Northern Lights Trilogy

by Lisa Tawn Bergren

  It made him want to shake his fist at God, those memories. But for now, he willed himself to follow the direction he had found in Ketchikan—to remain Kaatje’s silent protector, to flush out the truth in Soren before leaving her alone with him He spent his frustration on the effort of getting the skiff to the river’s edge, which was no small task in the spring ice melt. The whole journey had been trying, as difficult as last year’s, except that now he missed Kaatje, so it was much lonelier.

  Kadachan was at the river’s edge as he approached, and James caught his attention with an owl call. It was a poor imitation, and Kadachan thought it hilarious each time James tried. The Tlingit Indian was a master at it, as he was at ten other bird calls. The man smiled broadly and lifted one large hand in greeting. He waited for James to float near, then waded to thigh depth to help bring him to shore. Once there, they clasped hands and walked toward the makeshift shelters the men had built of cedar boughs and small logs, not wanting to wait any longer than necessary to get the mine up and running.

  “It is as they say?” James asked. “You have struck gold?”

  Kadachan smiled again and went to a corner trunk. He opened it and then tossed a huge nugget, twice the size of the one Kaatje had found, to his old friend. James whistled under his breath at the weight of it. “And there are others?”

  The Indian bent and then, with some effort, carried the small trunk over to James, who whistled again, at a loss for words. The trunk was filled mostly with smaller nuggets, but here and there were other sizable rocks, of similar diameter to the one Kaatje found in the water. James shook his head. “I thought it would be a ruse. I truly thought it would only be something to flush Soren out of the thicket, not a real mine.”

  The other men sat around, smoking Indian cigars and watching their boss appreciate their work. “You all have done a fine job. You will be compensated as promised.”

  “How about now?” grumbled the fat man.

  “How ’bout it?” James repeated with a smile. He searched the trunk for seven nuggets that were comparable in size, then tossed one to each of the men. “You need to understand that what I say is true,” he said quietly. “I will treat you fairly. This is not a bait-and-switch game. You will get what I promised you.”

  They hooted and swore and laughed, looking at their individual prizes. They had accomplished all that James had hoped and more. And he would fulfill his promises to them as he had said.

  And in thanks, they would back him up when Soren came the next day. He was sure of it.

  Soren grew excited as the shoreline became more familiar. He was nearing home or the closest thing to it that he recently remembered. He loved these deep forests of cedar and pine and maple. Yet he would have to be careful. He had not left on good terms when he had spirited Natasha off to distant lands. Her father would still like to have words with him, he was sure, if not a good flogging. They were a fairly peaceful tribe, but Soren knew that he had crossed the line in taking Natasha away from her family.

  Briefly he thought of his son and his beautiful brown eyes. His quick smile. But Soren put him out of his mind. His first obligation was to his elder children. When he was rich and Kaatje and the girls had all they wanted, then he would go back to care for the mother of his son. But that would be a quiet affair—he never wanted his affiliations with another woman to hurt Kaatje again. The pain was deep in her eyes, and Soren knew he was close to never winning her back again. This was it. As a fellow Irish miner once said to him, if he did not find the gold at the end of this rainbow, there would certainly never be a rainbow again.

  He rounded the last bend in the river and scowled as he saw a group of men encamped on shore. Prepared for the worst, he paused and strapped on a gun belt, a Colt .45 secured low on each hip. Both were loaded, as was his shotgun that lay across the center seat of the rowboat. He thought about getting it, bringing it closer to him, when a man rose and pointed in his direction. He had been discovered.

  Setting his chin in determination, he poled toward the encampment. This was his land, his claim. It would be harder if they had indeed struck gold on the property. They would be infinitely more reluctant to depart. But nonetheless it was his. He was feeling fairly confident until he saw the form of James Walker edge out of the group and walk to shore. Right behind him was Kadachan. He swallowed his surprise at seeing James ahead of him when he had thought him behind.

  The skiff ground into the pebbles, and Soren walked to the end, hopping out and turning to pull it more firmly onto shore as if the men were not there. Then he turned and walked right to James, his heels sinking in the soggy ground with each determined step.

