Chapter 34
The morning of his departure, Brendan came to the cabin as soon as the sun started to rise, leading a black and white Malamute puppy tied with a rope and frisking at his heels.
“What on earth!” Maggie exclaimed as she stood in the doorway of the cabin, one hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun rising above the tree line, making the snow-covered meadow shimmer as if it was plated in precious gold.
“I know, I know,” Brendan told her on a laugh as he drew closer.
“But I remember you mentioning you could use the company. Admittedly, Malamutes aren’t the best guard dogs—they’re too friendly for that.
But judging by his blue eyes, he’s part Siberian husky, and in any case, he’ll growl and bark if something’s wrong, and that can be a big help, especially if you know how to shoot, which you will. ”
“You’re going to teach me in half an hour?” Maggie asked, smiling skeptically. She was already dressed in her nurse’s uniform, and she needed to leave for the hospital, and to take Sheetka to school, shortly.
Brendan grinned. “I aim to try.”
Just then, Sheetka let out a cry of delight and raced toward the puppy, who was nothing more than a fluffball of fur with the most beautiful blue eyes. Maggie watched as the girl dropped to her knees to embrace the dog.
“I guess she likes him,” she told Brendan, and he laughed.
“I guess so. The Tlingit keep dogs, although usually smaller ones for hunting bears. But I suppose any child likes a puppy.”
While Sheetka played with the puppy, Brendan took Maggie out to the meadow to practice shooting. He paced out twenty feet—he told her he didn’t think she would ever need to shoot from any farther away than that—and drew a circle on a tree with a stub of charcoal.
“All right, now the important thing is to keep your arm steady, but without locking your elbow.” He moved her arm in place, his hand covering her own.
“Grip the gun high and tight, and when you’re aiming, keep your eye on the front sight—that’s the narrow blade on top of the pistol.
And your stance should be like this—” He paused to stand behind her, so close that Maggie’s back was pressed against his chest, his arms around her as he guided her into position.
“Feet shoulder width apart, placed firmly, toes facing the target.”
Gently, he moved her into place, and Maggie’s breath caught. She knew she should be focused on the shooting lesson, but his closeness, the soapy smell of his skin and the warmth of his breath fanning her ear and cheek, his arms snug around her, was making her head spin.
“All right?” Brendan asked and then stepped back.
Maggie forced herself to focus, taking a steadying breath before she fixed her gaze on the front sight and then, pressing her lips together, pulled the trigger.
The crack of gunshot ran out through the meadow, and Brendan jogged through the snow to the target, letting out a crow of triumph as he turned to face her.
“Not quite a bullseye, but good enough,” he called to her. “You hit a man that close and you may not have killed him, but you’ll surely have knocked him down.”
Maggie lowered her arm, feeling decidedly shaky. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” she told him, and Brendan’s smile slipped.
“I know, and I don’t want you to, either. But if you have to…” He let that thought trail away. “Let’s try again. I brought some extra boxes of ammunition, so you won’t have to worry about wasting bullets.”
They practiced several more times, some shots going wide, others hitting the mark, but all in all, Maggie felt more confident handling the pistol.
She still didn’t want to say goodbye, though, but the moment arrived, as she knew it would.
The as-yet-unnamed Malamute was tied up by the woodshed, the boxes of ammunition stored safely inside the cabin, and Sheetka was ready for school.
“I’ll write,” Brendan promised her. “The mail steamers are pretty regular now. And I’ll be back by Christmas.”
“You hope,” Maggie reminded him, and he smiled wryly.
“I hope,” he agreed.
For a second, he simply stood there, and Maggie wondered if he would embrace her.
She wanted him to, but she wouldn’t be so forward as to move first. Brendan knew how she felt; she’d told him over a year ago now, and nothing had changed.
He had to know that, too. Surely he saw it in her eyes now, as she willed him to take her in his arms.
But he didn’t. He smiled, and then turned to caress Sheetka’s head briefly, and then the puppy’s, and when it came to Maggie, he simply lifted one hand in farewell, and she did likewise.
“I don’t want to miss that boat,” he told her, and then he was gone, striding through the snow, back down 7th Street and into the town proper, away from her.
