Still, for the most part, Danny held his temper. He’d learned a lesson in Temperanceville—it was best not to call attention to himself. Too many bruises that healed in a day’s time would raise questions.
Then one night, Sheehan told Danny that one of their regular contacts, a crooked copper named Russell Grady, wanted to meet with them on a certain street corner at a certain time. Danny arrived—and found himself in the cross fire of a gang fight. As he died in the gutter, coughing up bright blood from a torn lung, he realized that Sheehan must have known that the two gangs had plans for that evening. With his last breath, Danny swore revenge.
A week later, he’d followed Sheehan—who’d been mightily surprised to see him alive the morning after the shooting—as the man made his way home along the gaslit paths of Central Park. In the shadows of an underpass, he ran up behind. As Sheehan turned, Danny shot him once, square through the forehead. Then he took his billcase and the flashy ring from his finger. He’d thrown both into the lake.
That night, he’d drunk himself to sleep. His dreams had been troubled. He knew that what he’d done was wrong. But he had done it anyway.
And I could have done it again, wrong or not, he thought. Fergus Cooley, you are a lucky man indeed. If I had found you that night—
“Blast!” Hugh’s voice startled him. He looked up. His teacher stood on the shore, slapping at his cheek.
“Is it time for you to take my place already?” Danny asked.
“No,” Fitzcairn answered. “But MacLeod and the Indian are busy jabbering at one another in two different heathen languages. There wasn’t a lot I could add to the conversation.”
“Come out on the raft, then. But I should warn you—the bugs are just as bad here.”
“Mosquitoes!” Fitzcairn muttered, as he joined Danny, stepping carefully over some coils of rope lying on the deck. The dog called Vixen followed him, settling at his feet. “Is this not the Frozen North? Why then, I ask, haven’t these intolerable pests been reduced to mere bits of insectoid ice?” He swore again, swatting at his sleeve.
They sat for a while in silence. Danny continued to stare out at the lake. Fitz took out his pipe. As he went about the business of filling it, he hummed softly. The tune was one that Minnie had played. Danny drew his breath in sharply.
“She was a lovely girl,” Fitz said. “You’ll carry her memory with you for a long time, I’ve no doubt.”
“And as I am an Immortal,” Danny said, bitterly, “the time could be measured in centuries.” He turned on Fitzcairn, fiercely.
“We’ve talked of this before, Hugh. But I must ask it again—what is it for, this living forever? What good is it to be able to rise when you are done to the death, if your rising brings you nothing more than just another day?”
“Consider the alternative, lad.” Fitzcairn said. “Consider those four left rotting back on the trail.”
“That’s no answer, Hugh,” Danny said. “Sure and I know that any mortal would say he wanted to be like us.”
He heard Hugh sigh. “Well, yes, most would. Until they heard the part about the swords.” He drew up his knees and rested his arms on them.
“Some would say that we are what we do. That we live for the Game, for the chance to be the One. For them, that’s reason enough.” He drew on his pipe and blew out a plume of smoke.
“It’s not for you, I know. Nor has it ever been for me.” He turned and leaned forward. Danny could read the concern on his face.
“I asked the same question of Henry Fitz six hundred years ago. He could give me no answer. But, after he was gone, I came to realize that he had lived all his long life to prove, over and over, to mortals that were long dead that he was worthy of their family. That was his answer, the one he had came to for himself.” He paused.
“My friend Darius—you’ll meet him someday when we go to Paris—he’s one of the oldest of our kind. In his lifetime, he found two answers. And very different they were. For centuries, he lived for conquest. Now he’s a man of peace. The Highlander—”
“He lives for justice,” Danny broke in. “You told me so in Skagway. And I saw that it was true when we had to let those two thugs go. It pained him.”
“It’s his way,” Fitz said. “It always has been, I think. Though he used to be more inclined to seek that justice at sword’s point.” The dog stirred. Fitz reached down and scratched behind her ears.
“Ah, Danny, here’s all the wisdom I’m capable of. Your Immortality—it’s a treasure given to you. The great luxury of time to find your own answers. Whatever span of years the search consumes, you’ll live on to pursue it. And all those men camped here …” He gestured toward the shore. “They’ll be gone, dying with their own unanswered questions. And no time left to ask them.”
