by Jamie Carie
“You’re not traveling alone, are you?” It had been a stupid thing to say.
She gave him a quick smile, a gentle curve of rose-colored lips, and a flash of fearful reticence in her eyes before looking down and then behind her. “No, my brother is with me.”
She was as skittish as a new colt, but she didn’t run away. She stood there, eyes downcast, waiting for him to say something else.
His mind went blank and his mouth went dry. What was wrong with him? He was never this unsure of himself. “You got a name?” Had he really just asked her that? Of course she had a name. A warm flush filled his cheeks and he looked away.
She didn’t seem to notice. She took a step forward and held out a mittened hand. “Ellen Pierce, and you?” She smiled, with just a hint of a teasing light in her eyes. “Do you have a name?”
Buck cleared his throat and reached for her hand. It was small but the grip was comfortable, like two puzzle pieces locking together. “Buck Lewis. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
Ellen gazed up at him through thick, dark lashes, and his heart did a double beat. His wife, whom he had loved more than life itself, had never made him feel like this . . . this floating, dizzy, anchorless unease.
Before he could say something else that would make him look like an idiot, a man strode over with angry, clipped steps, came up from behind her, and grasped her arm, wrenching her hand out of his. He glared at Buck. “Is this man bothering you, Ellie?”
Ellen backed away shaking her head. “He just introduced himself, Jonah. Please don’t make a scene.” She whispered the last in a terse tone.
“You stay away from my sister, got it?”
So this was her brother. A small, wiry man with sunken cheeks and eyes. Physically he presented no threat, but those eyes. . . . A strange darkness possessed them that sent a shiver down Buck’s spine.
“I didn’t mean any harm.” Buck spoke in a low, calm voice as he would to a cornered animal.
“Just stay away from her.” Her brother pulled her away with a jerk on her arm.
Buck curled his hand into a fist. That had been the first of many times he saw Jonah manhandling her, and every time Buck wanted to plow his fist into the gaunt face. He kicked at the side of the ship as he thought back to what he witnessed today.
Her brother was growing more dangerous, demented even. What if he snapped? Killed her? Buck didn’t want to care, shouldn’t care, but he did. Lord, what can I do about it?
His wife’s face, her eyes, how they’d widened with the shock of the bullet as it entered her chest, flashed before him and nearly sent him to his knees. He hadn’t been able to protect her. He had insisted she come with him to Skagway. Kalage’s death was his fault.
God, why didn’t You stop me? Why didn’t You stop him?
Buck quieted his mind and tried to hear God’s answer. He closed his eyes and waited.
Nothing.
He heard nothing but the deadness of his laden heart and the moaning of ice all around.
The early morning air had a stinging crispness that felt different somehow, as if we were inhaling crystallized snowflakes into our lungs instead of air. Garbed in my tattered coat and mittens, I followed the fourteen men setting out for Klondike gold and the city in the north that made poor men’s dreams come true: Dawson City. Our only assets were three heavily loaded sleds with motley beasts for dogs and inexperienced mushers for drivers.
I looked at the facts around me and tried to do what Buck told us to do—pray the clear skies would hold—but I choked on the first line. I didn’t pray anymore, hadn’t prayed in years.
What could my brother be thinking to command that we do this? I’d tried to convince him the night before. The memory of him curling into a ball on the bed and rocking back and forth with low moaning swept through me.
I went to him, tried to comfort him with a hand on his back. “Jonah, we would be safer waiting out the winter here on the steamer. Please. You’re not thinking clearly.”
He turned, snarled, and then spit at me. Before the shock of that wore off, he leaned into my face and, with a guttural sound to his voice, let loose a stream of curse words, evil horrid words directed at me, about me. His face contorted with a hatred I’d not seen before. I backed away from his crazed eyes, but he grabbed me.
“I will tether you to a dogsled if necessary. I’m going to get me a claim, and even if it kills you, Ellie, you are going with me.” His eyes rolled back in his head. He began to shake and sob. “Don’t leave me alone, Ellie. Don’t do it.”
I saw it then. That dark presence that haunted him, a specter I could neither see nor hear but recognized the signs of all too well. It grew stronger, desperate, at times like these. Sometimes it had us running like rabbits, moving from city to city. Sometimes it watched us hide in Jonah’s make-believe world, where he was god and king and could do anything. And then there were the times it just hovered in a low hum, coloring his every thought and action and eating away at his flesh until I could hardly remember the strong, handsome youth I had known as my brother so many years ago.
Despair filled me as my cage, that promise I’d made to my mother, clamped around me. “Yes, I’ll go, Jonah. Don’t cry.”
He abruptly let go of my wrist and collapsed on the bed like a limp rag doll. I spent the rest of the night quietly packing our things.
Now I fumbled with the straps of the snowshoes that would supposedly allow me to skate across the depths of white. Buck walked among us, checking the packs, explaining the duties, the protocol that was our only chance of walking upright into Dawson.
Most nodded their sober understanding, a few ventured questions, but Sinclair puffed out his chest and flat out complained when told he would walk instead of drive a sled.
“I don’t know who you think you are, Lewis, and who made you leader, but I’m not taking orders from the likes of you.”
