The Call of the Wild: Klondike Cannibals, Vol. 2

by Herbert Ashe

  As they pushed and jostled along among the thousands, it felt to Jack a lot like a World’s Fair, or at least how he’d imagined one to feel. There were the same breathless crowds, the same marvelling at wonders that Jack had read so much about. There was a distinct flavour of carnival in the air, as if P. T. Barnum himself had orchestrated the whole spectacle for effect.

  They passed many small ad-hoc shops that had sprung up in the backs of carts, or in hastily constructed booths crowded along the dockland road.

  Already there were signs of rampant inflation. The price of canned food was up thirty percent since the week before, and a man might now sell his beaverpelt hat for twice its usual price. They passed a number of outfitters who had completely run out of heavy woollen blankets. Everything was being hoarded: especially anything warm. Wool socks, fur hats, and sealskin suits were all much in demand.

  Up ahead the dockland road widened into a crowded square, where they saw the major steamship warehouses.

  “Would you look at that,” Captain Shepard said with a low whistle as they approached the square.

  Buzzing with frantic activity, all the roads leading onto this square were jammed with traffic. Overworked horses pulled wagons stacked high with wooden crates. Ten-foot-high stacks of supplies were piled everywhere, guarded by teams of men clutching bills of ownership.

  Some men were trying desperately to buy steamer tickets, others to sell them. Some waited patiently in long lines, others fought and swore about the delays and congestion.

  Bright signs with catchy slogans advertised all manner of new wonder products aimed at the men heading North. It seemed as if every wall and surface existed solely to tempt a man into throwing his hat into the ring. There were posters by equipment companies of all sorts, advertising tents, sleds, furs, compressed foods, medical supplies, folding boats, &c., &c., &c. Jack saw signs, advertising “Complete Outfits supplied on Shortest Notice,” pasted up all over the place.

  Jack recognized the familiar shape of the Umatilla, docked at a pier just south of the square. He knew the ship well, having shovelled coal aboard her upon his return from Vancouver three years before. There was a strange symbolism in this for him. He found it hard to believe that he would soon sail North on the same ship, only now as a passenger, rather than lowly coal stoker.

  When they finally made it inside the Alaska Trade & Transportation Company warehouse, Eliza took charge. No expense was to be spared, for, as she kept saying, “if you are going to do something, you must do it right.”

  And sometimes that meant spending a little bit more.

  Over the course of the next hour, a Company agent showed them around the bustling warehouse.

  They didn’t have to carry their supplies yet, of course. They mainly picked things out of the Company’s catalogues, with the arrangement that it would all be loaded upon the Umatilla later. They were issued bills of ownership, saying they were entitled to x number of provisions and equipment aboard the ship. Eliza was very nervous about all this, and insisted upon carrying all their bills and receipts in a secret purse under her belt.

  Captain Shepard and Jack would each have to carry six hundred pounds of staples: wheat flour, cornmeal, rolled oats, rice, and dried beans. He would carry another three hundred pounds of bacon and granulated sugar, and two hundred more of evaporated apples, peaches, onions and potatoes.

  And that was just the food. In addition to all that, he would have to carry his own tin stove, plate, utensils and pots, whetstone, chisel, hatchet, box of nails, hand saw, whip saw, files, picks, hammers, jack plane, butcher’s knife, two hundred feet of rope, and a compass.

  Then there were the clothes: three suits of heavy underwear, one heavy mackinaw coat and two pairs of matching mackinaw trousers, a heavy rubber-lined coat, a dozen heavy wool socks, another dozen mittens, two pairs of heavy rubber boots, four blankets and four towels.

  Rather than being intimidated by the thought of all the hardships that lay ahead of him, Jack relished the idea.

  * * * * *

  It was only after the three of them had left the Alaska Trade & Transportation Company warehouse that Jack first spotted Annie.

  They had just started walking back across the dockyard square, in the direction of a small seafood restaurant Eliza had spotted, when a young blonde woman came into view, escorted by a prim and proper elderly lady.

