by Henry, Sue
On November 29, the temperature dropped so low we spent two whole days wrapped in our blankets, shivering though the fire was never allowed to subside. We know now that it was sixty-seven below and trees cracked like gunshots in the cold.
On Thanksgiving night half of Dawson burned down when a lamp thrown by a dance-hall girl ignited a saloon. But the most important thing to the two men was that, at almost twenty feet down in the shaft they were sinking, they found gold and began slowly accumulating nuggets in a coffee can for the owner of the claim. It was as exciting as if it belonged to them, as in part it did. They were careful to take only their small wages from the buckets of ore they hauled to the surface and dumped into piles that froze solid as stone. Christmas came and went.
Hampton stopped reading and took a turn bringing more coffee.
“Had enough?” he teased, when he came back to the table.
“Don’t even think about stopping now.” Jessie threatened him with a metal-topped sugar jar. “There’re only a couple of pages left, from the look of it. I want to know what happened to make Riser hike up the frozen river in the middle of that horrible winter. It had to be something pretty important.”
Hampton flipped pages to find they had only three to go and the next entry was the last. He began to read again and soon sat up straight as he came to an incredible passage.
On Tuesday, January 4, 1898, Riser had left the claim to go for a load of firewood. When he returned, he found tragedy, his partner dead…. His head crushed…by a large rock rolled in on him…certainly by Warner and Oswald. I…found Ned crumpled and half buried in the shaft, his bright blood frozen on his clothes and broken skull.
Fascinated and horrified, Hampton glanced up at Jessie, who sat wide-eyed, her coffee forgotten, to hear what would happen next. Quickly, he completed the rest of the entry and sat back, stunned with the results of the murder of McNeal. He and Jessie stared at each other without speaking for a long minute. Now they knew what had impelled Riser onto the ice of the storm-swept Yukon in the middle of that terrible winter and what he had done before he left Dawson. Assessing his choices, the stampeder had decided that he had few, especially if he wanted to have any small opportunity for life. It was awesome. What a strange, and yet predictable, turn of events. If Riser had not come to the Yukon. If he had not met Frank Warner, who in turn met Oswald Wilson. If he and McNeal had not found gold in the shaft they dug for the absent owner of the claim.
He stood up and began to put on his coat and mittens.
“Come on,” he said. “I think it’s time to take another look at the original journal. If I’m right, it has more to tell us than I thought.”
Chapter Twenty-six
ANOTHER ATTEMPT TO GAIN INFORMATION from the two native men had ended in the same stalemate. Hasluk refused to talk, as did Kabanak, though he seemed almost apologetic about it after a night in jail.
“Let them sit awhile longer,” Alex suggested. “Time is on our side, after all. They can’t enjoy staying in here all that much. Let his father talk to them both, when he comes in.”
Del opened the evidence bag and dumped out the items they had found on the beach where Russell was killed. The four bottle caps, green pen, and piece of gray fabric lay on the table in the back room of the RCMP office.
“You were right. There it is.”
Jensen picked up the scrap of gray and matched it to the tear in the jacket he had also laid out on the tabletop. “Matches perfectly. He was definitely on that beach. There may also be threads on whatever he tore it on.”
“We’ll check it out, but we don’t really need them with this, if we believe the Kabanak boy’s testimony about what he saw on the beach and Charlie’s confession. What I want to know is, where is the boat Will and Charlie were driving? Both Duck and Charlie admitted going back that evening and that it wasn’t there. Why hasn’t it turned up? It must have been used to move the gear and bodies down to Hampton’s camp, whoever did it.”
“Well, there must be a hundred places on the river that a person could hide a boat that size between here and Eagle.”
“True enough,” Delafosse nodded. “But I want to know where…and why.”
“Could have been sunk.”
“That, too.”
Jensen stood up and began to pace around the room as he considered. “Let’s go back over the thing and what we know. There are several things that bother me about all this, including that boat. That hatchet is going to tell us something. Bet on it. We still don’t know how those two got it, but I’ll bet it wasn’t on the river in Hampton’s stuff. Seems wrong for them to bring it in here, not just ditch it somewhere we’d never find it, if they had anything to do with Russell’s death.”
