by Janet Dailey
“What’s the matter with yore friend, Nate?” Big Molly curiously studied the tall, lean private.
“Don’t pay no mind t’ him. He always sits for a while an’ moons over that gold mine he ain’t found yet. After he’s had a few drinks under his belt, he livens up some.” Wheeler poured her a shot from the bottle, then turned in his chair and draped an arm across her shoulders, letting his hand hang low. “Right now you an’ me can talk.”
“You just mind where that hand of yours goes,” she warned. “You know the rules. I don’t go in for no free fondlin’.”
“Ah, Molly,” he protested.
“Business is business,” she reminded him. “If you don’t like it, take your bottle an’ go get some squaw from the Ranche liquored up. Then you can have all you want for free—includin’ sores all over ya.”
“Yo’re a hard woman, Molly.”
“Now, Nate, you know I’m soft. How many times this past winter have you wallowed in my softness?” she chided him.
Ryan had seen Big Molly work too many times to be interested in watching her hook another customer. He walked over to the bar. “I’ll be in the back office if you need me, Lyle.”
CHAPTER XXXV
After their marriage, the Blackwoods set up house in a sparsely furnished cabin, mainly with cast-off furniture. Nadia took pains to create an attractive setting for her beloved husband.
Her needle was always busy fashioning doilies to cover the marred surfaces of tables and bureaus and embroidering scarfs to hide the threadbare arms and backs of the sofa and chairs. But each time she looked about the rooms, she saw so much more that needed to be done—new curtains for the windows, samplers for the walls, hooked rugs for the floors—the list seemed endless.
Hearing the scratch of pen on paper, Nadia looked up from the needlework on her lap. Gabe sat at the table he used for a desk, bending over the letter he was writing, a study in concentration. Even if it took her a lifetime to turn this home into one in which he could take pride, she’d do it gladly for him.
He paused in his writing and ran his fingers through his hair, then he rubbed his eyes in a gesture indicative of weariness. Quietly, Nadia set her needlework aside and crossed the room, walking softly on the balls of her feet so the click of her heels on the bare floor wouldn’t disturb him. In the kitchen, she fixed him a pot of tea and set it along with two teacups and a pot of honey on the silver tray that had been a wedding gift from her grandfather.
She carried the tea tray into the parlor and set it on the table where he was working. He glanced up with a preoccupied frown. There was something so boyish about that expression that, even after two weeks of married life, she still had the urge to reach out and smooth those furrows from his forehead.
“I thought you might like some tea,” she murmured.
“I’d love it.” He sighed and straightened in his chair, arching his back and flexing the cramped muscles in his shoulders.
After filling his cup, Nadia added the amount of honey he liked, then carried the cup around the table to set it in front of him. He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her close to him.
“What are you writing?” She glanced curiously at the paper that was nearly covered with his elaborate handwriting.
“A letter to Congress urging them to give us the right to a form of civil government. They must be informed of the present conditions—and the potential for sound growth and development here. We can’t continue with no law here. They must pass some legislation to end this intolerable situation,” he declared.
“You will convince them.” She pressed her hand on his shoulder in a gesture of both affection and faith.
“Some husband I am.” His smile held a trace of chagrin. “I’ve barely said two words to you all evening. Soon you’ll accuse me of neglecting you.”
“Never.” She blushed when he slid his hand higher on her rib cage, nearing the swell of her breast, and lifted her hand to kiss its palm. Gently she extricated herself from his embrace and moved back to the tea tray to pour herself a cup. She was still not comfortable with the intimacies of the marriage bed. She enjoyed his kisses, but the rest seemed so brutish to her. “Did I tell you my cousin Dimitri has found work?”
“That’s wonderful news. Where’s he working?”
“Mr. Colby hired him—”
“Colby? That blackguard?”
Shocked by his sudden anger, Nadia wavered uncertainly. “I … I thought he was your friend.”