Danny stood abruptly. The dog pricked up her ears, growling softly in her throat. He turned his face away, and spoke with great intensity. “I hear the truth of what you are saying Hugh. I know there are times when you must doubt that I’ve a brain in my head. But I do. And that part of me understands.” His shoulders slumped.
“But there’s a part still that can’t fathom the notion that you and Mr. MacLeod were alive before white men ever saw this land. That I will be alive when the grandchildren of the men who stood beside me at Gettysburg are dust in the wind. That part feels—well, it’s dark and bleak, it is.” His voice broke.
“Do we get less like mortals as the time passes, Hugh? It might be a thing to be wished for, not to be human …”
Fitzcairn rose to his feet. “I should hope not, lad. If we were not human, why then we couldn’t love.” He put one hand on Danny’s shoulder.
“But we can love, lad. We can lose our hearts, and have them badly handled. Yet as long as we don’t lose our heads, we can go on living and learning.” He drew the young Immortal into a brief hug.
“Ah, Danny. Think what a blow it would be to the women of the world if Hugh Fitzcairn could not love! Imagine the lamentations!”
Danny laughed, shakily. Impulsively, he returned the embrace. His teacher’s words had comforted him. Though a black core of his anger remained, he felt a new hope, a new resolve.
If Fergus Cooley, a mere mortal, could find his fortune in the Klondike in a matter of months, then the odds of striking it rich were even more in favor of men with all of time on their side!
“Look there,” Fitzcairn said. The two rafts had just rounded a bend in the river. He stood and pointed. On the shore, tied to a tree, was a piece of red cloth. Directly beneath it, a hand-lettered sign bore the single word “CANNON.”
“Are we to be under fire now?” he shouted.
As the dull roar ahead became more pronounced, Siwash Sam spoke to him tersely. “Englishman—sit down. Hold on to sled. Not gun. Big water.”
Fitzcairn sat, crouching in the midst of the dogs, who were tethered tightly to the deck. At the back of the raft, Danny knelt at the sweep, the long heavy oar that served as a rudder. He steered at the Indian’s direction.
The second raft, with Sam’s brother at the front and MacLeod handling the sweep, was directly behind.
And spread out behind them, over the fifty or so miles back to the shores of Lake Bennett, was an assortment of boats that looked as though they had been whittled by the hand of a small demented boy. Rafts of all sizes, boats with sails of all description, even a craft that looked like a side-wheeler in miniature. It was hard to comprehend that this strange flotilla was the cull, the best of the hundreds and hundreds of floating conveyances that had been brought piecemeal or whole and entire over the mountains, or built painstakingly by the side of Lake Bennett.
But it was. And now they were all, each and every odd craft, headed inexorably toward the “cannon” that lay just ahead.
Not a gun, oh no. A canyon, filled with big water, rushing water.
The sound grew ever louder. It was not music to Fitz’s ears. The rafts picked up speed. The cliff walls seemed to press in, as the river narrowed.
<
br /> It’s like being poured through a funnel, Fitz thought. Or down a drain.
The two Indians wielded their oars and shouted instructions to Danny and MacLeod. Sam’s brother had enough English for that, thank the saints. Thus they steered past the whirlpool in the center of the river, coming so close to the black-basalt cliffs that Fitz saw places where travelers had dared to leave their marks, names scrawled hastily as boats bobbed on the current. As they skimmed along, he was able to make out a few of them: there, in a looping script, the initials J.L. Above it, at a height that indicated some fool had stood to make his mark, a lopsided heart. Farther along, in block print, the name BUCK and a half-completed date.
A small canoe carrying three men had been caught in the whirlpool. It turned in dizzying circles, the men crying for help. MacLeod called to them, but there was nothing that could be done. The rush of the river would not be denied.
They were past the whirlpool now, but not past danger. Si-wash Sam ordered them all to get down low, and lash themselves to the raft. The coils of rope that had been a bother underfoot now were to be put to their intended use. For the river narrowed even more, until it was scarcely thirty feet across. And at the other end of the canyon, it spat the rafts out onto the jagged rocks of the rapids beyond.