  The young blonde wore a pretty green dress and held a matching Japanese parasol in her slender hands, shielding her delicate features from the sun, while surveying the hustle and bustle of the dockyard square with wide eyes.

  It all happened so fast—the young blonde stumbled as she passed by Captain Shepard—somehow falling forward into Jack’s arms. He caught her awkwardly. For the briefest of instants, Jack could feel the press of her small frame against his, and smell her hair.

  “I’m so sorry!” she cried out, with a slight Irish accent. She looked up at him with brilliant green eyes.

  “Don’t worry, Miss,” he blurted.

  She took a step back, brushing a lock of exquisite hair from her eyes, looking him up and down.

  “Are you going?” she asked.

  “Annie!” the elderly lady exclaimed. “Where are your manners? You mustn’t pry…”

  For a moment Jack just stood there, blushing like a fool. “Yes,” he said abruptly. “We sail on the Umatilla in two days.”

  “I knew it,” she said.

  Again Jack blushed. He was certainly not used to receiving this sort of attention from a lady. Sure, the whores on the docks found him cute enough, but women of class generally looked right through him, as his cheap and tattered clothing immediately identified him as below their notice. Mabel had been a rare exception, but even she hadn’t looked at him like this, as if he were some Romantic hero stepping free from the pages of Kipling or Conrad.

  Annie saw the way Jack stared at her.

  So, apparently, did her chaperone, for the elderly woman spoke up. “We really must be getting back,” she croaked, giving Annie a severe look.

  Annie stiffened. “Yes,” she said, her smile fading. “We must.”

  They nodded their heads politely to Jack, Eliza, and Captain Shepard, then continued on their way.

  Eliza watched them go.

  “Check your wallets,” she said, as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Oh Lizzie!” Captain Shepard laughed, looking over at Jack in amusement. “You can’t be serious!”

  “Do it, now, while they are still in sight. You too, Jack. Quick!”

  Both Captain Shepard and Jack checked their wallets. Eliza wasn’t satisfied until they had made sure nothing was missing.

  Then Eliza checked the inside of her purse. Yes, their bills and receipts were still inside.

  She blushed a little, a little embarrassed by having her suspicions proven wrong.

  Jack could tell she wanted to get going. She didn’t like the idea of carrying around so many valuable documents in one place, especially one crawling with pickpockets and thieves.

  “Nothing quite like the sight of an adventurer to set a woman’s heart aflutter,” Captain Shepard said to Jack. “I well remember such scenes from my cavalry days.”

  * * * * *

  After a quick lunch of scallops and shrimp at the seafood restaurant, Eliza splurged on a carriage-for-hire to take them downtown, as Captain Shepard wanted to make some legal arrangements for Shepard & Company with a lawyer he knew named Jones.

  It took them half an hour to edge through the traffic jam near the docks, but once they were free and away the carriage made good time to Union Square. Again Jack noticed the strange silence and emptiness of San Francisco’s streets. If anything, they were even more vacant than they had been the day before. The contrast with the bustling atmosphere down in the docklands was startling.

  But he didn’t really consider the oddness of it. His mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Annie. Her hair, her face, her voice… The way she smelled.

&n
bsp; Jack looked out the carriage window, in the direction of Chinatown. It was odd that the papers hadn’t mentioned the outbreak or quarantine, given the number of police Jack had seen there the day before. But the Klondike madness was consuming all attention.

  When they arrived at Jones’s office, the lawyer had seemingly disappeared: his office was locked, and no one in his building seemed to know where he’d gone, or when he’d be back.

  Disappointed with this setback, Captain Shepard suggested they take a streetcar to the terminal, to catch the 3 o’clock ferry to Oakland. He seemed suddenly very anxious about their imminent departure, and kept muttering about the need to wrap things up.

  * * * * *

  They had just boarded the #17 streetcar, and found seats up near the front, when Jack looked over at Captain Shepard and saw sweat pouring down his forehead.