“Him? Never.” Gabe pushed his chair back with a loud clatter and began striding about the room, gesticulating wildly as he spoke, “That saloon of his and the others are responsible for half the evil in this town! They are houses of sin and corruption, and they should not be allowed to operate!” He stopped, confronting her with his anger. “What possessed your cousin to go to work in such a place? He’ll be violating the law. Here I am fighting to make this town a decent place to live, and one of your family does a foolish thing like this. How is it going to look?”
Nadia cringed slightly from him. “Dimitri isn’t going to work in the saloon. He’s a navigator,” she explained hesitantly. “Mr. Colby has hired him to sail his ship.”
“His ship? What ship?” He drew back, no longer looming over her. “What’s Colby going to do with a ship?”
Sensing the break in his anger, she hastened to assure him that her cousin would be committing no wrong. “Dimitri said Mr. Colby bought one of the company sloops so he can begin trading with the Kolosh villages in the area for furs. That’s what Dimitri is going to do. He’s a trained navigator and familiar with these waters and the location of the different villages. He knows about trading, and he can speak the Kolosh tongue very well.”
“Those savages.” Gabe pushed the condemnation through his clenched teeth, then pressed his lips together so tightly they appeared to quiver. “No man should have to get within a mile of them and their carved wooden idols.”
“Their totems aren’t idols of worship. They tell stories and legends of their clans.”
“How would you know?” he challenged.
“That is what I was told,” she murmured uneasily.
“Whatever they are, they’re heathen objects and should be burned. No decent person should have to associate with the likes of them—furs or not. If the Army had any sense, they’d clean out that pigsty they call the Ranche, with its disease and drunkenness, and ship all those filthy Indians off to some remote island.” With his diatribe finished, he stalked back to his chair and began writing furiously.
Nadia’s hand shook slightly as she lifted her teacup. But the tea was cold. She returned the cup to its saucer, wishing fervently that she had never brought up the subject of the Kolosh. From now on, she must remember how sensitive Gabe was and avoid any mention of them. It was all her fault that he’d become so angry. She should have known better.
A year and a half later the Stars and Stripes waved over the citizenry of Sitka who had gathered on the parade ground in front of Baranov’s Castle, now the residence of Alaska’s military commander. Ryan Colby stood on the fringe of the crowd, a thumb hooked in the watch pocket of his brocade vest. Nursing his customary cigar, he studied the slender, slouch-shouldered speaker standing on the veranda steps.
There was little about the older man to command such attention. His suit looked rumpled; the wavy locks of his gray hair were inclined to disorder. His high forehead and shaggy eyebrows emphasized his beak nose and receding chin. Yet this man was the former Secretary of State, William H. Seward, the man responsible for Alaska’s being purchased from Russia.
“Mr. Sumner, in his elaborate and magnificent oration,” Seward continued in a naturally hoarse voice, referring to the Massachusetts senator who had championed the purchase of Alaska, “although he spake only from historical accounts, has not exaggerated—no man can exaggerate—the marine treasures of the territory. Besides the whale, which everywhere and at all times is seen enjoying his robust exercise, and the
sea otter, the fur seal, the hair seal, and the walrus found in the waters which imbosom the western islands, those waters, as well as the seas of the eastern archipelago, are found teeming with the salmon, cod, and other fish adapted to the support of human and animal life. Indeed, what I have seen here has almost made me a convert to the theory of some naturalists, that the waters of the globe are filled with stores for the sustenance of animal life surpassing the available productions of the land.”
Seward was indirectly defending the purchase of the land that had been sarcastically referred to as Seward’s Folly, Walrus-sia, and Seward’s Icebox in the nation’s capital. Ryan’s attention wandered to the select group of townspeople attentively standing to one side of the veranda. All but one were members of the de facto city government, composed of the mayor, who was also the government’s customs collector, and the councilmen. Ryan wondered how Gabe Blackwood had managed to get himself included, then supposed it was the letter campaign he had waged on Congress, agitating for some form of civil government to replace the present military rule in Alaska.
