawson’s most prominent citizens safely to town. And on not returning Soapy Smith’s henchman, which was never stated but nevertheless understood.

  Starnes then gave Sterling one more order.

  Mr. Mann opened the door, pulling his suspenders over his shoulders. “Mrs. MacGillivray asleep,” he said. The door began to shut again.

  “I’m not here to see her, but Angus. Is he up?”

  “Breakfast,” Mr. Mann said.

  The door opened and Sterling was admitted. Mrs. Mann stood at the stove, stirring the porridge pot. The smell of toast and coffee filled the kitchen. Angus sat at the table, caught in the act of spreading orange marmalade on his toast. He broke into a big smile. “Morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, Angus, Ma’am. This is Mr. Templeton.” Sterling introduced his companion, a short chubby man with neatly trimmed hair and moustache and intelligent brown eyes. He wore a pair of thick spectacles perched on a beak of a nose that would do a hawk proud. He was well-dressed in high boots with a long wool double-breasted jacket over a clean white shirt and tie. He took off his cap when he entered the house and nodded politely to Mrs. Mann.

  “I’d like to take Angus away from his duties at the shop once again,” Sterling said. “I trust this will be the last time.”

  Angus jumped to his feet, toast in hand. “Where are we going?”

  Templeton laughed. “I see what you mean, Corporal. Eager indeed. Finish your breakfast, son.”

  Angus stuffed the food into his mouth. “Finished,” he mumbled.

  “Coffee?” Mrs. Mann asked the new arrivals.

  “No, thank you, Ma’am. We breakfasted at the Fort.”
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  Mr. Mann stroked his chin. “If sis is police business then okays.”

  Millie was waiting outside, a single canvas pack, lightly filled, slung over her back. Angus added the tin containing his lunch to her load and gave her an affectionate scratch behind the ears. Mr. Templeton carried a bulging pack of his own.

  Sterling explained their mission as they walked through the morning streets. “Mr. Templeton’s a surveyor. The creek we followed heading north isn’t on any maps, and the government wants the location marked. We won’t be travelling up it this time, just want to make a note of the exact location. Won’t take us more than a couple of hours to get there and back, and I figured you deserve to be in on the recording of the new river.”

  “Can I name it?” Angus said.

  Templeton laughed. “Perhaps you can. MacGillivray River is a mouthful though.”

  “Angus Creek?”

  “Sterling Stream has a nice ring.”

  They all laughed. It was a good day for a walk. It was going to be a scorcher of a day, but the trees and the river would keep the temperature down. Sterling was looking forward to a pleasant outing for a change. A chance to get a break from town and spend some time in the wilderness without a care in the world. They followed the same route they had last week, past the city’s outskirts and along the north bank of the Klondike River. Even in the few days since they’d last come this way, the town had grown. Men were hard at work chopping down trees and turning them into building logs. More men, a dark steady river all its own, marched down the other bank, heading south to the gold fields.

  “We could name the river after my mother,” Angus said. “Fiona River. It was because of her we discovered it.”

  Sterling thought the peaceful little creek flowing into the Klondike was nothing at all like the tempestuous Fiona MacGillivray. If a river were to be named after her, it should be a great waterway, pouring into nothing less than the ocean. He didn’t say so.

  The question of what to name the new river became a moot point.

  They couldn’t find it.

  To Templeton’s increasing impatience, they walked up and down the Klondike. It had rained several times over the past week, and all traces of their footsteps, the horse and cart they’d been following, and all the people, donkeys, wagons that trooped after them, were gone. They followed the Klondike River much farther than Angus and Sterling believed they’d been, until eventually they met up with a river that was on the government maps. They swore they hadn’t come this far.

  They came back, eyes on the ground, checking every step, eventually hearing the sounds of civilization in the west. Sterling took off his hat and scratched at his head.

  “If you’re playing some sort of a joke on me, Corporal, I am not amused,” Templeton snapped. He shifted his pack. It contained his surveying equipment, and he was hot and tired and bad-tempered.

  “No joke. It’s just not there.”

  “The creek might have dried up,” Angus said. “Although that’s not likely with all this rain. But even then the riverbed should be visible. It was about five feet across, right, sir?”

  “The banks were a foot high and there was five feet or so of a watercourse. Open water. No trees or bushes.”

  They searched for the rest of the day as Templeton got increasingly angry and Sterling increasingly frustrated. Angus had the idea of letting Millie lead the way to possibly retrace their steps. But the dog simply sniffed after rabbits and enjoyed the day’s excursion.

  The sun was low in the sky when they got back to town, tired and hungry and perturbed. Templeton stalked off muttering something about wasting government time.

  Sterling and Angus watched him go. Stoves and cooking fires glowed on the hills of both sides of the river, and light streamed from steamboats and make-shift rafts being used as houses. Kerosene and oil lamps were lit in the dancehalls up and down Front Street. Music, men’s voices, and women’s laughter poured out of the doors.

