Chapter 37
Lake Bennett was a flat, glassy stretch of water between the snow-capped mountain peaks, its shores crowded with tents, horses, piles of supplies and felled trees.
The sound of hammering and sawing filled the air as men set to work building their boats, punctuated by the occasional sudden crack, as loud as a gunshot, of ice breaking.
The lake still had sheets of ice on its deepest parts, but the Yukon was flowing, others said, although with chunks of ice bobbing in its turbulent waters.
It would take Maggie and Brendan a few days at least to build their boat, and by that time Brendan had said he hoped the river would be freer of ice, which could create dangerous jams.
It had taken Brendan and Maggie three more days to reach the head of the Yukon River, and Maggie didn’t think she’d ever been so tired—or so dirty. She’d washed her face and hands in a mountain stream, but beyond that, she hadn’t been able to bathe, and she was sure she smelled.
She was grateful, though, to be over the worst of the trail—from now on, they would be sailing down the river, which, while it certainly possessed its own dangers with its many rapids, at least meant she wouldn’t have to pull her horse along a rocky, muddy trail, every muscle she had screaming in protest. Brendan intended to sell the horses before they set off in their boat; it would be too difficult to keep them fed and sheltered for the rest of the journey.
“We’ll make camp,” Brendan told her. “And then we’ll start sawing tomorrow.”
As they headed over toward a clearing by the lake to set up their camp, Maggie glanced curiously at the other miners who were hard at work, their boats in various stages of completion.
Many were simple scows shaped like a rectangular box, with sides a few feet high; others were built like canoes or skiffs.
The woods surrounding the lake were already being stripped bare as miners took their lumber straight from the trees that grew there.
An hour later, their tent was set up, the horses fed and watered, and Maggie was warming a can of stew over the campfire while Brendan went to talk to some of the other miners to learn the lay of the land.
After four days on the trail, Maggie was used to their routines; she was used to the silences that stretched between them for hours at a time because they were simply too tired to speak.
She was used to the steady sound of Brendan’s breathing at night, and the way he always rolled over, throwing one arm out, right when he was about to fall asleep.
She was used to living rough, her skin already turned callused and hard, and wearing men’s clothes, which, despite the mud and sweat that caked them, were surprisingly comfortable.
She was used to catching Brendan’s eye and knowing they were thinking the exact same thing, his crooked quirk of a smile always confirming it.
Maggie had just brewed coffee when Brendan came back, easing down by the fire with a groan of relief.
“What’s the news?” Maggie asked as she handed him a cup.
“It’s better to take a little time with the boat,” Brendan told her. He took a sip of coffee, closing his eyes briefly as he savored the taste. “Too many fools rush it, and end up sinking a few miles down, in Miles Canyon.”
“Miles Canyon?”
“It’s the first set of rapids. There’s a whirlpool right in the middle of the river, and you don’t even see it until you’re right upon it, but then it leads into the White Horse Rapids, the most dangerous ones on the whole river.
We can pay for a pilot to take us through them.
The mounted police are considering making it a law that you do, but they haven’t yet. ”
“All right,” Maggie said after she’d absorbed the information. “That seems sensible, since neither of us are particularly experienced seamen…”
“Indeed.” Brendan braced his elbows on his knees, his empty cup dangling from his fingers as he gazed up at the early-evening sky, ribbons of lavender unspooling across the horizon.
“I didn’t even think we’d make it this far,” he confessed, and it took Maggie a moment to realize he was serious—he really hadn’t believed it.
“What did you think would happen, then?” she asked curiously. “We’d turn back?”
He shrugged, his gaze still on the sky. “Turn back, or collapse or die, I don’t know. Something.”
Maggie stared at him, the long, browned column of his throat visible with his head still tilted back. His hair was damp with sweat, his face grimy with dirt and mud, and he probably smelled as bad as she did, but in that moment Maggie didn’t think she’d ever loved him more.
“And yet you still came,” she said softly.
Brendan lowered his head to smile at her wryly. He looked exhausted, and older than he had even a week ago, with deep crow’s feet by his eyes. Maggie knew she probably looked older, too.
“And yet I came,” he agreed, holding her gaze.