“I agree. Have to wait and see.”
“Would they both lie just to lie? I don’t think so, but they may both be afraid we won’t believe them, or there may be some other threat we don’t understand yet.
“Here’s a Sherlock Holmes-ish theory for you. You know, the one that says if you answer all the questions logically, whatever is left has to be the answer, even if it doesn’t seem possible?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there’s still blood on that hatchet. That means there’s no way it could have been used after it was used on Russell, so it must have been used before. The wood must have been cut before.”
“And transported down the river, you mean?”
“It could have been, along with all that other gear.”
“Why?”
“Maybe the killer knew he would need a fire and couldn’t be sure of finding wood somewhere else. Sounds like he didn’t know exactly where he was going, doesn’t it?”
Delafosse grinned. “Or she?”
“Yes, it could have been a woman. But I’m not saying ‘he or she’ every time I refer to the killer. Let’s agree on ‘he’ for the sake of argument.”
“What would need to be burned?”
Jensen took out his briar, packed it with tobacco, and puffed it alight, thinking hard. “Maybe not burned,” he said slowly. “A fire would also be a source of light and there was a lot to do, setting up Hampton’s camp to look like he had done it himself. Maybe he needed to see what he was doing.”
“If the whole thing was a setup?”
“Right.”
“Why would…he…take Russell’s body and leave Will’s? Why not leave Russell where he died, or transport Will too? Must have been more than just to frame Hampton. Pretty risky to take all that stuff downriver.”
“Let’s look at it from the viewpoints of the people involved.” Jensen sat down, picked up one of the four screw-on bottle caps, placed it by itself in the middle of the table, and gave it a name. “If it was Sean, for instance, getting his father’s body away from where he camped would solve more than one problem. He might be less likely to fall under suspicion; it would confuse clues and put someone else right in the middle of any investigation.”
Delafosse placed a second bottle cap near the first. “And if it was Hampton, what better way to elicit sympathy and dispel suspicion than to make it look as if you had been set up—that someone else did it to you? That shotgun we found under Russell’s body had Hampton’s prints all over it. But either the person who knocked him out wiped it clean, and used his hands to make prints pointing to him and him alone, or he did it himself, once again to suggest a frame.”
Jensen pushed another bottle cap to rest beside the first two. “Is Charlie that clever? Or Duck? Was Will?”
“Pretty unlikely, but anything’s possible, I guess. The old man’s not stupid. He is sly.”
“There’s that shotgun pellet we found in the canoe and the hole in it. Why wouldn’t some of that gear be wet if Hampton crashed the canoe as badly as it looked when we found it?”
“True. But why would setting Hampton up be so important? If it was done, it took a lot of hard work.”
“How would someone who set up Hampton know where to find him? Why pick him? If he did
it himself, that question would be easy enough to answer.”
“Maybe the killer wasn’t looking for him. He may have been headed somewhere else and stumbled across Hampton, then took the opportunity that offered itself.”
“I just can’t see what Hampton would have to gain by killing anybody. He didn’t know either of them.” Jensen clenched the pipe he had lit between his teeth and frowned.
“Satisfaction? He must have been angry. But what did Russell’s head first hit? Could the whole thing have been an accident and Hampton tried to cover it up in a panic?”
“That might apply to whoever did it.”
“Right. And if ‘whoever did it’ was interrupted by Will and Charlie, it would explain why ‘whoever’ was shooting at them.”
“Could have just stayed quiet in the bushes.”
“Not if they were about to steal what he needed to get away.”
“Does the timing tell us anything more?”
“I thought it might to start with, but half the people involved with this are the inaccurate, ‘sometime-around…whatever’ sort of timekeepers. Nothing agrees with anything else.”
Jensen smiled. “Yeah. People in Alaska run on ‘bush,’ or ‘Yukon River time,’ too. Everything moves slower and everyone pays less attention. They aren’t being intentionally vague—they really don’t know—or don’t often care exactly what time it is. If it’s time to do something, minutes on a clock don’t usually matter much.”