  “You’re on my land.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Yes, you are.” He walked past the men toward the cliff side where he had left tracer mine materials. “These are my tools you’re using.”

  “You left them behind. We have made this claim our own since you abandoned it.” James’s expression bothered Soren. He was too confident.

  “I left them behind only for a season. Here I am again,” he said, pulling his arms out to the sides as if greeting old friends. “Now it is time for you all to go.” His hands came down to rest on either pistol. “And you are to leave any gold you have found.”

  The men stayed where they were, a formidable lot.

  “You did find gold, right?” Soren asked. “It was my mine that was reported in the newspaper? There aren’t many others up and running yet that I’ve seen, unless things have changed since last year.”

  “Oh, we found gold, all right.” James turned, picked up the heavy, small trunk, then dropped it to the fine gravel before him and lifted the top.

  Soren fought the urge to gasp. He let a thin smile split his lips. “Do not worry,” he said to the other men around James. “I will reward you for your work. You will be paid.”

  “With what?” James asked, his voice little more than a rumble.

  “With this.”

  “This is not yours.”

  “It most certainly is.” He picked up the biggest gold nugget in the trunk as he searched his vest pocket and produced a land deed for James to read. How could the man be so stupid? Did he think he could send a group of men here to rob him blind and Soren would not see? He held it out to James, and the man calmly took it.

  “Yep,” he said with a nod. “You have a serious problem, Soren.”

  “Oh?” Soren bantered back.

  “Yes. This deed here expired some months back. The land claim has been refiled under another name.”

  Soren’s eyes shot up to meet James’s laughing gaze. James didn’t drop his eyes as he reached into his own vest pocket and took out a leather case. Gingerly, he removed a pristine white document and read it, as if to remind himself. “Mm-hmm, that’s it. This mine is no longer in the name of Soren Janssen. This claim has been filed in honor of Kaatje Janssen. It looks to me like your wife is a wealthy woman, Soren. And you’re out in the cold once again.”

  twenty-four

  May 1889

  James had watched the blood drain from Soren’s face as his eyes scanned the land deed again and again. It had given him infinite pleasure to watch the man turn away, his shoulders sagging in defeat. But what truly bothered James was Soren’s expression as he climbed back into the boat and pushed off into the river. His eyes never left James’s—and they were cold, so cold.

  His first inclination was to celebrate with the men, to toss them each another nugget of gold and dance around the campfire. But there was no joy in his heart at beating Soren that day, and it came as a cruel surprise. He immediately walked deep into the woods to examine what he was feeling. Following the deer path that Kaatje had once followed, he hiked to where the forest canopy high overhead was so dense that the light grew dim and the shafts of sunlight all the more intense.

  He leaned against an old pine, then sat down amongst the moss and peat and pine cones, cross-legged, near a column of sunlight. He stared as it slow
ly moved closer to him over a half-hour period, content to think of something other than himself, Soren, and Kaatje. First the column illuminated a tight green pine cone—most likely dropped by a squirrel—then brilliant, yellow-green moss on a log, then an intricate spider web strung between the roots of the tree against which he sat… The shaft came closer and closer, showing him different details of the forest floor as though God was showing him different parts of his own heart.

  James sighed and leaned forward as the sunlight touched his shoulder and then climbed his neck until he could feel the subtle heat of it on his head. “I have sinned, Father.”

  His Lord knew that already.

  “I wanted to protect Kaatje, but more than that, I wanted to beat Soren. I wanted to hurt him.”

  He knew that, too.

  “I wanted him to fall, Father, to know defeat. I wished him ill, and it is not my place to wish such things. I wanted him to feel pain, because I feel it. Because I couldn’t have his wife. I wanted her more than life itself. Forgive me.”

  The sunlight moved off his head and to his left shoulder. He watched through bleary eyes as it moved on, mourning the loss of Kaatje and the fact that hating Soren would not bring her to him. He swallowed hard. “I will leave her, Lord. Leave her in your hands.”

