Chapter 36
SKAGWAY, ALASKA
“It’s about four miles to the ascent, and then another forty or so to the shores of Lake Bennett.”
Maggie looked up from the coffee she was brewing over their little campfire to see Brendan standing in front of her, hat in hand as he ran his other hand through his hair.
It was just past dawn the morning after they’d arrived in Skagway, and they’d spent the previous afternoon setting up their tent, settling the packhorses and shifting their little mountain of supplies.
Brendan had woken up well before Maggie had, to load up the animals and learn more about the trail.
From the grim look on his face, it didn’t seem like he was bringing back good news.
“What is it?” Maggie asked uneasily. Last night, they’d slept side by side, wrapped in blankets, the air dipping down to below freezing and Maggie had longed to huddle into him for warmth, but she hadn’t.
She still didn’t know Brendan’s heart, and she reminded herself once again they had other things to think about.
And, in truth, her mind had raced most of the night as she’d struggled to sleep in such unfamiliar surroundings—the hard ground, the snores and coughs and grumbles from the men in tents all around her, and the knowledge of that mountain and its treacherous pass looming up above them all, her father and brother somewhere far, far beyond it.
Brendan sighed as he hunkered down next to her and accepted a tin cup of coffee, wrapping his fingers around the handle.
“It’s a brutal trail,” he told her. “We both know that, but I thought we’d only have to do it once, and so we could manage it somehow.
But a fellow just told me the Canadian mounted police are organizing a customs post at the top of the trail, to make sure everyone has enough supplies to last a whole year.
If they don’t, they’re sent back for more. ”
“What!” Maggie stared at him in alarm. “I heard a miner saying something about that back in Juneau, but he said it hadn’t happened yet.”
“Well, it seems like it has now, or is about to,” Brendan replied grimly. “Some men end up making the trip ten or twenty or even thirty times. It might take them weeks, or even months.”
Maggie shook her head, the movement instinctive as well as panicked. “We can’t do that.”
“I know, Maggie,” Brendan replied, his voice rising sharply in irritation that made her blink.
He so rarely lost his temper, the times when he did shook her to her core.
Brendan shook his head, his gaze lowered as he muttered, “This was a completely absurd idea. To think we could make it across the Yukon, we must have been mad… we won’t even get over the pass. ”
“Well, then,” Maggie said, forcing a playful note into her voice, “I’ll just have to charm the police, won’t I?
I doubt they’ve seen many women come over this pass.
” She had yet to see a single woman in all the whole encampment besides Captain Moore’s weary-looking wife, Hendrika, who sold eggs from their homestead—a dollar an egg.
Brendan glanced up, a smile creasing his tired eyes, although he still looked deeply worried.
“You do look fetching,” he told her and she laughed as she looked down at herself.
She was wearing wool pants with a pair of denim overalls over them, a plaid flannel shirt, a heavy woolen jacket, and high rubber boots.
Her hair was a single braid down her back, which she planned to tuck up under her cap.
“I’m sure to charm the customs police in this getup,” Maggie replied with a pretty pout, and Brendan let out a reluctant chuckle.
“I’m sure you will,” he replied, but he still sounded tired and careworn, and she was worried he was taking too much on himself, bearing the responsibility for both of them, and the animals too, to get up and over that hill.
After they’d drunk their coffee and eaten a breakfast of Lamont’s crystalized eggs mixed with water and scrambled over the campfire, they packed up their tent and started for the head of the trail, just past the wharf.
The air was damp and fresh, and more men were stirring, packing up and heading for the pass.
Brendan led one horse while he gave the rope of the other to Maggie, both animals saddled with various sacks and saddlebags—the sum total of their supplies for whatever lay ahead.
At the start, the trail was gentle, if muddy and strewn with rocks, forcing Maggie to walk carefully as the horse picked its way through the trees with clear reluctance.
She followed Brendan and his horse along the twisting, rocky path up the mountain, the hill rising slowly as the trail became steeper.
