Noble Metals

by L. A. Witt

Nestling my face deeper into my collar, I made my way back to the tent city. I hoped he was still there. He’d promised to hold my provisions until I’d secured a team, but he was a man in a hurry just like everyone here. They didn’t call this a gold rush for nothing, and with potentially dangerous men on his tail . . .

  His tent was still there, though, and to my great relief, he was sitting in front of it, writing in his journal beside the fire.

  “John?”

  When our eyes met, he straightened. “Oh. Robert.”

  “Hello.”

  He set aside his journal and stood, tugging at his jacket sleeve. “Ready for your things?”

  “Uh. Not quite.”

  “What?”

  I gulped. “Is it . . . Is it too late to go on with you?”

  John’s eyebrows rose. “I thought you were worried about the men harassing us.”

  “I am. But . . .” I gestured at the box. “Before I agree to it, if that thing is the reason those men are following you—following us—I don’t think I’m out of place in asking what exactly it is.”

  “Fair point.” John eyed the box briefly. “There are too many ears in this town.” I started to protest, but he touched my arm. “When we’re a few miles out of town—still close enough to turn back if you’re so inclined—I’ll explain. But here, in this place . . .” Shaking his head, he glanced around and shuddered.

  “But you’ll show me. As soon as we’re clear of the town with no one looking over our shoulders.”

  John hesitated, gnawing his lip, then nodded. “If it’ll reassure you enough to stay in my company, then . . . yes. I will.”

  “All right.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “I left because of the men following you. But I have no reason to distrust you.” I hesitated, but then met his eyes. “And I have more reason to trust you than I do any other of the men in this place.”

  John put a hand on my forearm. “You can trust me, Robert. To be honest, I need you for this as much as you need me.”

  I glanced at his hand. He withdrew it, but the faintest remnant remained of the gentle contact through my thick sleeve. We held each other’s gazes, and then John cleared his throat. “We should get some sleep. We’ll want to get an early start tomorrow.”

  “Right. Good idea.”

  He got up and went into the tent. As soon as I was alone, I released a long breath. Well, I was back where I’d started. The danger of Sidney’s men still loomed, and I still didn’t know if John was the thief or the potential victim of three thieves.

  But strangely, I felt safer than I had since I’d left his tent yesterday.

  I hugged myself inside my thick overcoat, warding off the chill of the drizzly early morning. Beside me, our mech’s engine idled quietly, the relief valves hissing and coughing at random intervals, sending little puffs of steam into the air.

  The local authorities restricted how many mechs could leave at a time. From what I’d heard, that was something to be thankful for—there were few things that could bring a caravan to a halt faster than a mech bottleneck on a narrow trail, especially if one broke down. With some space between groups, the congestion was minimized.

  So for now, we had to wait at the outer edge of Ketchikan with everyone else who wanted to leave.

  As we waited, I looked around, searching for three familiar faces within the tired, impatient crowd. I could’ve sworn I saw the one named Logan earlier, but he’d disappeared too fast for me to be sure.

  John kept a close eye on our surroundings as well, drumming his fingers impatiently as he scanned around us. We were boxed in here. That may have been why John kept his pistol on his belt and his overcoat open.

  I looked around again, and a face caught my eye. Probably imagining things. God knew I’d thought several times that I’d seen—

  No, that was really him.

  I swallowed. He was definitely one of the three men. Not Logan, the one who’d threatened me, but he’d been there yesterday. He hung back near some of the other teams, casually smoking a cigar and gazing out at the long line of mechs behind us.

  I touched John’s elbow. “Over there.”

  He turned his head, and his whole body tensed. His eyes narrowed and darted back and forth. “See the other two?”

  “No.”

  John pursed his lips. Then he turned so his back was to the man, and gave a slight grin. “I have an idea.” He reached into one of our packs and dug around. As he withdrew a folded map, he quietly said, “I’m going to insist we take the White Pass route. You’ll argue for the Chilkoot Trail but give in.”

