by Henry, Sue
Carefully, he picked up each pale fragment and dropped it back into the desiccated remains of the boot. Glancing around he noticed no other, but it was hard to see in the increasing shadows. Where was the rest of the skeleton? The man? The only other thing he found in the gathering dark was a battered tin so old and corroded that the lettering was long since departed. It was square, the size of a small candy box, and held something solid enough that he could feel it shift inside as he turned over the metal container. One end of the tin had been smashed at some time or other, so he could not get it open with his fingers.
Looking up, Hampton realized that the sun had disappeared behind the western hills and the light was almost gone. Hurriedly, he gathered another load of wood almost by feel, retrieved the tin and boot of bones, and went back to the camp beside the river, where the water in his kettle was just beginning to simmer gently.
Adding wood to the fire, he quickly went about arranging his bed next to the canoe and organizing the rest of his gear. It would be a clear night, so he did not pitch his small tent. A can of hash went sizzling into a hot skillet, soon joined by a couple of eggs. Three sourdough rolls, from the bakery in Dawson, warmed on a stick over the coals. A pot of coffee came to a rapid boil, speeded by some of the already hot water. Deciding it was strong enough, he poured in a little cold water to settle the grounds and set it to one side of the fire to keep warm.
Dinner ready, he sat astride a log, set the blackened skillet before him, and ate directly from it, using the bread to encourage bites of hash and egg onto a fork. As he chewed, he watched the dark and listened to the small sounds of the wilderness as it settled or woke for the night: a tentative birdcall or two, the soft murmurs and gurgles of the stream and river moving, the thump and crash of what could have been, and probably was, a moose in the alder thicket across the water.
There was no breeze, but with the sun gone, the air was progressively chilled and the warmth of the fire was welcome. A few stars pricked holes in the dark sky and he remembered that a pale, close-to-full moon would soon rise. The smell of woodsmoke combined with that of damp leaves, newly fallen, for a somewhat dusty, leathery, fragrant reminder of fall, with winter on the way.
Suddenly wishing he could share his pleasure in the moment, he regretted that Judy had not been free to come with him. Almost simultaneously, however, he remembered that though he enjoyed her company, some of his gratification with the trip resulted from being alone. That she recognized and accepted his periodic need for solitary journeys on unexperienced stretches of water was part of what kept them comfortably together. She could come next time, for there was no question that another trip north lay in his future.
Never married, Hampton had, for several years, enjoyed a close, exclusive relationship with Judy Rematto, a Denver divorcée with a teenage daughter, Megan. It was satisfactory to both, for they were as much friends as lovers, and suited each other well. Though independent, they shared interests, including a love of reading and the outdoors. He taught her canoeing. She encouraged an appreciation of history and travel in him. Though she sometimes accompanied him on canoe trips, this time her job as a social-studies teacher had held her captive, with school just starting a new year.
Lifting the last bite of hash to his mouth, he glanced at the boot that lay next to him on the log beside the dirty rectangular tin. Now and then, as he ate, he had looked at it curiously. But until he finished every scrap of food, scrubbed the skillet clean with sand, filled a mug with coffee, and added wood to the fire, he did not touch it. Then he sat down near his source of light and heat and, with the blade of the heavy hunting knife he carried on his belt, carefully pried at the aging metal till the flat lid popped off, allowing him access to some kind of package.
Though the body and lid of the tin had fitted tightly enough, a little moisture had slowly seeped in through the dented corner. The contents, however, had been additionally protected by a waxed wrapping of cloth over paper. As Hampton began to undo it, he could see that candle wax had been carefully dripped and smoothed over the entire package. Cautiously, with delicate strokes of the sharp blade, he flaked off enough of it to find and release the edges of the fabric cover. Slowly he unfolded it and the paper under it, like the four triangle flaps of an envelope laid to the center, overlapping. Some of the wax cracked and fell in crumbs into his hand, and he tossed them into the fire.
