by Lynn D'urso
The miles and days roll on. Islands and passages are noted in the ship’s log and left astern. In a copse of alder trees, the sagging longhouses of an abandoned Indian village, once peopled by proud warriors who outfought, outfoxed, and outbargained all others, only to be decimated by the limitless diseases and alcohol loosed upon them by European traders, fades into moss-covered ruin. For Hannah, coming from England where every meter of land has been deeded, spoken for, and titled since Charlemagne’s time, considering the mass and spread of unclaimed land around her creates at first a vertigo and weakness of breath.
Many aboard the Pegasus chafe at the length and idleness of the journey, unaware that the passing of time and distance is necessary, not for geographic reasons, but because it requires that they sit and watch for days on end, as a full thousand miles of coast unrolls before them, creating by the end of the journey a sense of proportion and an acceptance of the size and immensity of the land that makes the idea of going still farther, over endless mountain ranges and down great rivers into god-knows-where, acceptable. By churning their impatience into eagerness, it gives them false heart and a belief in themselves that will make it possible to go beyond all that they know or believe, into the wilderness that is the Yukon and Alaska. Outclassed and ignorant, they are as carpenters and sellers of shoes at a county fair, stepping into the ring with a professional boxer, and the length of the journey is the beer that supplies them courage.
The depth of ignorance suffered by the pilgrims is visible in the soft red and yellow pastels decorating the heights under which they pass, for these are the hues of deception. Here in the north, there will be none of the ribald autumn colors they know from the world they left behind, no warning that the alpine blush of August on these mountains is all the admonishment they will have that summer has passed and winter waits impatiently behind the peaks.
THREE
The prospectors arrive in Skagway on the twelfth of September. It is forty-two degrees Fahrenheit at noon, and the first gold the passengers see is painted on the autumn leaves of cottonwood trees scattered across the hillsides. Thousands of men swarm the muddy lanes and boardwalks in a slow, churning riot of shouting, pushing, and rushing that reminds Hannah of a shovel-turned ant hill. Many wear sidearms beneath their coats. The Nelsons have been warned repeatedly of robbery and thievery. Few women walk the muddy streets, and those who do seem evenly divided between those like Hannah, who dress with some severity, and those in brightly colored dresses that accent their bosoms and behinds. Hannah watches in shock as a drunken slattern attempting to climb from the rear window of a crib-sized hut behind a saloon slips and falls.
An unsure, troubled look seizes Hans’s eyes, and Hannah searches without success among the features of his face for some sign of the aplomb he has carried since Chicago. Frightened by the deflation she finds there, and the sudden droop in her husband’s shoulders, her voice erupts, a decibel too frantic, “Mr. Nelson, what shall we do?”
Hans stares at Hannah for a moment from behind a furrowed brow, digging for his confidence. Squaring his shoulders, he eyes the fevered crowd and grumbles, “This lot looks like it would steal us blind. It’s best if one of us stays with the gear.” Waving a gloved hand at the mound of their belongings, he says, “I’ll find a hotel. You keep an eye on the supplies.”
By nightfall the sky is growing overcast. A cold rain begins to fall, driven by rolling gusts of wind. Hannah digs an ankle-length oilskin coat from a pack. Hans returns late, wet and hungry. Dropping to a seat on a keg of nails, he blows on his hands to warm them, picks up a stick, and begins carving the mud from his boots.
“There’s not a room to be had anywhere, Hannah. Every bed has two or three men in it. They’re even sleeping on the floors.”
She hugs her arms to her chest to keep warm. “Perhaps we should return to the ship.”
Hans’s answer is to shrug and begin digging a folded tarp from the stack of supplies. “It’s gone. It left for Seattle two hours ago. We’ll have to stay here for the night.”
“Surely there must be some place we can go,” she says, glancing up at the darkening sky to emphasize the rain.
Hans bristles. “I said there isn’t anything. Do you think I haven’t looked?”
A flush of anger fueled by uncertainty courses through her. Why isn’t he taking better care of her? What of the promises he made in Seattle? She has never slept outdoors in her life.