Buck pinned him with a steely glare and stated loud enough for all to hear, “Some trail advice, Sinclair. Plan on taking the worst of the chores, the lowliest of positions for the next week. And then, if you get better, consider yourself lucky. We work together to stay alive.” He turned his back on the seething man, giving me my first real shudder of the horror that lay ahead.
Men like that could ruin us.
When Buck came to me, he paused, his first hesitation of the morning. He waited for me to stare back into his ice blue eyes, reminding me of the floating crystal in the air, as breath robbing . . . and as cold. “You sure about this, Miss Pierce?”
He wanted to hear it from my lips. He needed to hear me say it. I also knew that if I said I did not wish to go, he would overpower my brother’s demand and see that I stayed the winter on board the steamer.
The trail ahead would be harder than anything I’d known, miles of wading through the cold, deep tundra, but the ship behind me was full of men I didn’t know or trust. With Buck and my brother gone, it would only be a matter of time before they found plausible reason to abuse me, but I might have a better chance of living through that.
I hesitated, feeling the tension in Jonah’s body beside me, seeing the hidden hope in the man’s eyes before me. “I’ll go.”
Buck nodded and turned away, but not before I saw the tanned skin around his eyes crinkle, a fine web of lines from some long-forgotten place of happiness, and then I heard his deep exhale.
Chapter Two
The dark line of prodding figures stretched out against a field of white. Buck looked back for what seemed like the hundredth time that hour. The weaker members had dropped back, their panting breaths telling in the fixed puffs of fog that created ice on beards and mustaches and eyebrows. This wasn’t good, not good at all.
He waved his hands above his head and shouted at them. “Keep up! Stay together!” He had to push them harder, knowing their strength would only ebb over the next unmerciful days. Praise God, Ellen was doing all right, even helping her brother when he floundered in a drift.
Pride swel
led his heart every time he looked at her. She was so . . . strong and steady, calm and helpful, seeing a need and meeting it the best she could. But their group had its weak members too. By nightfall two men had decided to return to the steamboat and pray for a short winter.
As dusk settled on the land, Buck motioned for the group to gather around. “We’ll stop and camp for the night. Ronnie, you and George gather what firewood and branches you can find so we can thaw our food and feet.”
Buck let a crack of a smile come through, trying for encouragement. They all looked at him with white, wide-eyed faces, and Buck knew they were feeling the fear, some bordering on panic. It was only the first day, but most of them had never experienced such cold.
“What can I do?”
He turned to see Ellen close by his side. It never failed to give his heart a start when she was that close to him, and he wasn’t sure why. Sure, she was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen, but he had never been attracted to exceptionally pretty women. They were usually too doll-like and prissy for his taste. And Ellen was doll-like in the sense that her face had perfect proportions, her form was thin and willowy, but that’s where the comparison ended. She was a contradiction that fascinated him. Where she should be weak, she proved strong; and where she could be needy or flirtatious or, well, fake, she wasn’t ever any of those things.
“You can help me pass out dinner.” He led her over to the sled that held the food. Her brother glared at him, but he ignored it. It would be a miracle if the man had the strength to glare at anyone for much longer.
After the simple meal, the group sank on the green spruce boughs two of the men had cut and spread around the fire for beds. Ellen lay a few feet away, close enough he could see she was shivering. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her against the warmth of his chest, but that would cause too much trouble with the other men, and one man in particular. If he upset Jonah’s delicate mental balance, Buck knew who would suffer.
He looked over the camp one last time before lying down. The dogs had had their dinner—frozen salmon, whacked off with an ax and wolfed down before the men could turn their backs on them—and were huddled in heaps, licking snow from between the pads in their feet before succumbing to sleep in their curling cocoons.
Each man had been assigned his chores: cooking, hunting, setting up and breaking down camp, or taking care of the dogs. None of them liked it after a harrowing day on the trail when the flesh demanded the ease of being parallel to the earth, but they’d done it uncomplaining, except for the muttered curses of Sinclair. Buck’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the big man’s back.
Sinclair.
There was a man to watch.
It was the third day when I first noticed it. Jonah was slowing. His breath was more labored, more ragged after just two hours on the trail. His steps faltered beside me, but when I glanced in concern, he scowled at me. Clearly I was not to notice.
I dared not comment. He would store and nurse any injury to his pride and repay me later when he was able, with weeks of belittling, soul-smothering attacks. Instead, I pretended I didn’t know we were falling behind, pretended it was normal to invent reasons for running ahead to see the dark coat of the last man and so to discover our way. It was a game I had become an expert at—this make-believe world where Jonah’s mind and soul were safe.
We arrived at camp nearly an hour after the rest, by now so frozen my muscles quivered with fatigue as I helped my brother limp to his snowy bed. Buck’s gaze followed us in a worried way, his brows raised at me in question. I nodded to him, assuring him we would be all right when I didn’t believe anything of the sort. I would have to approach Buck, find out how we were going to go on tomorrow, but first I had my evening chores and Jonah’s too. He would be unable to rise now that he had his boots off, his gaze fixed on his feet, which looked as hard and frail as porcelain.