  “All right.”

  “Trust me.” John turned again so the man watching could see us both in profile. He flattened the map over the top of our provisions and jabbed a finger at one of the painstakingly drawn mountains as he loudly said, “The Chilkoot route is longer and more dangerous. This is the faster route.”

  “What about the weather?” I shook my head. “Between the wind and snow, we’ll—”

  “Nonsense.” John waved his hand. “It’s faster, flatter, and the only reason anyone’s talking about bad weather is so everyone will go the Chilkoot route and leave the trail less crowded for them.”

  “And what happens if we get up there and find out the weather really is bad?”

  “Then it’ll be just as bad on Chilkoot.” John folded up the map. “We’re taking White Pass.”

  I glared at him, then put up my hands. “All right, all right. White Pass. But I think we’re making a mistake.”

  He shoved the map into the pack. “And I think you’re falling victim to men spreading rumors just to keep the trails clear for themselves.”

  “Fine.” I chanced a surreptitious look at the man who’d been smoking a few paces back. He lingered behind us for a while, then dropped his cigar in the mud and disappeared into the crowd.

  “That should do the trick.” John stared at the place the man had been standing. “At least until we get to Dawson City.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  The first day of traveling by land was grueling but less so than I expected. The worst was yet to come, of course, so I was thankful for a somewhat easy start. Rain was better than snow, hilly was better than mountainous, and though my feet and back ached by day’s end, I wasn’t about to complain. Not with hundreds of miles and the arduous task of crossing Chilkoot Pass still ahead before we could claim our riches in the Canadian north.

  I could only imagine how I’d feel at the end of one of those days, though, because at the end of this one, I was ready to fall over. While John wrote in his ever-present journal, I warmed my hands by the fire and just enjoyed being off my sore, throbbing feet. At least John seemed equally exhausted, nearly nodding off as he wrote, so I didn’t see him asking for anything beyond quiet company by the fire.

  And he was good company. As Ketchikan faded behind us and the trail wound into the distance before us, I realized I’d never taken into consideration the abject monotony of walking in the rain along a tree-lined strip of mud.

  The mech’s clang-snap-thud, clang-snap-thud steps bordered on maddening. That, and the brass beast wandered more than a distracted horse. Between the noise and the meandering, had I not had John’s company, I might have steered the damn thing into a river for spite.

  “Pity that by the time the airships are cheap enough for us common men,” he’d said this afternoon, gesturing up the trail, “this whole stampede will be over.”

  I’d looked up at the gray sky, squinting at the rain that stung my cheeks as I trudged through the thick mud. What I wouldn’t have given for a leisurely, luxurious passage over the tops of these trees and Chilkoot Pass. “Think they’ll be affordable soon?”

  “Eventually.” John glanced at the sky. “But that’s still months, maybe years away. It won’t help anyone with Dawson City on his map.”

  “Pity,” I muttered, and kept walking over the wet terrain.

  As the day wore on, J
ohn told me about his youth as the son of a fur trapper, and how the life in the city had always called to him. The son of a tanner myself, I understood.

  “Did your father approve?” I asked.

  He laughed. “He’ll approve the day I beat Edison or Tesla to something and make a fortune. Until then . . .” He shrugged. “What about your father? Did he approve of your leaving tanning for Seattle?”

  I winced, but John didn’t seem to notice. “Well, like yours, he’d probably have approved if my brothers and I had struck it rich. Until I do, the only way I’ll regain his favor is to start tanning cowhide with him again.” I felt a little guilty lying to John, but he had his secrets too.

  John wrinkled his nose. “I’ll never understand men like our fathers whose livelihoods involve peeling skin off creatures. Such . . . grotesque work.” He shuddered.

  I laughed to myself. From anyone else, I might have taken the comment as snobbery toward those who’d engage in such menial tasks, but John had skinned his share of beasts. That, and he’d loaded the mech and inspected its tools and spare parts as if it had never occurred to him to think such work was beneath him. And having removed the hide of many a cow, I couldn’t disagree with his sentiment that it was a grotesque business.