It is almost as if Hans reads her thoughts, and he softens, saying, “I’m sorry, Hannah. I truly am. But no one was expecting this.” He waves a hand to indicate the squalor and the milling crowd. “For now we’ll just have to do the best we can.”
“And besides,” he adds as he begins shifting bags and crates to build an opening in the pile over which to spread the tarp, “there may be more of this sort of thing in the Yukon.”
He is right, of course. As she helps anchor the tarp, she imagines more cold, wet nights and must swallow against the throat-swell of tears as she concedes to herself how unrealistic her vision of a romantic tent life has been.
“Take this,” says Hans, handing her a rolled blanket. He lifts the edge of the improvised shelter and motions for her to crawl in. “Try to sleep. I’ll stand guard.”
It grows cold. Huddled beneath the blanket in the mud, she shivers amid fragments of sleep and broken dreams.
Morning arrives adorned in the glittering jewelry of winter. Fresh snow forms a pattern of lace on the broken cliffs above the town.
Again, Hans leaves Hannah with their boxes and bags and goes in search of a room or stable in which they may sort and pack their goods. They dare not leave the gear unattended for a moment. Shovels, cooking utensils, clothing—all are scarce in Skagway, and their supplies would melt into the hands of thieves as fast as the fresh snow is now disappearing into mud. The thin leather of Hannah’s boots is soaked through, and her feet are numb. Her skin feels filthy, and hunger and thirst make her dizzy. She gathers snow from the tarp spread over the equipment, compresses it in her fist, and puts it into her mouth. After sucking cold water from the snowball, she crawls under a corner of the tarp, wrestles her undergarments down, and performs an act of public indecency. In the darkness, the smell of her urine rises warm and rank to her nose.
Hans returns near the middle of the day with news of a tent village where others from Pegasus have set up camp. There are latrines close by, as well as a number of peddlers selling supplies at pillaging prices. “There’s room for us there and a standpipe nearby, so we will at least have water for you to cook with.”
“We’ll be glad of that,” says Hannah. Hans starts to say something then looks away. In the flow of mercenaries there are numerous men of the sort he labored with in the Hobbesian world of the Idaho mines, where bullies and thieves ate from the lunch buckets of weaker men. After a heavy snowfall and a derailed train left the operation short of rations, he had seen a Chinaman kicked and stabbed to death for an apple. After that, he had squirreled food away and eaten alone whenever possible.
Hannah watches as her husband feigns interest in a passing wagon, mystified by the struggle she sees in the flickering glances he throws in her direction.
After a moment he grumbles, “We’ll get moved and set up the tent. You can cook something. You must be famished.”
“Yes,” she agrees. She has had no food since leaving the Pegasus.
Hans hesitates, chews at his lip, and swallows, then puts his hands on his hips and straightens as if a decision has been made. “I thought you might be,” he says. “So I brought you this.”
He reaches under his coat and brings out a small parcel wrapped in newsprint. Folding back the paper, he holds out the remains of a sausage nestled amid a small litter of cold potatoes.
Dear Diary,
Disaster is complete. We have been turned back at the border of Canada for being inadequately supplied. Very distressed in our condition, for winter is upon us with rain, snow, and terrible winds. This canvas te
nt is our sole shelter and miserable. Many others in the same condition.
The Crown forces of Canada, in the form of a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, flips the tarp back over the pile of supplies and speaks bluntly, “Entry refused.”
Hans stands up straighter and speaks loudly to make himself heard over the yowling of sled dogs and shouts of men hoisting heavy packs to their shoulders as a string of prospectors prepares to depart for the Canadian interior. “Refused? Why?”
The Mountie folds a fistful of receipts and papers in half and holds the bundle out to Hans. Snowflakes drift through the air like ashes. Hannah feels their cool sting on her cheeks.
“Insufficient supplies,” says the officer, flicking his blue-eyed gaze across Hannah’s upturned face. Lowering his voice, he looks again to Hans. “Look, man, it’s really no place for a woman. Not a woman like her.”
Hans stares at Hannah as the Mountie goes on to explain. There have been reports of cannibalism and murder, with one gang of miners raiding another in search of food, and after several parties of ill-prepared prospectors starved to death, the Mounties enacted a requirement that each company carry a year’s worth of supplies. Beans, rice, salt, coffee, flour, lard, bacon, dried milk, sugar, and jam are unavailable in the Yukon, and a full ton of staples is required for each and every gold seeker wishing to enter Canada.