  James felt the indistinguishable desire suddenly to go home. To Juneau? It was as close to a home as any since he had left his wife’s graveside in Minnesota. But that took him back to Kaatje. “How can that be, God? How can I be close to her when…?”

  Home. He was to go home.

  Now. It was so clear to him it was as if God had audibly spoken.

  But he had just promised to leave her. To stay away from her. Why was he to go home? Why now? Instinctively he knew—Kaatje was in danger. He leapt to his feet and started walking quickly to camp, then padded to a jog, then to a full run.

  Something was wrong, desperately wrong. The respite of the forest floor and the gentle sun was pushed away like an Arctic wind on a warm eve, and inside, James shuddered. All he could think of now were Soren’s cold, cold eyes.

  He ran until his lungs burned. When he reached the claim, the men looked up at him in confusion and concern. One spilled his tin cup of steaming coffee, swearing, but James had more on his mind than a man’s mild burn. “I need to get back to Juneau. Right away.”

  Kaatje brought a mug of coffee to Elsa, who sat sketching one of the totems on Ketchikan’s seaward banks. It was a cold, drizzly day, but Elsa had insisted on going out to sketch. “I’m going mad,” she explained. It had been a long month of convalescing as she let her sprained ankle heal.

  It had been Kaatje who had come up with the idea of sailing to Ketchikan for a holiday, of sorts. Her girls were eager for a break too. So they all went south on Karl’s small steamer. He had left them there while he took a trip to Seattle on the Fair Alaska to pick up his first group of tourists. They would arrive in two weeks for the grand opening of the Storm Roadhouse of Ketchikan. Kaatje could tell that Elsa was itching to see him, could tell that she was restless, so restless that she had even insisted on going out on such a dismal day.

  Bradford sat beside her on a huge, sea-grayed log, stripped of any bark or moss by the driving wind and rain of the region. He held an umbrella above them both, silently watching as Elsa sketched the eagle, bear, and salmon on the giant totem pole before them. Beyond them, in the trees, Christina and Jessica were chasing Elsa’s children and the Bresleys’ little boy with joyful shouts and screeches, oblivious to the fact that they were getting soaked. They had been as fidgety as Elsa to get outside, regardless of the weather.

  Kaatje sat down on the other side of Elsa, taking the umbrella from Bradford, who immediately left to join a game of tag with the children. There was so much moisture in the air that Elsa’s paper curled at the edges, but she ignored it, seeming to be in another world as she sketched madly, as if the totem would fall any minute and her opportunity would be lost forever.

  “How do you do that?” Kaatje asked in a hushed tone.

  “What?”

  “That. Sketch so well. Did you always know you would be an artist?”

  “Not always.” Gradually, a bear’s paw took shape at the top of the pole on her paper. “I simply started. You never know what you can do until you start.”

  Kaatje smiled. She’d come to know that too. From crossing the Atlantic to America, to farming the land by herself, to co-managing a roadhouse, Kaatje had surprised herself at what she could accomplish if she simply began the process.

  Elsa completed her sketch and sat back, looking from totem to pad, then shifted her swollen, wrapped ankle a bit.

  “You miss him, don’t you?” Kaatje asked gently.

  “Horribly.”

  “What happened in Glacier Bay? I mean, beyond the accident.”

  Elsa smiled and shot her a quick look. Then, gazing out to sea as if hoping his Fair Alaska might emerge from the mists, she said, “He told me he loved me.”

  “Finally.”

  “Finally?”

  “You two have been in love all year. What gave him the courage to tell you?”

  Her grin grew more broad. “I told him I loved him first.” Kaatje giggled. “Brazen girl!” she chided. “You never are one to wait, are you?”

  Elsa laughed with her. “That is true. But he needed… I don’t know, I think he needed me to be the first one to say so since we had shared so much in the past. It was as if he was terrified to speak again and be rebuffed. But all I wanted was to hear him say those words. To confirm all I was feeling.”