Maggie watched him for a few moments before she stirred herself. “Time for school,” she told Sheetka, and she even managed a smile.
The next few weeks passed slowly.
With less than seven hours of sunlight each day, the nights seemed endless and lonely, the days bitterly cold.
In mid-December, a letter came on the mail steamer from Brendan; he’d arrived safely in Seattle but would have to stay through Christmas, due to the storms. Maggie wasn’t all that surprised considering the weather, but she was disappointed.
In any case, she and Sheetka spent a pleasant Christmas with Diana Marks and her husband, John. They even brought the puppy, who had been named Biscuit after Sheetka had fed him one straight from the griddle, and he’d gobbled it up, licking his lips in obvious delight.
In January, the weather became even more bitter. The walk from their cabin to the hospital, although not a long distance, became an exercise in endurance, the wind sweeping down from Mount Roberts so icy that Maggie’s eyelashes froze.
The mail steamer didn’t come for three weeks, and when it did, there was no word from Brendan, or from her brother and father.
Maggie tried not to worry, but when she was sitting alone, Biscuit at her feet and Sheetka tucked up in bed, the wind howling outside, rocking the whole cabin, it was hard not to give in to fear.
Were her father and brother safe? Were they even alive?
There were so many ways to die out in the treacherous Yukon.
And what about Brendan? Why had he not sent word?
There was nothing to do but keep trudging through the days—working at the hospital, taking care of Sheetka, keeping their home.
At least there hadn’t been any trouble. Maggie didn’t know if the good people of Juneau had gotten used to the sight of a white woman and Tlingit child walking hand in hand, but she liked to think she felt fewer stares, heard fewer grumbles.
In early February, the mail steamer came with a letter from Brendan. He’d been delayed waiting on a shipment, and he hoped to be back in Juneau by April.
“April,” Maggie said out loud, trying once more not to give in to despair.
It seemed ages away. And meanwhile, she was learning that Brendan was right.
Hopeful prospectors had started to trickle into the city from Fort Wrangell and Victoria, filling the boardinghouses and saloons, swaggering through the street, so sure they were going to find gold.
Plenty of them set out for Mooresville with little more than a rucksack of supplies; Maggie doubted they would get far.
In March, miners started coming the other way, with stories of life out in the Yukon, the river still frozen, although some had braved the freezing temperatures by foot, and they stumbled into Juneau with fingers and toes blackened from frostbite, sometimes even their cheeks and noses, as well, half-dead from both cold and starvation.
As Maggie tended to them at St. Ann’s, she listened to stories of men collapsing on the Chilkoot Pass, its ascent as steep as a staircase, and pack animals, overworked and exhausted, dying on the White Pass, so many that some had nicknamed it Dead Horse Pass.
And then there was the river journey so many, including Danny and her da, had undertaken in September.
She heard about the flimsily constructed box boats miners had built on the shores of Lake Bennett and Lake Lindeman, cutting down spruce to saw into planks, too inexperienced to realize their crafts weren’t seaworthy for the dangerous rapids on the river.
“I saw four boats go over at once at Five Finger Rapids,” one miner who had only three fingers and four toes left told her. “Every single man lost.”
Maggie could not summon a single word in reply. Could her father and brother build a decent boat? She had no idea, but in her mind’s eye she was already picturing them falling in, claimed by the icy, swirling water.
There was no way to know what had happened, although she did ask the miners she met if they’d come across an Irishman and his son, Declan and Danny O’Halloran, both charming and cocksure.
No one she encountered had seen them.
“But there are a lot of men coming through there now, miss,” one grizzled old miner told her.
“And more by the day. Why, when we climbed the Chilkoot, it was like waitin’ in line—one after another we followed the rope all the way to the top, and then back down.
Twenty times, I did it. They said the Canadian mounted police are goin’ to start makin’ a man bring two thousand pounds of supplies—do you know how many trips that would be?
But maybe that would be better, because, God knows, there are already plenty who’ve starved. ”
Had her father and brother starved? Maggie wondered numbly.
They certainly hadn’t brought two thousand pounds of supplies, far from it, although maybe they’d been able to stock up in Mooresville, the last outpost of civilization before the newly formed Dawson City, up in the Klondike. Once again, she had no way of knowing.