  Eliza didn’t seem to notice, preoccupied as she was writing out various calculations in her little leather notebook, counting out the cost of their steamer tickets, outfits, and provisions, and trying to work out how much gold they would need to pan to pay for it all.

  Jack was about to speak when—suddenly—Captain Shepard toppled over onto the floor.

  An elderly woman sitting nearby shrieked, startled by the sudden movement. Jack and Eliza went to Captain Shepard’s side. Passengers whispered and pointed at them. As soon as one respectable-looking couple stood up and crossed over to the back of the streetcar, the floodgates opened. All at once chaos erupted: a young girl started bawling, and everyone began pushing. A chorus of shrill voices screamed, for someone—anyone—to open the doors and let them out.

  Eliza grabbed Captain Shepard’s arm. “Is it your heart?”

  Captain Shepard shook his head groggily. “Just… hot…” He put two fingers into his collar, trying to loosen it. Eliza quickly unbuttoned the top buttons on his shirt, and yanked it open.

  Heat radiated off his chest.

  Hearing the commotion, the conductor hit the brakes and the streetcar rattled to a stop in the middle of the street.

  It emptied very quickly.

  The conductor stood up, and came over towards them, as if he wanted to help. But his nerve broke when he saw Captain Shepard lying there, shaking and shivering, and he bolted, removing his conductor’s hat and jacket as he ran off down the street.

  Eliza looked up, squinting a little as she peered out the window at a nearby tree, in the front yard of an elegant three-storey house.

  “Let’s move him into the shade,” she said to Jack. “He needs some air.”

  Jack threw Captain Shepard’s arm over his shoulder, and dragged him off the streetcar, across the sidewalk and into the shade of the tree, where he laid him gently on the well-manicured lawn.

  Captain Shepard tossed and turned, moaning, his forehead slick and dripping.

  “What happened to Jones?” he kept saying.

  “Take it easy now,” Jack said. He didn’t want Captain Shepard to get worked up, not with his heart the way it was.

  “What happened to Jones??” Suddenly Captain Shepard reached out and grabbed Jack by the collar. His crazed eyes jolted around wildly in their sockets.

  “Nothing. Don’t worry.” Jack slowly unpried Captain Shepard’s clenched fingers from his collar, and gently laid his head again upon the grass. “That’s it. Just lay back…”

  Captain Shepard seemed to calm down again.

  By now Eliza had grown nearly hysterical with worry. “We need to get him some water!”

  They looked up at the house just in time to see the curtains in the nearest ground-floor window being yanked shut.

  Eliza ran up to the front door of the house and knocked several times.

  “Please!” she cried out. “I know you are in there! We need water!”

  But the door did not open. In fact, Jack thought he heard another lock sliding into place.

  Just then Jack noticed a group of three young boys walking by on the sidewalk, and had an idea.

  “Do you have a dollar?” he asked Eliza. “Quick!”

  She opened her purse and gave him one.

  Jack ran over to the boys.

  “I have a dollar for the first of you to bring me a doctor,” he said quickly. “Any takers?”

  The boys looked at the bill in Jack’s hand. Then they looked at each other.

  “Sure, mister!” said the tallest of the boys, a redheaded twelve-year-old with big ears. “Be right back!” Without another word, he sprinted off down the street.

  The other two boys looked at each other for an instant, then scrambled after him.

  Jack watched the pack of them run off and disappear around a corner.

  While the two of them waited for the boys to return, Eliza began pacing back and forth on the lawn. “I should’ve known something like this would’ve happened. What a fool I’ve been!” Tears sprang into her eyes, as she looked down at her husband, writhing in the grip of a wild fever. “If he can’t even make it this far…”

  Jack put a hand on her shoulder. “Eliza…”

  “Here is what I want you to do, Jack. I want you to get the best price you can for his ticket and outfit down at the docks.” She reached into her purse and gave Jack all the bills and receipts. “Go now, before I change my mind.”