With infinite care, he lifted out the contents and laid the wrapping aside. In his hands was a narrow book, perhaps half an inch thick, with a rusty-black cloth cover, bound along the spine with dark leather that evidenced the discoloration and wear of significant use.
Because the leather felt dry and old, he was concerned it might break and fall apart as he very gently attempted to open it, but surprisingly, it was still in remarkably good condition. The extreme edges of the pages were brittle enough to splinter off small fragments, but he was amazed to find that they turned easily. There was handwriting on the pages, and it was readable, though the ink had faded to a sepia tone. A name was written at the top of the first page, Addison Harley Riser, and below it, carefully centered:
The Account of
My Journey
to the Gold Rush
from
Tacoma, Washington
to
Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada
1897
Facing this title page was a picture on photographer’s heavy cardboard, which had been cut to size and glued to the inside of the front cover. From it the faces of a young woman and two children looked out. Seated in a straight chair in front of the sort of painted canvas background common to a photography studio of the day, she held the baby and smiled self-consciously. The little boy stood at her side, one arm laid across her knee, staring wide-eyed and serious at the camera. Across the bottom their names were written: Mary Riser, Thomas and Anna. Addison Riser’s family, without a doubt.
A journal. Hampton could scarcely believe he had found the journal of a participant of the Klondike gold rush, but it could be nothing else. A very real man had recorded his small part of the incredible rush for gold in the Yukon almost a hundred years ago. He turned a page to see what Riser had written. It began with a date and a place: Sunday, September 5 Steamship Al-ki, Headed for Alaska Territory.
The writing was neat and not difficult to decipher, but small, two lines in each ruled section of the page, an indication that the writer had been concerned with conserving his supply of paper. Hampton turned some of the other pages delicately and the penmanship remained the same throughout, crowding as much onto each page as possible. At the back, half a dozen pages had not been filled and after them two or three leaves had been torn out, leaving ragged remnants where they had been.
Turning back to the first entry, Hampton frowned, considering his find. If he had gone to Dawson, how had Riser’s journal found its way here, almost twenty miles beyond that community? Laying down the journal, he picked up the boot. Not only his journal, but Riser himself had apparently reached this location.
Carefully he emptied the bones into his hand. The individual yellowed pieces were so clean they seemed almost artificial, pleasing in their shape and smoothness to his fingers, divorced and distanced from their original function and purpose. It was possible to see how a few of them fit together as easily as they had in life, even without the tendons and flesh that had held them together and made them move. Though nature had picked them clean, some of the vanished tethers had worn reminders of their presence into the very bone itself, leaving evidence of their flexing, if one looked closely.
In their present state, they were not distasteful reminders of a death. Somehow, quite the opposite. They made Hampton wonder about the man who had walked through his life on these fragile supports. And here, beside his bones, in his journal, were his thoughts. Who had Addison Harley Riser been? How had he come to die in this unusual place? Where had he been going, and why? What had happened to his wife and children? And had they ever, almost a
hundred years ago, known what happened to him? It seemed doubtful. How odd, after all this time, that he had stumbled, by chance and quite literally, over the lonely remains of Riser so near a river on which so many had traveled on their way to fortune or loss.
But there was also something dark and a little disturbing about Riser’s bones…something that made him frown uneasily at the wrongness of it. This was not the way people were supposed to die and remain…aboveground, unburied, unmourned and lost. Why were his bones here and not in some peaceful, acceptable place with a stone to mark his passing, hold his name in remembrance? Something about this was unsettling and unusual…hinted of an uneasy dying, even, perhaps, a violent death.
Curious and hoping to have his questions answered, Hampton wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and sat so he could lean against the log by the fire, warm and near enough to poke in more wood, to read what the man had written.