As they rode over the boulders, foam rising above them like sea waves in a gale, Fitz could see, here and there, the shattered remains of craft that had attempted the journey before the Mounties had come to impose order. It was not a comforting sight.
He had his right arm locked around one of the ropes that secured the sled and his left around Vixen. The dog lay half in his lap, a look of pure canine delight on her face.
“Well, I’m pleased that you’re enjoying this,” he muttered into her ear. Then he looked back. MacLeod was sprawled at the front of the raft. His face was alight with excitement. The raft dipped, and a spray of water cascaded over him. Even above the din of the river, Fitz could hear his laughter.
“Mad dogs and Highlanders,” he said to Vixen, who yipped in response.
In the next instant, the raft tipped forward, sliding down the face of a huge boulder.
“Whooooaaa!” Fitz exclaimed. He kept his grip on the dog, as the deck became nearly vertical. Danny slid downward, too, headfirst, scrabbling for a handhold. He must have left too much slack in his rope, Fitz thought. All he could do was extend his leg to try to stop the young Immortal’s fall. Drowning was not a death he would wish even on the worst of their kind.
But as the raft continued to tip, Fitz realized that it wasn’t just Danny who was in danger of going for an unwanted swim. For a heartbeat, they teetered on the brink of overturning. Then the Indian reached for Danny, pulling him back. The balance tipped again, and the raft skimmed off the bottom of the boulder. The crash of spray when it hit the river soaked them all.
MacLeod’s raft was ahead of them now. Fitz wiped the river from his eyes, and watched it careen along. The Indians used the oars to push away from the larger rocks, when they could, but the way was still a foam-filled chaos.
Vixen whined, and he realized that he was holding her so tightly that she could barely move. He loosened his grip, and she got to her feet. A second later, he was drenched anew, as she shook herself thoroughly. Then the raft hit another boulder. Fitz grabbed the dog and once more held on for dear life.
A breathless few minutes later they were through the rapids, skimming along on the current. The river flowed into another lake, blue-green and peaceful under the cloudless sky. Mountains rose all around. Fitz looked up to see their peaks sparkling white. Then he looked out over the lake. The still, clear water mirrored the mountains and the sky to perfection. Certain now that he would not drown this day, he allowed himself to be transfixed by the beauty of it all.
Siwash Sam was on his feet, oar in hand, moving the raft smoothly across the calm surface.
“Water holds the sky,” he said. “Sky holds the water. They all the same.” Fitz was taken by surprise. Usually, the Indian spoke freely only to MacLeod or to his brother, in their own language. He searched for a response.
But Sam had already turned away. He grunted a command to Danny, and they headed toward the shore.
A handful of days later, Duncan sat crossed-legged on the raft, anchored by the lakeside for the evening. The night was still, save for the sound of Danny moaning in his sleep. In a while, if his distress continued, Fitzcairn would wake him.
During the day, the young Immortal seemed to have put Skagway behind him. At night—well, dreams were not where logic ruled. And no matter how good a job Fitzcairn was doing in his role as teacher, he could not go wherever it was that Danny went when he was asleep.
Duncan had a fleeting memory of Connor shaking him awake once. He’d been dreaming of what? His first death? The old hermit in the cave? Debra, falling? He couldn’t remember. But he had woke up screaming in the night.
He put the thought aside and returned to the map that he was examining by lanternlight, tracing with one finger the route they had traveled. The latest of his Argonaut reports lay next to him, half-completed.
“Lake Bennett to Marsh Lake.” he murmured to himself. “Through Miles Canyon and the Squaw and White Horse Rapids. Down the River Lewes to Lake Labarge. From there, to the river called Thirty-Mile.” He made a note on the map. Thirty-Mile had been difficult. Hidden rocks and sand bars had made the going treacherous.
“Then through one last set of rapids. Called the Five Fingers.” He made another note. There was a trick to getting through, a trick that Sam knew. One of the five channels held a whirlpool. It looked dangerous, but in fact it turned the boats right, and set them safe.