“I don’t think it matters a lot with this either. Any of them could also be lying, or mistaken. It’s like the reports of boats on the river last Monday. Almost everybody who was asked said they remembered some, or thought they did. They see so many that no one pays attention. Everyone saw some, but it could have been morning, noon, afternoon, or not at all—two, four, or six o’clock, for that matter. There are more important things.”
“Like the three different blows to Russell’s head.”
“Yes. There’s got to be a reason for each of them.”
Jensen reached to push across the last bottle cap.
“We can’t eliminate Kabanak’s son till we know what the boys know about the hatchet. I need another bottle cap here for Hasluk, but I guess we can count them both on this one, since we put the Wilsons and Charlie on that one. Do I need more?” He waved a hand at the line of four on the table.
“Not in my opinion. Why? You think of something else?”
“No. Just double-checking, but…”
The door opened to admit Clair, with a business card in one hand, the coffee pot in the other. “Wilson’s attorney’s finally making an appearance,” she said, handing Delafosse the card and filling their empty cups. “Now take note here. Seems like I’m doing an awful lot of coffee the last couple of days. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“Duly noted. As of tomorrow you’re off coffee duty for a week or two. My turn. Okay? Thanks, Clair,” Delafosse told her. He looked at the card and nodded. “Tell this guy we’re having a meeting in the only interview room and have Mel let him into Duck’s cell. I’d just as soon keep Wilson under lock and key. He can be a real pain and smells like something the cat drug in. Let his lawyer put up with it.”
She laughed. “You haven’t seen him since this morning. The guys got together and tossed him in the shower. He roared like he was going to melt—I could hear him howling clear out at the desk—but they didn’t let him out till he scrubbed and shampooed. His dirty clothes have been bagged for fumigation, or the trash, and he’s wearing a set of baby-blue sweats. You wouldn’t recognize him—until he opens his mouth.”
“Cherlyn?” Jensen questioned.
“Doing great. Still looks terrible, but feels better and has got a lot of her confidence back. She’s going to either stay in town and get a job, or move to Whitehorse and go back to school. She’d like to be a teacher.
“Oh, Alex. I met your friend. She came in a few minutes ago. She’s really nice. I think she and Hampton have something to tell you. They’re both excited about something. Like a couple of kids.”
While she was talking, Delafosse had picked up the evidence bag and the items on the table.
“Let’s go out there,” he said, standing up. “I’ll take the lawyer to Duck. I think I’d better have a word with him about the charges.”
In front, they found not only the attorney but Jessie, waiting in a chair near Clair’s desk, with Hampton standing nearby. She stood up as they came in.
Delafosse invited the short, round, nondescript man, who wore a trench coat, carried a briefcase, and looked completely out of place, to come back to Wilson’s cell. When they were almost to the door, he paused and returned to hold out the evidence bag and items he had removed from it.
“Put these away, would you, Clair? We’re through with them for now. Oh, get a separate bag for the gray fabric and that jacket Jensen is carrying. Okay?”
She nodded and laid the items down on her desk on top of the original evidence bag. Jensen handed her the torn jacket.
Delafosse disappeared with the attorney.
“So,” she asked Jessie, “how long are you going to be in Dawson?”
“A day or two, I guess. Depends on the trooper here.” She turned to looked at Alex, her eyes shining and an anticipatory grin on her face. “You’ll never guess what we think we’ve found out. Can we have a look at the original journal Jim found?”
“Why? What’s up?”
“You tell, Jim.”
Hampton brightened visibly. “Hey, we finished the journal and you won’t believe it, but Riser evidently hid the gold somewhere here in town…before he left for Forty Mile, after they killed McNeal. And he drew a map. What do you think? A map!”
“Whoa,” Alex stopped him. “What gold? Who killed McNeal?”