Every fifteen minutes or so, Brendan would stop and look behind to make sure she was keeping up.
Within an hour, Maggie had started dropping farther behind, her legs and lungs both burning as the path steepened, and her horse began to protest, digging her hindlegs into the dirt whenever there was a particular twisty or steep part.
Twice, a miner coming up from behind passed her with grumbling and sometimes swearing, and Brendan was forced to move his own horse to the side as best as he could, to wait for her to catch up so they wouldn’t be separated.
“You’ll have to use a switch,” Brendan told her after another difficult hour where they’d gained very little ground, and Maggie balked just as the horse had been doing.
“I couldn’t hit an animal!” she protested, and he gave her a look.
“Maggie, that horse isn’t getting over that pass without some incentive.
I don’t want to torture the poor animal, but we have to get her up and over this mountain.
” He left the trail, coming back with a thin switch of birch.
He glanced at her in both exasperation and apology before turning back to the horse.
“Now get up, get up,” he shouted as he whipped the horse’s flank while Maggie flinched every time the switch landed.
The horse started to move.
“I’m not a brute,” Brendan told her once he’d got the horse going again. He handed her the switch with a grimace. “But we’re in dire straits, Maggie. We have to make the top of the pass by nightfall. Surely you can understand that?”
She nodded meekly, hating that she’d shown herself to be so missish. “I know,” she whispered.
Another two hours passed, each step feeling more agonizing.
At least the horses kept going, although Maggie had had to tentatively use the switch several times.
By now, the sun was hot on her head and sweat ran down her back, soaking right through her shirt.
Her head felt light and her tongue was thick in her mouth, her lips already cracked and dry.
At times, she sank up into mud nearly to her knees; twice her horse stumbled so badly Maggie feared she might break a leg, and Brendan had had to run up to help her right the animal. Absolutely everything in her ached.
“We’ll stop to eat,” Brendan said when they’d been traveling for about four hours. “We’re almost halfway there, but the hardest is yet to come.” He squinted up at the sun, which was still high in the sky. “At least we’ll have plenty of daylight.”
Maggie only managed to nod, too exhausted and overwhelmed to speak. This was only the first morning of their journey, and she already felt like a failure. Like she couldn’t do it… and yet she had to. There simply wasn’t any other choice.
Neither of them said much as they ate a quick meal of dry biscuits and canned beans, washed down with canned milk.
“We need to keep up our strength,” Brendan told her, “but we’ll have to ration the supplies once we’re over the pass.”
Maggie nodded wearily, and they started again, trudging up the trail, one weary foot after another.
She was aching, dirty, and covered in mud.
Flies buzzed around her and the horse’s head and sweat stung her eyes and ran in rivulets down her face and neck.
Her fingers and hands had blisters that popped and bled from holding the horse’s rope, and the blood trickled down her wrists.
Still, she kept on, even though inside she felt like sobbing.
This was too hard. Brendan had been right; they must have been mad to try to do this.
Several more hours passed, and Maggie lost track of time, or even reality.
She existed in a haze, her sweat-blurred vision on the muddy, rock-strewn ground in front of her as her mind moved through the stages of her life as if she were watching a play—her childhood in Ireland, first with her sickly mam, her da a jolly yet fleeting presence, everything so tenuous.
Then the six years living with her aunt and uncle, nurturing her ambition into a determined blaze as she fetched and carried for them, an unending thankless task she longed to be free of.
New York, now seeming so long ago—the anxiety she’d faced when their father hadn’t been there to meet them, the hours spent sewing piecework simply to earn a few pennies, the raw fear of being tossed out on the street.
And then the hard and humbling work for Mrs. Cater and her household, sweeping grates and emptying chamber pots, all the while worrying about her brother and what he was getting up to…
Then the loneliness of living in Mrs. Stein’s grand mansion, ignored by the other servants, wondering if she’d made a mistake yet still holding onto that precious dream.