A black-haired man wearing the billed cap and pea jacket of a seaman was working his way around the outer edge of the crowd, pausing now and then to crane his neck and scan the onlookers as if searching for someone. Recognizing the young skipper of his fast sloop, Ryan stepped back from the crowd and motioned to Dimitri Tarakanov. As the young man joined him, Ryan was struck again by the hard and knowing look of those black eyes that belied the relative youth of his twenty years. In their first meeting in the spring of the previous year, Ryan had concluded that what Dimitri Tarakanov lacked in experience was made up for by his cunning intelligence and casual disregard for danger. He had not regretted his choice.
“Lyle said you were here.” Dimitri spoke sotto voce.
“Any problems?”
A smile lifted the outer corners of Dimitri’s spiky black mustache. “None. The furs are sitting in your shed and the whiskey is stashed on the island. As soon as it gets dark, we’ll bring it in.”
“Good.”
Ryan stuck his cigar in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully on it. He had quickly learned there was little profit in the fur trade any more, but it provided the perfect cover for his rum-running activity. Although the Army gave tacit approval to trafficking in liquor, they occasionally confiscated incoming shipments. Ryan considered smuggling the obvious choice to prevent a possible interruption of his supply.
“What’s going on here?” Dimitri indicated the speaker with a nod of his head.
“The good people of Sitka are hoping there’s something Seward can do for them in Congress,” Ryan answered dryly.
Hope was a mild word to describe the desperation he smelled in the crowd. Most of the people had become disheartened, doubting that their pleas would ever be heard by the government in Washington. Alaska was considered a customs district. There was no law, no legal conveyance of property title, no courts to legally try and punish the guilty, no legal tax levies except customs tax, and no right to vote.
Within a year after the purchase, more than seventy vessels had entered the port and left with their cargo holds loaded with nearly all the metal, equipment, furs, and stores that the Russians had in Sitka. The ships that didn’t carry those supplies hauled Russian passengers. The town had already been looted of everything of value, but most of the townspeople didn’t realize it.
The boom was over for most of them—the speculators and promoters who could no longer buy and sell land to which they could neither get nor give clear title, the merchants and tradesmen like the barbers and tailors and family men who could not tolerate the lawlessness and disorder. But it was a situation just made for saloon-keepers, gamblers, and prostitutes.
Sitka was literally a military town. Additional troops had been brought in, raising the number of soldiers in Alaska to five hundred, all but a few stationed right in Sitka. Their barracks were in the heart of town, and when the soldiers went on drunken rampages, which they often did, they ruled the streets and terrorized the population.
But the soldiers were Ryan’s main source of business—the soldiers and the Indians, both the Tlingits at the Ranche and the ones in outlying villages to whom he traded liquor for furs. Not that he didn’t have some competition, and not just from other saloons in town.
Some of the more enterprising soldiers had begun distilling their own brew. Supposedly it had all started at a Tlingit village called Hoochinoo, where a soldier showed the Indians how to take the simple brew they made from bark and berries, add some molasses and yeast, then distill the mixture. The process had since been slightly refined, but molasses remained the main ingredient, with additions of flour, dried apples or rice, yeast powder, and enough water to make a thin batter. The mixture was allowed to ferment to a highly alcoholic state, then distilled. The end product was referred to as “hoochinoo,” a potent, head-splitting molasses rum that tasted as bad as it smelled.
In the Ranche, hoochinoo sold for ten cents a glass. Ryan had his own still to make the liquor, which he sometimes used to cut his whiskey and stretch the supply, or else he sold it when his whiskey ran out, as occasionally happened in the winter.
“I’ll need you to transport some kegs of molasses out to the still for me,” he told Dimitri.
Dimitri nodded, his gaze directed at someone in the crowd. “My grandfather just saw me. I will have to go speak to him.”
“I’ll see you at the saloon sometime after midnight,” Ryan said.