  We exchanged glances. Then the mech started wandering again, so I leaned into it while John used the lever on his side to guide it back onto the road.

  “Had I more time,” he said through gritted teeth, “I’d modify this contraption to navigate itself.”

  “You could do that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I thought you were a scientist. Are you also an inventor or something?”

  He shrugged. “An inventor, a scientist, a fool. Depends on who you ask.”

  “How so?”

  “Well,” he said, briefly leaning against the errant mech as it tried to veer toward his side of the trail, “I’m researching new technology. Electronic technology. Harnessing electricity to find new ways to make manufacturing more efficient or daily life better. So yes, an inventor and a scientist.”

  “And they call you a fool?”

  He laughed softly, his cheeks coloring. “Every scientist’s work is riddled with failure, as is every inventor’s. The problem lies in convincing those who’ve funded all those failures to fund something that will likely also be a failure on the off chance success is just around the next bend.”

  “Presumably you’ve been convincing, if they’ve paid for you to come all this way.”

  “Yes, well.” He sighed. “It was a struggle to persuade them, and if I fail this time, it’ll likely be the end of my funding from that or any other university.”

  “Then I certainly hope you find enough in Dawson to convince them to continue funding you,” I said. “Though with that much gold, you might not need their funding.”

  “Oh, as I said before, I’m not interested in gold.” He paused. “Well, no more than the next man, I suppose. I may be a fool to some, but I wouldn’t turn away a bag of gold.”

  “Oh, yes. Platinum. I’d forgotten.” I glanced at him. “But, why a gold stampede?”

  “Platinum is extremely difficult to find. Very, very rare. But where there’s gold, more often than not, there’s also platinum. Trace deposits, really, but I don’t need much to start with. It’s invaluable to my work, so it’s worth the journey.”

  “I’ve heard the fields are enormous, though,” I said. “You expect to find traces of anything in a place like that?”

  John looked my way, and his grin reminded me of a devious child’s. “This is why I have that device that Sidney’s men so covet. Let’s just say it’ll make my needle easier to find in the haystack.” He gestured at the locked box tucked in amongst our provisions. Lowering his voice to nearly a whisper, he said, “I’ll show you when we reach the fields.” His eyes darted ahead of us, then behind us, before meeting mine again. “No one can know about it who doesn’t already, or every man will be out to steal it.”

  I nodded but said nothing. I didn’t begrudge him his secrecy anymore, especially with those men hunting him.

  Shortly before nightfall, we stopped. Tents and tied horses lined the edge of the trail as far as I could see in both directions, though a stubborn few kept going, probably hoping to gain a few more miles before bedding down for the night. I didn’t envy them trying to put up a tent in the dark—the daylight alone was worth stopping now.

  We set up the tent beside the mech. After John chained the mech’s legs to a tree so it wouldn’t be stolen, we moved the most valuable of our provisions into the tent. Coal, weapons, some food—the things we didn’t dare risk losing. He tucked the mysterious box in the corner of the tent, near where we’d laid out our bedrolls. Everything else would have to weather the elements and hopefully not wind up in the possession of passing thieves.

  “Robert.” John gestured for me to come into the tent with him.

  I froze. He didn’t want . . . out here? When it was this cold?

  Damn it. We’d never discussed those terms. I’d foolishly never established that I wanted to be here as a fellow prospector, not as a prostitute.

  He glanced back, eyebrows up. “Something wrong?”

  “Uh . . . No. Nothing’s wrong.”

  With my heart in my throat—not now, John, please—I followed him into the tent.

  Our bedrolls had been laid out, and I almost instinctively reached up to take off my jacket but stopped when I saw the mysterious locked box in the middle of his bedroll.

  He knelt beside it and fished a key from his pocket. “I promised you proof. I hope you’ll forgive me if I keep the device itself under wraps, but . . .”