Their own mound of supplies, large and cumbersome as it is, is woefully inadequate. Worse, there is little food to be had in Skagway and none at all at a price that will not empty their purse.
After dragging, sledging, and packing their burden back into Skagway, Hans falls into a black mood and walks away, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll be back later. Watch our things,” before disappearing into the crowd.
“Mrs. Nelson? Mrs. Hans Nelson?” The searching call comes to Hannah through the thin canvas wall of the tent. She hesitates as she tries to identify the visitor before throwing back the flap. “Here. In here. I am Mrs. Nelson. Where is Mr. Nelson?”
A small man in a coat sewn from a colorful Hudson’s Bay blanket bends down to peer in, removes a knit cap, and says in a voice with a Midwestern twang, “He’s up to the blacksmith’s there. Took a pretty good knock, and he’s asking fer you. Is that you, then, Mrs. Nelson? You’re Mrs. Nelson, are you?”
Hannah rises to her feet and reaches for her hat as she realizes he means Hans has been hurt. Casting a concerned look at the stack of supplies she has been charged with guarding, she hesitates, worried they will be pilfered, then hurries to follow the messenger as he trundles off before her, hurling bites of words over his shoulder as he elbows a passage through the damp-smelling crowd. “It was a nigger boy found him. Gangs all over the dam’ town. Behind the horse pens, knocked silly. I’m from Indiana, myself. So he was asking for ya, I come to get ya.”
Outside a blacksmith shop that reeks of hot metal and tar, Hans sits on a box, clutching a bloody rag to his head. After stopping in a saloon to ponder his troubles, he had been lured into conversation by a friendly stranger, then offered a drink. Two hours later, he awoke in a puddled alley, his mouth sticky, dry, and plated with the copper taste of the drug the stranger had slipped into the whiskey. Groping through his emptied pockets, he had staggered back into the saloon and confronted the stranger, only to be beaten with a sap.
The blanket-coated Hoosier stands back and chatters as Hannah pulls gingerly at the rag. It sticks to the wound with dried blood. “Ought to do something, but nobody does. They’ve killed a few fellows, too, for their pokes. Rigging card games and such. Call him Soapy Smith, got a real gang of cutthroats, but nobody does nothing.”
Shrugging, he repeats unnecessarily, “And they’ll kill ya, too.”
Hans leans against Hannah as they stagger back to the tent. “Just about cleaned me out. Got my wallet, all our cash. All we got left is …” He stops to feel about in the pocket of his vest with a forefinger and thumb. They emerge pinching a gold piece between a pair of smaller silver coins. “Jesus. Five dollars. Five dollars and fifty cents.”
Heavy rains fall that night, soaking the tent and everything in it. In their wet bedroll, Hans curls around Hannah, burning her neck with his stubbled beard.
The next morning a dark, mute beggar stops at the door of the tent. His face is dirt caked, lined with calamity, and as he holds out one filthy hand in silent supplication Hannah looks away, embarrassed by the proximity of such misfortune, and waits for Hans to say, “Scat.”
The beggar stands stock-still, hand distended, his unspoken request resonating in the air.
Hans shifts uneasily in his seat. Hannah looks to her husband, who does nothing, then breathes deep to gather her courage. “We’ve nothing for you,” she says, reaching for the flap.
Hans covers her hand with his own. “Wait.”
Reaching into his vest pocket, his fingers fish, pause, then fish again. And because in times of calamity people often do the unexpected, or because charity appeals when someone else has it worse, Hans passes into the beggar’s soiled paw two small silver coins.
There is no work in Skagway except that of a mule. Hans considers hiring out to bear loads of goods up the precipitous incline of the Chilkoot Pass, but the local strong-backed Indians have established a level of wages for which only the most desperate are willing to labor. Many lie broke and hungry in ragged tents in the mud. Hundreds compete for every job.
The surplus of bodies has spread out from Skagway, guaranteeing unemployment in the nearby settlement of Haines and overflowing into the mines eighty miles away at Juneau. Willing men idle as far away as Petersburg. Prices everywhere are outrageous; an egg brings a dollar, a pound of beans, three. Coffee is a luxury for kings.