We all moved like a clock needing to be wound, our blood thick in its efforts to bring any life to our limbs. My mind too was affected. I couldn’t think, couldn’t concentrate on mixing the flour for our evening biscuits. Had I added enough water? I couldn’t tell by the thick paste I stirred, my fingers locked with cold around the handle of the spoon.
A hand on my shoulder startled me, causing me to turn sharply and stumble. Buck caught me, righted me, lingering, touching, still strong somehow, still everything they said he was.
“I’m sorry.” I pulled away.
“Miss Pierce, how are you? Really.”
Really? This man wanted the truth? Shock and something else, something that felt close to relief, spread through my limbs, making them weak and alive at the same time.
“Call me Ellen.” My lips curled up into the unfamiliar gesture of a smile. Had Jonah seen it? He would not like me talking to Buck, much less smiling at him.
Turning as brisk as my muddled mind allowed, I stated, “I’m cold, Mr. Lewis, but I find I can walk well enough.” I paused, afraid but needing the help. “My brother will not come to you, but I fear his feet are in jeopardy. His toes are black on the ends. Do you know how to save them?”
Buck took a breath, his gaze sliding toward Jonah, and nodded. “I thought as much. What kind of footgear is he wearing, Ellen?”
He said it . . . used my name like he was savoring the feel of it on his tongue. “Boots, leather boots.” I looked down at Buck’s brown knee-high moccasins.
He answered my unspoken question. “Moccasins are waterproof. What are you wearing?”
I lifted the hem of my skirt enough to reveal sturdy leather boots, much like my brother’s.
“I have an extra pair of moccasins in my pack you can have. They should fit you. I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer your brother. Whenever we break camp, he needs to put his feet in front of the fire and set his socks and boots up close to dry. Being wet is the enemy in this land. It can take a healthy man down in a few hours. Make him change socks often, even if he has to stop to do it. If his feet aren’t frozen, he’ll catch up.”
I nodded compliance to the rapid-fire instructions as he walked over to his pack, rummaged through it, and came back with some long, folded-over caribou hide. The way he held it, close to him, his thumb caressing a string of beads that adorned the side told me they meant something to him.
An intense wave of jealousy spiked through me and then, the moment I recognized it, dismay. I couldn’t take something so precious to him. And yet they might mean the difference between continuing or stopping in another day or two. I thought of Jonah’s toes, the pain and suffering of walking on such feet. I reached for the moccasins held from Buck’s strong hands.
“Thank you.” I turned away, not wanting to see what it cost him to give them to me.
“Don’t you want to know?”
I faced him, blinking the water back into the wells of my eyes. “Yes . . . no . . . do you want to tell me? You don’t have to tell me.”
“They were my wife’s, a Tlingit woman.” He took a few steps toward me, blocking me from the view of the camp.
“Were?”
“She was shot during a skirmish in the streets of Skagway over an ounce of gold.” Buck leaned to one side and tried to spit, his voice hard, his mouth a bitter twist, but it turned to ice barely inches from his lips and crackled into the snow. “This is a God-forsaken place, Ellen, it surely is.”
“I thought you loved it here.”
“I guess I did at one time, before this gold rush changed everything. Greed taints the land now.” A sudden noise sounded from across the camp. The hunters. And they were empty-handed.
Buck’s voice was low, for my ears alone. “We’ll have to ration in earnest without fresh meat. It will weaken everyone, and a few, like your brother, already have the dead flesh creeping up on the living.” He looked into my eyes. “I can’t tell this to the others. They wouldn’t know what to do with it, but you need to know the truth. Prepare yourself, Ellen. This march is about to turn ugly.”
The fourth day
one of the dogs dropped and wouldn’t get up. Those close enough watched in silence as Buck cut her out of her traces and then, without a word, steered the rest of the panting, stricken animals around her. We passed her body, one by one, trying to avoid the pained, alert eyes, all of us wondering . . . who would be next?
By noon the feeling of warmth was a hazy, rose-colored memory. It was easy to forget why we were doing this. Why had I let Jonah drag me across a continent in search of a pot of gold? There were no rainbows on my horizon. No, I corrected through the stupor of my brain, he had insisted I come along. And when I’d said I wouldn’t go . . .
I shivered with the memory of his hands around my throat, the black frenzy in his eyes, the strength he suddenly possessed. That was the first time I thought he might really be capable of killing me. The time I finally admitted to myself that his violent episodes were escalating in intensity so I was truly no longer safe with him. But what could I do? He would not survive without me, and besides, I had promised my mother to take care of him until the very end.
I looked up from the blinding snow to see that everyone had slowed. Even though my brother and I brought up the rear, it was easy to see the weaving, tottering, drunkenlike figures in front of us and know the way.
Jonah leaned more heavily against my side, making my muscles quiver and spasm. I glanced at his face, ice crusting over his nose and chin, bright red spots of color on his cheeks. His breath labored and steps faltered, but I did my best to drag his skeletal form along.
By late afternoon we were stopping often so I could support Jonah while racking coughs consumed his body. It was the ailment Buck had warned about. When the air became so cold it froze in the lungs, the result was a lifetime of coughing for those lucky enough to escape death.