It took them nearly two weeks to build their boat—day after day of grueling work, so blisters formed on top of the blisters Maggie already had, and her hand became so swollen it was hard to hold the saw.
Brendan had cut the trees down and stripped them of bark and branches and leaves, but it took two people to operate the whipsaw that turned the rough trunks into proper planks, hoisting each one onto a wooden stand that Brendan had also had to fashion, and then sawing from both top and bottom, back and forth, back and forth, until Maggie had wanted to scream or sob or both, as the wood splintered or broke or the plank was too uneven to be used.
They were amateurs playing at a game that was life or death.
All around them, men, and a few hardy women, were doing the same as they were, working with diligent determination, although occasionally fights broke out.
On their fourth day by the lake, two brothers who had been working on their boat for over a week got into such a bad argument that one of them, furious and drunk, took a hammer to the boat and smashed it to pieces.
The other man went for him, and it took three others to pull them off each other, both of them broken, bleeding, and insisting they couldn’t travel on together.
At least she and Brendan hadn’t descended to fisticuffs, Maggie reflected, but even so, the mood between them felt grim with weariness and fear.
Stories of the rapids circulated through the camp; the mounted police were considering requiring everyone to register their boats, so the wrecks could be identified if they didn’t make it to Dawson.
This was meant to be the easier part of their journey, Maggie knew, but it still felt so hard, and they hadn’t even faced the treacherous rapids yet.
As each day passed, Maggie had started rationing their supplies—the canned milk they’d drunk greedily while on the hardest part of the trail now had to be doled out sparingly, a splash in coffee, a few sips shared between them.
It was taking even longer than they’d anticipated to complete their boat, and it was another two weeks at least on the river.
Still, she told herself, they were closer than ever to Danny and Da…
and farther from all other human life and civilization, including the little girl she loved.
Finally, after two weeks, their boat, a flat-bottomed scow big enough to hold them and their supplies—Brendan had sold their horses to another miner—was finished.
Brendan took it for a trial spin on the lake, loading it with a few boxes as he paddled out toward the center.
The ice had broken up completely, and the day was warm.
“You didn’t sink!” Maggie exclaimed as he paddled back, and he let out a tired laugh.
“I didn’t sink.” He climbed out of the boat, and Maggie helped him to pull it onto the shore. “We’ll set out tomorrow morning,” Brendan stated.
Since they’d taken the White Pass rather than the Chilkoot, they at least wouldn’t have to navigate the mile-long rapids that separated Lake Lindemann, at the base of the Chilkoot, from Lake Bennett, at the base of the White.
Instead, they would set straight for the rushing headwaters of the Yukon, and then onto Mile Canyon, before they stopped to hire a pilot for the White Horse Rapids, the most dangerous part of the whole five-hundred-mile stretch, and then onward evermore, all the way to Dawson.
That night, Maggie could hardly sleep. Although it was quiet outside, the air still and cold, most people asleep judging by the snuffles and snores, she lay and stared at the canvas ceiling of the tent, her mind racing with thoughts as slippery as minnows, so she couldn’t even hold onto one.
Next to her, Brendan shifted, and she whispered, “Are you awake?”
“Yes.” His voice was calm and steady, and his simple answer made her smile, because it was so like him. She could always trust him to answer calmly, to tell the truth.
“Are you scared?” she asked. It was a question she hadn’t wanted to ask him before, but somehow in the dark it felt easier.
“Yes,” Brendan replied after a moment. “I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.”
“I know, but…” Maggie rolled onto her side to face him. In the darkness, she could only see the outline of his body, one arm pillowed under his head. “I mean really scared.”
Brendan rolled over to face her, as well, so then she could see the gleam of his eyes. “Are you?” he asked seriously, his voice low.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “We’ve come this far, and I don’t even mean just from Juneau. I’ve been thinking about our whole lives—Ireland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco… we’ve done it all, Brendan.”
“We have,” he agreed. He sounded wry, and Maggie couldn’t help but laugh.
“I feel like I’ve dragged you on a wild goose chase, across the whole country,” she said.
“You have,” he replied with the same wry note in his voice, “but I’ve wanted to go. I’ve always told you that.”
“I know.” She paused, and then added softly, “I’ve always known.”