  Kaatje looked down and kicked the fine, rounded sea gravel with the toe of her boot. “It is good that you two have found each other. It is right.”

  “You think so? Really?”

  “Really.”

  “It relieves me to hear you say that, Kaatje. I think it’s right too, but sometimes I get a niggling doubt. That somehow I’m not honoring Peder’s memory by staying on my own without a man.”

  “Peder would not have wanted that. You are a young woman. You have a whole life ahead of you. And it will be all the more rich with a companion.”

  Elsa gave her another quick look. “As it would be for you.”

  Kaatje scoffed at her words. “I fear I am destined to live my life as an old maid. The man who has me tends to throw me to the winds, and the man who wants me cannot have me.”

  “And you? What do you want?”

  Kaatje stood, suddenly uneasy. “I want…I want things to be settled, one way or another, as I have for almost seven long years.”

  Soren moved more quickly toward home than he had to the mine, and James shadowed him, finding himself surprised and challenged by his pace. They traveled hard, taking risks in riding the river and walking the trails until the last vestiges of twilight faded from the sky. Fortunately, the days were slowly getting longer, the light staying with them until nine o’clock.

  James sank to his bedroll one night, rubbing his aching calves and knees. It had been a hard month on the trail. He wondered if Soren—just a half-day ahead of him, judging from his last campfire—ached as much as he. Would it slow him down any? And yet part of him wanted to get on with it, to get to the conclusion of this grand puzzle they were putting together. There were still several questions that had to be resolved. How would Soren react to Kaatje when he confronted her with the facts of ownership? James had not told either of them that it was he who had changed the registration when the deed lapsed. He needed to be there when he confronted her, to tell them both the truth at the same time. He feared what the man would do to her otherwise.

  And how would Kaatje react? James wished now that he had found the opportunity to tell Kaatje what he had done and why. That he’d only wanted to protect her. But doubts about his own motive jabbed at him. Had he done it solely to beat Soren? Would it all backfire, providing Soren the means he sought to settle down and be the man Kaatje always wanted? One thing was clear to James: He would witness the reso
lution to all of this and then leave town. Staying near Kaatje, but unable to be with her, only tore him apart, and it had to stop. To say nothing of what it did to Kaatje as she sought to rebuild her marriage.

  He would simply make sure that all was resolved, that Kaatje was safe, and then he would say his forever good-bye. James swallowed hard. He would not cry again over it. He would not.

  Soren punched the wall of the Storm Roadhouse of Juneau in fury when he found out Kaatje was gone. Had she run away? Hidden herself away to enjoy his hard-earned money without sharing any with him? “Where is she?” he ground out, glaring at the shaking waif of a waitress in the roadhouse door. “Where is she?” he screamed.

  Sara tried to shut the door in his face, but he shot a foot out to block its progress. He fiercely grabbed her arm, then looked down, panting, his hand throbbing, trying to get control. “Listen to me. I need to speak with her. It’s urgent. Where is she?”

  “Ketchikan,” Sara whispered. “She went down there for the grand opening of the roadhouse. It’s in four days.”

  He dropped her arm so suddenly, she cried out. It surprised him. Did she think he was going to strike her? He was not a violent man. Ordinarily.

  “Thank you,” he muttered, turning and wiping a hand over his sweaty upper lip. He winced. Had he broken some fingers pounding on the door? The pain only fed his fury.

  Slowly he pulled out his pocket watch. Four o’clock. There was a ferry leaving in the morning to Ketchikan, as there was each morning. And he aimed to be on it.

  When Sara related to James what had transpired, he did not wait for the morning’s ferry. He went directly to the docks and hired a decrepit old steamer south. He wanted to be in Ketchikan, with Kaatje, when Soren arrived. If he could beat the ferry.

  It would take them three days to reach Ketchikan, if they hit the tides right. The old ferryman insisted upon going down Stephen’s Passage and hugging the western shoreline, rather than going out to sea. “I must beat the morning’s ferry to Ketchikan. You’re sure you can beat it?” James asked for the fourth time.