  They could see Fiona MacGillivray inside the Savoy, drifting across the saloon. She wore a scarlet dress and her thick black hair was piled up under a scrap of a hat more ostrich feather than cloth. She jerked her head toward one of the bartenders, and he hurried to serve a well-dressed man at the end of the bar.

  “What do you think happened to it, Corporal Sterling?” Angus asked. “To that creek?”

  “I’ve seen waterways dry up if beavers build a dam upriver, or something blocking the way moves, and the water can turn in another direction. But for the creek bed to grow into fully-treed forest in a week?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s better we don’t know. I’m going inside to check everyone’s behaving themselves. You better get off home.”

  “Night, sir.”

  “Good night, Angus.”

  Corporal Richard Sterling of the North-West Mounted Police stood on the boardwalk for a moment, watching the tall, lanky boy make his way down the crowded street. When he turned back to the Savoy, Fiona MacGillivray was standing by the window, looking out. She lifted her hand and beckoned him in with a warm smile.

  The doors opened and a body flew out, propelled by Joe Hamilton, newly hired bouncer. The man landed face first in Front Street and struggled to his feet with a groan and numerous curses, dripping mud and horse dung.

  “Well, if it isn’t Ronald Kirkluce,” Sterling said. “I thought you’d been run out of town long ago. You’d better come with me.”

  The astute reader is advised not to attempt to follow the trail of Fiona and Sheridan and parties in search of them. They have, perhaps, stepped off the map into the unknown lands.

  Acknowledgements

  Sincere thanks to my great critique group: D.J. McIntosh, Jane Burfield, Donna Carrick, Madeleine Harris-Callway, Cheryl Freedman, fabulous writers all. And to Jessica Simon, who provided a ton of useful information about the flora and fauna and scenery of the Yukon. I apologize to Jessica for all my errors, deliberate and accidental. Thanks also to Jerry Sussenguth, who helped with the German accent.

  I have attempted wherever possible to keep the historical details of the Klondike Gold Rush, and the town of Dawson, Yukon Territory, accurate. Occasionally, however, it is necessary to stretch the truth in the interests of a good story. A few historical personages make cameos in the book: Jefferson Randolph (Soapy) Smith, Big Alex McDonald, Belinda Mulrooney, Inspector Cortlandt Starnes, but all dramatic characters and incidents are the product of my imagination.

  The reader who is interested in learning more about the Klondike Gold Rush is advised to begin with the definitive book on the subject, Klondike: The Last Great Gold Rush 1896–1899, by Pierre Berton. Also by Berton, The Klondike Quest: A Photographic Essay 1897–1899.

  OTHER READING:

  Gamblers and Dreamers: Women, Men and Community in the Klondike. Charlene Porsild.

  Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike. Charlotte Gray.

  Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush. Lael Morgan.

  The Klondike Gold Rush: Photographs from 1896–1899. Graham Wilson.

  The Last Great Gold Rush: A Klondike Reader. Edited by Graham Wilson.

  The Real Klondike Kate. T. Ann Brennan.

  Women of the Klondike. Francis Blackhouse.

  The Klondike Stampede. Tappan Adney.

  FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE NWMP:

  The NWMP and Law Enforcement 1873–1905. R.C. Macleod.

  Sam Steele: Lion of the Frontier. R. Stewart.

  Showing the Flag: The Mounted Police and Canadian Sovereignty in the North, 1894–1925. W.R. Morrison.

  They Got Their Man: On Patrol with the North-West Mounted. P.H. Godsell.

  SOAPY SMITH AND SKAGWAY:

  King Con: The Story of Soapy Smith. Jane G. Haigh.

  The Streets Were Paved with Gold: A Pictorial History of the Klondike Gold Rush, 1896–1899. Stan Cohen.

  THE LIFE OF SCOTTISH TRAVELLERS:

  Exploits and Anecdotes of the Scottish Gypsies. William Chambers.

/>   Pilgrims of the Mist: The Stories of Scotland’s Travelling People. Sheila Stewart.

  www.time-travellers.org.uk.

  LIVING IN THE YUKON WILDERNESS:

  This Was the North. Anton Money with Ben East.

  Author photo courtesy of Alex Delany

  Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers. She writes everything from standalone novels of gothic suspense to the Constable Molly Smith books, a traditional village/police procedural series set in the British Columbia Interior, to the light-hearted Klondike Mystery series, the first two of which are Gold Digger and Gold Fever. Vicki lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario. Visit www.vickidelany.com.

  Copyright © Vicki Delany, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Editor: Matt Baker

  Design: Jesse Hooper

  Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Delany, Vicki, 1951-

  Gold mountain [electronic resource] : a Klondike mystery / Vicki Delany.

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4597-0190-8

  1. Klondike River Valley (Yukon)--Gold discoveries--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS8557.E4239G65 2012 C813’.6 C2011-906001-9

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.