Hannah counts and recounts the dollars hidden in her journal; there is not enough for a return passage to Seattle. She calculates, figures, and refigures, then proposes to Hans that selling their outfit will fetch a sufficient sum. He mutters a curse in reply, wipes at a plate of beans with a crust of bread, then grips himself and tries to speak with calm and reason; retreat would be futile. There is no work elsewhere since the collapse of the railroads. Men and their families are going hungry in every state in the Union. Better to stay the course here in the north, find a way to get in on the gold. But first there is the winter to survive.
The next day after a walk, Hans throws himself down on the wet cot. “I hear there’s a lumber boat leaving for Sitka.”
The old Russian capital lies on the outer coast nearly two hundred miles away to the southwest. Skagway’s boomtown hunger for building material and firewood has completely stripped the surrounding countryside of timber-grade trees. The few remaining are small, crooked, and grain-twisted from incessant gales, but Sitka’s moderate maritime climate provides trees that are immense and straight.
“I reckon it pays to freight lumber to Skagway. That ought to mean there are sawmill jobs in Sitka,” he mutters. “We might as well go find out. Things can’t be any worse there than here.”
“Perhaps I can work, too. There must be something I can do,” says Hannah.
Hans shakes his head, sitting up and reaching for his wife’s hand with a mixture of righteousness, pride, and tender concern. “I can’t have it, Hannah. No wife of mine is cuttin’ fish in a cannery or spooning hash up to a bunch of trashy boomers.” He shakes his head emphatically. “It’s just not for a lady.” Then he drops his brow into his hands. “Don’t know how we’ll get there, anyhow. Five dollars won’t get us on the boat.”
Hannah stares at the mud beneath her feet. Her toes have not been warm for days, and she feels like crying. “I have some money,” she says. Reaching for her journal, she is enfolded by a regret she cannot name.
Sixty of the one hundred and eighty-three American dollars pressed flat in her journal go to the lumber boat’s captain. Hans appropriates the remainder to refill his plundered purse. Hannah does not mention the forty English pounds pressed between unwritten pages in the back of her diary. While he sees to their pass
age, she carefully rips a seam from her one good whalebone corset, folds the bills lengthwise, and stitches them smoothly along one polished stay.
Emptied of its cargo of planks and beams, the lumber ship rides high, lightly ballasted by a cargo of broken humans. A north wind screams in the rigging, driving vapors of black exhaust from a sputtering engine into the forepeak, where a dozen men and one woman squat on wooden benches, huddling together against the gunwale-to-gunwale wallow of a following sea. The smoke stinks and coats Hannah’s nose with the gummy flavor of kerosene. One by one the cabin’s occupants add the sound and smells of seasickness to the discomfort of the voyage.
There is no heat in the forecastle, and the air is clammy with their breath. Sea air permeates everything, weighting and dampening their clothes with salt. Hannah, like the others, hugs herself in a stupor and dozes, deadened by the slow, pile-driver rhythm of the waves.
A deckhand comes below with a wooden bucket of saltwater and slops the contents across the deck, swirling the rejected contents of outraged stomachs about their feet before it dribbles into the bilge.
“’At’s your head and slops pot, too,” says the deckhand, setting the bucket on the planked sole and giving it a nudge with his foot. When he grins at Hannah and chuckles, she sees that his teeth are gray.
A muttering man among the huddled passengers wears greasy coveralls and boots of vulcanized rubber. The skin of his hands and face flakes in red patches. A cracked gleam sparks in his glance. Beside him sits a man so large and dark he consumes space the way a cavern absorbs the light of a candle, his face hidden beneath a sprawling salt-and-pepper beard.
The mutterer reaches with one booted foot for the bucket and skids it ringing and empty across the deck to rest before him, then rises. When he stands and reaches for his groin, working his hand into his fly, Hannah realizes he intends to urinate. Looking up to protest, she sees wet, contorted red lips splinter into a grin. The man leers, enjoying the shock on her face. Beside her, she hears Hans shout “not in front of my wife!” and sees him rise to his feet.