And Chicago, when that dream had turned into fleeting, glittering reality, and for six months she’d thought she’d reached the summit of her paltry ambitions, only to tumble right down to the ground.
Her mind moved to San Francisco, where she’d discovered her calling to be a nurse, and Juneau, where she’d discovered her calling to be a mother.
She’d learned through it all, Maggie thought, and she was grateful for those lessons even if she still ached with regret. If only she’d realized she’d loved Brendan sooner. If only she hadn’t been so stupid…
“Maggie!”
Her head jerked up and she let out a shriek of surprise as Brendan’s hands gripped her shoulders hard enough to hurt and he thrust her away so hard she stumbled.
“You almost walked straight off the ridge!” he shouted at her, and blinking, Maggie realized, in her reverie, she had walked far too close to the edge of the trail, which led steeply down a granite canyon.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped out, reeling back, but Brendan just shook his head.
“Be careful,” he ground out, and he strode back to his own horse.
Maggie knew his anger masked a far greater fear, but she still felt ashamed as she forced herself to focus on the trail right in front of her. Now was not the time for maudlin reflections or pointless daydreams.
For she soon learned Brendan had been right, and the hardest had indeed been yet to come, and now it was here.
A grueling, mile-long ascent to the summit, steeper than anything ever before, so her horse balked again and again and Maggie glimpsed the rotting carcasses of those animals who had been unable to make the climb.
She broke the switch she’d been using and had to cut another, whipping the animal up the hill and sobbing all the while, out of exhaustion and frustration and fear. She wanted to give up as much as the horse did.
Ahead of her, she could see Brendan urging his own animal up the steep path, the mud now mixed with snow, his head lowered, his face set in alarmingly grim lines.
The once warm day had turned cold, the wind bitter.
The sweat dried to her skin and the weeping blisters on her fingers froze. Still, they went on.
There was nothing, Maggie thought, but this trail, this climb, this endless striving. Tears and sweat blurred her vision so she could barely see, and yet still she kept going, yanking the poor horse when she had to, her cold, bleeding hands hard on the rope.
And then somehow, like a miracle, they were at the top.
The trail fell away, the ground flattened out, and gasping for breath, Maggie straightened to view the incredible vista all around them—snow-capped peak after peak, stretching endlessly under a bright blue sky.
Snow had been piled high to clear a trail past several raggedy-looking tents, the way down to the other side.
It was early evening, but the sun was still high, although the air at the summit was frigid.
Around them, miners and their animals were in various states of exhaustion—doubled over, their hands on their knees, slumped or even collapsed on the ground.
Maggie watched one man kiss the snowy ground, tears streaming down his face.
They were all so relieved to have made it, and yet there was so much more to come.
And yet… they’d done it. She looked to Brendan, who was wiping his forearm across his brow, his face drawn in taut lines of exhaustion.
She followed his narrowed gaze to one of the tents and realized it was the newly formed customs post. The thought of having to go back felt utterly inconceivable; she could never do that ascent again, Maggie thought with more resolve than panic, never.
And thankfully, she didn’t have to. When she and Brendan approached the tent, they found it empty.
“He’s gone for his supper,” another miner explained. “He said they need more men up here, but it’s not a job many want.” He shrugged. “For now, you can just walk by.”
Maggie exchanged an incredulous look with Brendan, and then he laughed, shaking his head.
“Let’s get down beyond the snowline,” he decided, “and then we’ll make camp.” He paused, and then a smile, wide and genuine, split his face. “We made it, Maggie,” he said, a wobble in his voice that told Maggie he hadn’t been sure they would. Well, she hadn’t been sure, either.
“We made it,” she agreed, and still exhausted, aching, and dirtier than she’d ever been in her life, Maggie followed Brendan through the pass and down the trail on the other side.
They were that much closer, she thought with a pulse of relief, to finding her father and brother.