Chapter Two
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5
STEAMSHIP AL-KI
HEADED FOR ALASKA TERRITORY
I BEGIN THIS ACCOUNT AS WE STEAM NORTH aboard a crowded ship, headed for Alaska Territory on the beginning of my great adventure to the gold fields, and on this day I am in a much more cheerful disposition. Upon departing Tacoma, the last of August on this steamer Al-ki, most of us, I think, felt a bit unhappy at the thought of leaving family and friends and embarking into the unknown wilderness. I was disconcerted and sad to leave my dear wife, Polly, and our children, Thomas and Anna, not knowing when I would be able to greet them again, and knowing that, until I can, she must care for all three. There were many of us on deck and most were quiet and thoughtful for a time, as we watched the island scenery slide by. But by the time we passed Vashon Island and docked briefly in Seattle, where we took on a few more passengers and a number of horses, a gayer mood prevailed and we were soon singing “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and comparing our expectations of fortunes in shining gold in the future.
The Al-ki tied up at the Schwabacher dock, where the Portland came in from the Clondyke on July seventeenth with the two tons of gold that inspired this whole venture. I could not help but think of the headline in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! 68 Rich Men on the Steamer Portland. STACKS OF YELLOW METAL!” And more than five thousand people waiting at six o’clock in the morning to see those ragged miners stagger off onto the docks with their strange assortment of bags and containers so heavy they could scarcely carry them. The handle pulled straight off one such case.
Hopefully, less than a year from now, I may come back with such good fortune. How I long for that day. I know Polly has forgiven me for throwing over my employment at Jordan’s Mercantile, and that she tries not to worry. I simply could not be a clerk forever, watching Polly and the children want for things they deserve to have provided. Had there been a position available for me to make use of my training as a newsman, things might have been different. The last few years of the country’s depression have been desperately hard and this is my opportunity, the answer to our prayers. If I cannot find a rich strike, I can, perhaps, write down my impressions and sell them to a newspaper somewhere, possibly even a book.
A book. Hampton stopped reading for a minute. Unfortunately, poor Riser had obviously never seen his dream of publication come true. Too bad, for he seemed a good observer and writer, his journalistic training apparent in the choice of words and colorful description.
What courage, or foolhardiness, it must have taken to leave everything in hopes of a fortune in an unknown place of such hardship. Hundreds of people had done it, he knew, for gold fever had been contagious, especially after the California strikes that mesmerized the American public. Riser had probably invested everything he had in this one chance and, from the evidence of his bones, lost it all, including his life.
Leaving Seattle, I took time to look about me and assess the company and surroundings in which I was to spend almost two weeks and travel more than a thousand nautical miles. This is a second Clondyke run for the Al-ki, which is not a large vessel, having a single smokestack, cabins and bridge toward the stern, and a rather long foredeck, where I have pitched a rain fly and deposited my bedroll between piles of cargo, wood for the steam engine, and the outfits of others going north. There are more of us without than with staterooms, since the boat was originally a freighter and not designed to carry the more than two hundred passengers that crowd its decks. I was surprised to find a few women and several families with children aboard. They are crushed into the few staterooms, while most of us single men camp on the deck, where we do our best to stay dry in the mist and rain that accompany us up the coast. Temporary bunks have been hastily installed in the hold, but the air is close and stale below, rank with the seasickness of many unfortunates. I am glad to be up in the fresh air and do not much mind the dampness.
Imagine traveling all the way from Seattle to Alaska on the deck of a small steamer in September. Another of Hampton’s ambitions was to explore the Inside Passage. With a friend who owned a sailboat, he had pored over maps of the route, dotted with uninhabited islands and hundreds of tangled waterways that cruise ships and ferries never penetrated. If they took his canoe aboard, they would even be able to slip through water too shallow for the sailboat’s keel.