  Now I felt like a fool, but a relieved fool. I knelt beside him.

  He opened the padlock and lifted the box’s lid. Something about the size of my forearm was covered with dark velvet, and he pulled some folded papers out from under it. Drawings and such. Then he handed me the first page. “I hope this is sufficient.”

  I took the page. Most of the writing consisted of numbers and diagrams that made no sense to me.

  “At the bottom,” John said softly. “That should put your mind at ease over who has stolen from whom.”

  I looked at the bottom.

  United States Patent Office.

  Patent Pending – To be issued to Fauth, Jonathon William.

  Exhaling, I handed it back. “So it is yours.”

  He nodded. “Forgive me for not going into detail about its function, but—”

  “It’s all right. I just wanted to know for sure it was yours.”

  He put the device away and we went back outside.

  As we sat in silence beside the fire, John’s pen scratched quietly across paper, and occasionally, he’d pause to stare into the campfire or up at the night sky, his eyes unfocused and brow furrowed, before he’d resume writing.

  All the while, in the back of my mind, I thought about how I’d felt when he’d summoned me into the tent. The device hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’d been certain he’d had other intentions, and now I dreaded crawling into the tent to bed down for the night. In my haste to get out of Seattle, and of Ketchikan, I’d agreed to John’s terms without first making sure we were clear on all the terms. Certain terms had crossed my mind, but it hadn’t occurred to me I might not be as agreeable to them by the time we’d made it this far.

  I was a prostitute. When a prostitute was paid, certain services were expected. Even if we hadn’t discussed such a thing before I’d set off with him on this journey, he was paying me, I was a whore, and I’d have been foolish to be surprised if—when—he finally decided it was time for me to earn my keep.

  That time could very well come tonight. A knot formed in my gut. There hadn’t been privacy aboard the boat, so the point had been moot, and I suspected John had been too nervous about Sidney’s men to think of anything else.

  But now we’d be sleeping side by side in a cramped tent with no prying eyes. He didn’t hav
e to fear discovery as long as we both remained quiet.

  Stealing a glance at him in the firelight, I swallowed hard. He was attractive beyond words, and I liked him, but I was exhausted. More so than I’d ever been in my life. My body ached, my feet hurt, my eyes barely stayed open. Much as I’d enjoyed the night I’d spent with him, if I so much as saw a cock just now, I’d collapse into tears. I was too damned tired.

  But I’d do whatever I had to do to continue with John. The farther we traveled, the less I could risk being alone in bandit-infested country with only my pistol and what little I could carry. If John required me to earn my pay, then I would, but dear Lord, I didn’t know where I’d find the energy tonight.

  To be on the safe side, though, I’d gone into the tent earlier under the pretense of putting something into my pack. I’d withdrawn the opaque glass bottle from my pack and slipped it beneath the fur blanket along with the socks and shirt I’d wear tomorrow. If I had to please him tonight, at least I could have warm lubricant.

  John closed his journal, and my heart thundered in my chest. With a nod, he indicated the tent. I gulped and rose, dreading where the night would take us.

  I doused the fire, and John checked for the hundredth time that his locked wooden box was safely stowed in a corner of the tent.

  Neither of us spoke. We both took off our boots and coats. The weather was chilly, but not yet cold enough to necessitate sleeping in every stitch of clothing we owned. Much as I disliked bitter cold, it would have given me an excuse to keep as many layers as I could between John and me.

  I lay back on my bedroll and pulled the thick fur up to my nose. The blanket was big enough for both of us, and despite the warmth, I shivered beneath it, unsure of how to feel about being under the same covers as him. Staring at the top of the tent, I held my breath, listening to him move around as he got under the fur just inches from me. Exhaustion made the thought of coupling unbearable, and I was scared to death that he was a heartbeat away from asking me to undress. With every rustle and movement, I was sure his hand or body would find mine.

  But then he was still. Before long, his breathing slowed, and soon, he was snoring softly beside me. I released my breath. He must have been as tired as I was.