Again Dimitri nodded affirmatively as he moved away to join his family.
At the conclusion of the speeches, the crowd milled around the former Secretary of State, their voices clamoring for order and justice and illustrating the many problems they faced because there was no jurisdiction in the land. Nadia Blackwood stood off to one side with her family and proudly watched her husband, who was in the center of it all next to Mr. Seward.
“There is no more to be learned here,” her father, Lev Tarakanov, stated. “I think it is time we walked home.”
“He says that because his stomach is hungry,” his Finnish-Creole wife, Aila, teased.
“I need to prepare an evening meal for my husband as well,” Nadia replied dutifully.
“Dimitri and I will escort you safely home if you don’t wish to wait for your husband,” her grandfather volunteered. “I have the feeling he is not eager to leave soon.”
“No. I’m sure he’d like to spend as much time as possible with Mr. Seward.” Nadia knew there was nothing she could contribute to his discussion with the American statesman, and the prospect of waiting here until he was through didn’t appeal to her. The idea of having a meal ready for him when he returned home sounded much better. “Excuse me while I tell him that you are taking me home. I don’t want him to worry about me.”
“We will wait for you,” her grandfather promised.
With difficulty she made her way through the crowd and reached her husband’s side. He was speaking to the politician. This was the first time since the famed Mr. Seward had arrived that Nadia had been this close to him. It seemed to her that his face resembled that of a very wise parrot. She stood quietly next to Gabe, hesitant to interrupt him when he was speaking.
“… are intolerable. Congress has bought and paid for Alaska. It can no longer neglect our needs simply because we sit off here by ourselves. This land is bigger than Texas. You’ve seen its wealth. Congress must be made to understand that they cannot leave us here alone and forgotten.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more …” Seward hesitated over his name.
“Blackwood, Gabriel Blackwood,” he quickly supplied.
“Mr. Blackwood. When I return, I intend to speak to my friends in Congress, but you understand I have very few of them. I am not exactly a popular figure in Washington. But someday Congress will recognize the wisdom of this purchase and applaud my foresight.” He used the cigar in his hand to punctuate his comments, then he noticed Nadia hovering at Gabe’s side. “
I believe there is a lovely young woman who’s trying to gain your attention.”
“I don’t wish to interrupt,” Nadia said quickly as Gabe glanced at her in surprise. “I only wanted you to know that grandfather is walking me home.”
“Mr. Seward, may I have the privilege of presenting my very own Russian princess.” He tucked his hand under her elbow and drew her forward. “My wife, Mrs. Nadia Blackwood, the daughter of a very old Russian family here in Sitka. The Honorable Mr. William H. Seward, one of America’s foremost statesmen.”
“This is a privilege, sir.” Nadia gave him her hand and curtsied as he bowed gallantly over it.
“The pleasure is all mine,” Seward insisted, then turned to Gabe. “May I say that you are a lucky man to have so comely a wife.”
“I know.” Gabe smiled at her.
“You will excuse me. I am certain there are many important things the two of you wish to discuss.” She backed away, adding softly to her husband, “I shall be at home.”
“I will be along directly.”
But he wasn’t, and the sumptuous meal she had taken such pains to prepare for him was cold by the time he finally arrived. He didn’t seem to notice. He was filled with the excitement of his meeting with Seward, the long discussions that had taken place, and the support that was voiced.
Seward’s visit in early August raised hopes but not sufficiently to stimulate the town’s declining economy. September came with its depressing rains, and more and more people talked about pulling up and leaving.
As nine-year-old Eva lay awake in her bed, she listened to the voices of her parents in the next room. The dividing wall between the rooms muffled the sound, preventing her from catching every word, but she’d overheard enough similar conversations to enable her to fill in most of the blanks. It was always the same—her father worrying that he’d made the wrong decision by staying in Sitka and her mother doing her best to reassure him that the situation would improve. But she didn’t sound very convincing any more.