Quickly he read on, interested in the Al-ki and its passengers but hoping to find more information on the country through which they had passed. Riser discussed the steamer’s crowded conditions and the problems presented by eating in shifts. His description of the passengers included many ordinary people, together with others more colorful…. a couple of sharpers, one of whom runs a card game in a corner of the deck much of the time but has caused no particular problems and is balanced off by the young woman who leads a few souls in singing hymns in another corner. One arrogant young man from New York complains incessantly and runs his hired man ragged in the attempt to fetch and carry for this Eastern polka dot. Needless to say, I think he will get his comeuppance on the Yukon, though I gravely doubt he will make it that far. For the most part, however, my traveling companions are pleasant enough and a polite camaraderie, strangely lacking in class-consciousness, prevails.
Hampton had to smile at the dated language, though much of it was surprisingly contemporary in tone. Almost a hundred years was not really so long ago, he thought, remembering that his own grandfather had been born just after the turn of the century. In the next paragraph, he found what he was looking for about the waterway to the north.
Much of my time is spent at the rail, enjoying the scenery, for the passage north is most amazing. Much of the time we steam along between the mainland to the east and islands to the west, which protect boats traveling this route from the unpredictability of the Pacific Ocean and its storms. Often the landscape is shrouded with heavy fog and mist, and the shrieks of boat whistles and foghorns resound and echo back from the veiled hills. But the few clear days have assured us that the land is truly unsettled and a complete wilderness. Like a motionless ocean of dark green, the tree-covered slopes roll back steeply from the dark waters over which we speed. Only once or twice have we crossed inlets through which we could view the Pacific. The rest of the time we have threaded our way through channels and passages that twine between the islands like braided cords. Often eagles soar overhead. Once we saw a bear. In one great open sound, dozens of whales leaped from the water and blew air and water from their spouts. How my little Tommy would have enjoyed that sight! In the same place several icebergs could be seen floating near the eastern shore.
Much too short an account, Hampton thought, but tantalizing. Riser must have been more concerned with his destination than with what he passed to get there.
In the next entry, dated September 11, he had reached Dyea, Alaska, jumping-off point for the Chilkoot Pass and the route into Canada. The Al-ki had made a brief stop in Juneau before going on to the end of a long narrow passage, where he was…unceremoniously dumped into the mud…of the beach with all his goods an
d gear. During the trip, he had made a friend on the boat, one Frank Warner, a…streetcar conductor…with a red mustache and one walleye…with whom Riser had decided to travel and partner.
He wrote that…Dyea is like a hill of ants, with people moving constantly in all directions, but mainly toward the Chilkoot Pass…. In only a matter of weeks, wilderness has been transformed into a jumble of log cabins, frame hotels, saloons and gambling houses with false fronts, but nothing appears permanent, particularly the hundreds of tents scattered everywhere…. Everyone slogs knee deep in mud. Wagons mire up to the hubs. Transporting our goods up to and over the pass will mean many trips back and forth to ferry it all to the top, where we are told we must probably camp through the winter, build a boat, and wait for the spring thaw to continue our journey to Dawson City by water. Winter freeze-up has held off so far and, with a little luck, we may be able to make it downriver before the passage closes.
As much as he wanted to go on with Riser’s journal, Hampton soon found his eyelids growing heavy and frequent yawns began to interrupt the narrative. A day of strenuous exercise in the cool fresh air and a good dinner had made him, not unpleasantly but irresistibly, tired. When he jerked himself awake for the third time, he gave up and put the journal back in its tin. Scooting down into his sleeping bag, he levered the canoe over his bed, a hopeful discouragement to bears and a roof against unanticipated rain. As he slid into sleep, he wondered fleetingly if it would be possible to locate any of Riser’s grandchildren and if they would be interested in his story.
By seven-thirty the next morning, Hampton had finished a satisfying breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes with canned peaches. His gear, repacked in its waterproof bags, was in the canoe, which he had moved close to the water, ready for his last day on the river. Instead of pushing off, however, he sat on the log next to the dying fire, once again lost in the pages of Addison Riser’s journal, the last dregs from the coffeepot growing cold in a mug beside him.