“Oh, yeah…sorry. You haven’t finished it yet. I forgot.” He couldn’t help grinning at Jensen. “Riser and McNeal were digging a shaft for a miner who went outside and left them his cabin for the winter. There was gold. Oh, hell.” He pulled the journal copy from his pocket and opened it to the last entry. “Listen to this.”
As he began to read, Delafosse came back into the room and stood listening with the rest.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1898
DAWSON CITY, YUKON TERRITORY
I am heartsick and frightened. McNeal is dead. His head crushed in the shaft by a large rock rolled in on him, certainly by Warner and Oswald. I came back to the cabin with a load of wood and found Ned crumpled and half buried in the shaft, his bright blood frozen on his clothes and broken skull. There I left him and walked to the next claim for help. We pulled him out and wrapped him in his blanket, but the two fellows who helped gave me odd looks and mentioned cautiously that two friends of mine had found him earlier and gone to Dawson for the law. Their description matched Frank and Ozzy, and I recognized their tracks in the snow.
So I am now hiding with a friend in Dawson, whom I will not name for fear this journal may be found. He has determined that Frank and Ozzy told the authorities they saw me leaving the cabin just before they found him dead. I could assure my innocence and provide witnesses of my character, but would I be believed? The deciding factor, however, is that I know they intend to kill me as surely as they killed Ned, and why.
They came to our camp last week, asking to share and claiming rights as our partners. When we refused, they insisted they would have it, one way or another, that the owner would not return and the claim should be ours and, therefore, theirs. Ned showed them the shooting end of his rifle and they left, making threats.
They will not leave me alive to witness against them, when my death would make all easy. I expect that if they had the chance, they would kill me and tell the authorities, such as they are, that I attacked them, tried to escape, or some other such nonsense. Whatever they said, it would be two against none, with me dead, and two against one, if I were to go to report it myself.
I have decided that my only course is to attempt to head down river for F
orty-Mile. My friend agrees and has made me the loan of a wolfskin coat, beaver-fur mittens and hat. We both know it is more of a gift. Probably I will not make it, but, who knows? God being just, I may, and can return his coat next spring. It is better than waiting here for their nefarious and certain judgment. The first time it snows to cover my tracks, I will be off with a small sled and only enough goods for survival, probably tomorrow. I have buried most of the nuggets here in Dawson, in the best place I could think of that could not be easily located, and have drawn and hidden a map.
Dearest Polly, If I perish and this is found, know that I love you and the children. All I can leave you is this record and the gold, which does not really belong to me. If you will remember where you secreted the letters I wrote you before we were married, you will know where the map is hidden. I am only sorry things did not turn out differently, but it was not a bad idea to come here, all being considered. Events simply conspired against me, and against Ned, certainly. If we had been wintered in at Lake Bennett and forced to wait until spring, it might have been advantageous. But one can go crazy saying what if. Just know that I would never leave you with two children to raise unless it were as necessary as it seems to be. Either I die here, or try to make it there and perhaps die on the way, I like my chances better in not waiting here. Whatever happens, I send you all my love. In haste. Your loving husband, Addison Harley Riser.
“And that’s how he wound up where I found him on the riverbank.” Hampton paused to take a breath.
“So, there’s a map?”
“Yeah. At least he says so. There’s no way we could ever find out where his wife hid his letters, but I was thinking. Remember that paper padding under the picture of his family? Could that be it? Can we at least look?”
Amazingly, it was.
Retrieving the original journal from the safe in the RCMP office, Delafosse handed it to Hampton, who carefully extracted the folded paper from behind the photograph and looked up at Jessie with his eyes dancing. “A real treasure map.”
Crossing the room to a table, he cautiously unfolded the fragile pages and spread them out on the level surface. In the same ink used in the journal entries was a hand-sketched map in two sections that fitted together. They all leaned over to look at what was recorded. It was Riser’s map of his trip to the Klondike, for Dyea and the Chilkoot Pass were labeled at the bottom of the drawing and Dawson City near the top. In between were the names of places Riser had mentioned along the route: Lake Bennett, Dead Man’s Canyon, White Horse City, Lake Laberge, Cassiar Bar, Five Finger Rapids.