“We’re on the Yukon now, just about here.” An X marked the spot. “And tomorrow, we reach Dawson City.”
“This morning, we pass the cabin of Carmack. He the sourdough who made the first strike. I point it out to the Irishman.”
Duncan looked up, though he did not turn around. He hadn’t heard Sam approach. It had been a long time since he’d been taken unaware.
“I’ll write that down. My friend in Seattle would find it of interest.”
Sam sat next to him. He took the map and the pen. “Here,” he said, making another X. “This where it is.”
“George Carmack, wasn’t that his name?” Duncan asked. “And wasn’t one of his partners an Indian?”
Sam nodded. “Both were. They rich now, too. They not Indian anymore.” He made a sound that Duncan recognized as a laugh.
Duncan responded in Siwash. He hoped he was saying something on the order of “lucky bastards.” He’d been listening to Sam and his brother talk, and comparing what he heard to the Lakota that he knew.
Sam laughed again. “Pretty good, for a cheechako. I think maybe story you tell about living with Indians is true.”
“I had a—wife,” Duncan said. “And a son. They are dead now. I wouldn’t lie about that.”
This was not strictly true. Little Deer had not lived long enough to become his wife. Her son had not been his child. But these were things he could not tell Sam, things he had trouble speaking of, even after so many years.
Sam shrugged. “Most squaw men do not belong in the lands where they were born. They can live in the wild. In city places their hearts dry up.” He faced Duncan, his black eyes level.
“You not like that. You different from other men. But not in way squaw men are different.”
Duncan was uneasy. What had Sam noticed?
“If I were that different,” he replied, as casually as he could, “I wouldn’t be here, would I?” He folded the map. “My friend in Seattle thought that all argonauts were fools off on a fool’s journey. She would laugh to see us now. We’ve not bathed in weeks, our clothes are filthy, and we smell of wet fur.”
“But you go on,” Sam said. It was not a question.
“Yes.” Duncan agreed. “When we stood on the top of Summit Mountain, above the clouds—that was a sight meant for the eyes of eagles
. I want to see more.” He smiled. “I want to see the lights in the northern sky that I have heard so much about.”
“Scotsman,” Sam said, “there is more. I could show you.” He was silent. Duncan waited.
“Tomorrow, many come to Dawson. Some stop there. Some not. They go along the Klondike. They strike the land with their axes. They sift the waters with their pans.” He snorted.
“They are the fools. The land does not give up the gold to the soft men. It waits. For one like you.”
“If they are fools, then what would a wise man do?” Duncan asked, carefully.
“Ten mile beyond Dawson there is a village. It not Siwash. But the tribe does trade with Siwash. A wise man would go there, to buy more dogs and another sled.”
“And then?”
“A wise man would hire Siwash Sam and his brother. They would take the man and his friends to a place in the mountains. A place where land and water have not been touched.”
“Why would Siwash Sam do this?” Duncan asked.
The silence stretched between them. Finally, Sam answered. “Maybe Sam a fool. Maybe he want to be rich Indian.” He looked at Duncan from the corner of his eyes.
“Maybe he curious …”
Dawson City. Duncan would never forget the first sight of the town that had grown, in barely a year’s time, from a few scattered tents pitched on muddy riverbanks to a thriving metropolis. The rafts rounded one last bend. Beyond the turn, the river widened. Already, even in early October, ice chunks could be seen floating along with the current. Here the mighty Klondike rushed into the Yukon. On the right, a snowcapped mountain rose, dominating the horizon. And in the triangle of land formed by the junction of the two rivers, back to the foothills of that mountain, what looked to be a thousand or more buildings were clustered. Ranging from individual canvas tents to a four-story hotel, they were built haphazardly wherever there was space. No city planner had been at work here, Duncan thought. The morning sunlight, shining through the mist that rose from the mudflats, made it seem indeed like an Eldorado. Though they went on, bound for the Indian village, he stood looking back at the odd flotilla that had shared their journey. As the boats came close to shore, men leaped out, wading the last distance, eager to pass through this final gate to the fabled wealth of the Klondike. How many, Duncan wondered, would find what they had sought for so long? And would he and his friends be among them?
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