  “Are you sure about this? He won’t be happy.”

  “We are equal partners, remember? So he is outvoted two-to-one. Jack, think about it…”

  Jack had thought about it. But he knew how much this adventure meant to Captain Shepard, and he wasn’t the kind of man to deny another man his chance. “I can carry both outfits myself, you know. I don’t mind.”

  “Oh, Jack!” Eliza laughed at him through her tears. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  But she’d made up her mind. Deep down Jack knew she was right.

  The redheaded boy returned with a doctor a few minutes later. The doctor gave Captain Shepard some pills to bring his fever down, and told Eliza he suspected a summer flu, possibly aggravated by sunstroke. He advised her to return Captain Shepard home at once, where she was to give him regular small doses of quinine sulphate and potassium chlorate in a well-ventilated room, until he recovered.

  As soon as Jack saw Eliza could safely take Captain Shepard home, he left, walking back down towards the docklands.

  * * * * *

  Jack managed to sell Captain Shepard’s outfit and ticket down in the dockyard square two hours later to a desperate fifty-three year old stockbroker from New York named Joe.

  The Company itself had sold out of space upon the Umatilla about an hour or so before, and so a fierce impromptu market had arisen in front of the warehouse, wherein a dozen or so men were bidding upon or selling tickets and outfits independently, steadily driving up the price of both.

  It was very exciting to watch. There was a strange bravado in the air that was causing men to bet big, and often, and it was impossible not to get caught up in it.

  Joe offered Jack eight hundred and forty dollars for what Eliza had spent seven hundred on. For a moment Jack seriously considered hanging around the square and waiting for a better price.

  Who knew how high the price would go in another hour or two? Nine hundred? A thousand? He could make a month’s salary in just a few minutes!

  But he was in a hurry to return home. More than anything he wanted to begin choosing the few books he would be able to take with him, so he took Joe’s offer of eight forty after only a minute or two of haggling. They went inside the Company warehouse to transfer ownership, which was easily done with Jack’s identification and a couple of signatures.

  As they would be travelling North together on the Umatilla, they agreed to meet up once on board to see how well they suited each other as travelling companions and possible partners. When the deal was done Jack carefully put the cash in his wallet and wished Joe luck.

  He left the warehouse with a spring in his step, just after 5 pm.

  * * * * *

  Jack walked back to
wards the Ferry Terminal through the crowds.

  He knew how Eliza felt about the prospect of him carrying so much cash around, so he resolved to keep his hand on his wallet the whole way home. There was no way a pickpocket would be able to get it from him without a fight.

  As he walked, he smiled. He was enormously proud of the fact that, in just a couple of hours, he’d returned a twenty percent profit upon Eliza’s investment. This was a hopeful start to his adventure, surely: he knew now—he felt with every part of his being—that he would succeed in the Klondike.

  He would make Eliza proud.

  For a moment he thought of what Mabel would say, if she could see him now. He felt a mad desire to make a detour by her house on his way home. He wanted her mother, father, and brother Ted, to see him like this, in his moment of glory. The way Annie had seen him.

  But he fought it back.

  What was the point? To torment them both before he left? It had been calf love between them, that was all, though it hadn’t felt any less painful for all its innocence. He’d begun to feel the limitations in Mabel’s love. Now that it was over, he could see the inseparable gulf that had always existed between them.

  At first Mabel’s education and refinement had broadened Jack’s horizons, but in their most recent conversations he’d begun to see just how far he’d gone beyond her. The divine creature he’d once seen her as was just flesh and bone, no less a product of her environment and station in life than he was. This thought tired him out, and dimmed the fires of his love.

  But there was no looking backwards, only forwards, and if that meant—

  Jack’s heart skipped a beat.

  Up ahead, through the shifting crowds, he’d caught sight of the green dress again.

  * * * * *

  Annie stood with her aunt in a small huddle of people just off the main dockland road, in the shadow of a large brick warehouse.