6. The Offer
The next morning, we rose with the sun and set off on the trail to Chilkoot Pass. Eleanor emerged from her tent, having replaced her long skirts with bloomers and a skirt that fell only to her knees. Anna looked shocked, then delighted. “I wish I had the confidence to wear such a costume.”
“I assume it will be much more practical for the trail,” Eleanor said as she took out some flour for pancakes while the rest of us set about strapping our outfits to makeshift sledges. “Certainly in snow.”
Roland overheard and said, “Don’t you worry, Anna my girl. I’ll look out for you.”
What exactly he meant by that, I had no idea. I had too much to do without worrying about someone else’s relationship, anyway. We distributed our outfits onto sledges and into packs we’d carry on our backs, then quickly ate the breakfast Anna and Eleanor prepared. Once we were done, we joined the line of men and women streaming out of Dyea.
I’d imagined a lonely trek through the wilderness, but the trail was as busy as any street in Seattle. Lone men, groups of friends, and even entire families with children tramped determinedly up the river valley. As we walked, a cold mist gathered, dampening us, our things, and the landscape around us.
And what a landscape it was, both majestic and desolate at the same time. The desolation came from our fellow miners and ourselves, though, rather than nature. Any grass that had once flourished in the damp valley was long eaten away by horses and other pack animals. Only stumps remained to either side of the trail, the trees that had once stood guard felled to build sledges and cookfires. Thousands of feet churned the earth into mud.
“Look at that,” I said, nodding in the direction of an abandoned trunk alongside the trail. “Did someone just leave that there?”
“Probably.” Steve followed close behind me. “If he was alone, he might be willing to leave behind anything but the essentials.”
I couldn’t imagine doing this by myself. My entire body ached from dragging one of our sledges with a hundred-pound pack on my back, but at least I had others to share the load. Alone, I would have had to take my things a few miles, leave them, and go back for the rest of the outfit, again and again and again.
Suddenly the detritus lining the trail made a lot more sense. Abandoned trunks, boxes of silverware, cheap jewelry, anything some hopeful miner had brought only to cast away when it proved unnecessary. Even some lighter items had been discarded. Framed photographs stared mournfully from the mud, the faces of those captured within warped by the damp or trodden on by boots. As though some people had tried to lighten their load by leaving behind the memories of their families and friends back in civilization. Would those loved ones even recognize them when they returned?
“I’ll never be clean again,” Anna declared that afternoon, when a drizzle of rain replaced the mist. Though we all wore mackinaw jackets to keep off the rain, the churned mud of the trail splattered with every step. Soon her skirts were utterly soaked and crusted with a mixture of mud and dung, and tangled around her feet as she walked.
“A little mud never hurt anyone,” Roland said encouragingly.
She didn’t seem cheered. “How much farther do we have to go?”
Eleanor pulled the lighter sledge alongside Anna. “We’ll wash up when we reach Sheep Camp,” she told Anna. “That is our next landmark, isn’t it, Doug?”
“Yes.” He paused, wiped rain from his face, and continued on. “Sheep Camp. The Scales. Chilkoot Pass. Lake Lindeman. From there we float the rest of the way—no more hauling and climbing.”
It sounded so simple—though one only had to look around at the mud, the barren earth, and the discarded items to know that it wasn’t.
As the sun lowered and the arduous day began to draw to an end, I spotted a man sitting to the side of the trail. Of course, we’d passed plenty of men pausing for a rest, but his wild, unkempt appearance caught my eye. His clothes were in tatters, as though he’d traveled much farther than the few miles from Dyea. They hung loose on him, clearly made for a stouter man. Dirt seamed his hands and face, and he stank of sweat and something sour I couldn’t name.
He seemed to be studying everyone passing him by. As we drew closer, his eyes met mine—and he sat up straighter, suddenly looking far more alert than moments before. His gaze left mine, lingered on Doug, then Eleanor and the Kilgores.
“What’re you staring at, old man?” Doug asked, rather unkindly I thought.
“I’m looking for someone to help me out with a problem,” the man said, revealing blackened teeth.
“What do you need?” Steve asked, coming to a halt. The line behind us grumbled, so he moved off the trail beside the stranger.
Doug frowned but kept his opinion to himself. I could guess it anyway: this grubby old man had nothing to offer us, so why bother with him?
“First, let me ask you all—you’re determined to go on? To the gold fields?”
Roland exchanged a confused glance with Steve. “Obviously. Why?”
The stranger pulled a shotgun shell from his pocket, turning it thoughtfully over and over again in his hand. “Because I made the same mistake. My partner and I were mining out Circle City way, when news of the Klondike strike reached us. We hurried over, found a virgin creek, and started digging.”
“And?” Doug asked impatiently. “Did you find gold?”
“That we did. Pulled out a hundred dollars a pan.”
He paused, letting the number sink in. Six dollars was a week’s wages back in Seattle; to get a hundred dollars in a pan for just a few hours of work…
Excitement stirred in my belly. If that much gold was just loose in a creek…
The real riches of the Klondike were below ground, lying in great seams within the earth. If there was gold washing into the creek, even more waited above it.
The man stared down at the shotgun shell. “Bill—my partner—we had a disagreement. I left. Didn’t take anything away but this.”
He held the paper shell out to me. Confused, I took it and saw one end was sealed with a cotton plug. I pulled it out; the entire shell was packed tight with gold dust.
“I shouldn’t have taken it,” the stranger said, rocking back and forth a little. “I should’ve left it behind. But I can’t go back. I’m done in.” He swallowed, Adam’s apple prominent beneath his hunger-tight skin. “That’s what I need you to do for me. Take it back to Bill. Tell him Jack Clarke sent it.”
“How far out of our way is this creek?” Roland asked.
“Not far at all—maybe it’s even your destination.” Clarke looked us over once again. “The miner’s code is to always tell others about your find. But we didn’t have time to go back to Dawson and register our claim—or I didn’t, anyway. I don’t know if Bill had the chance after I left. So I’m fulfilling the code by telling you. Take this to Coffin Bone Creek, and you’ll have more gold than you could ever want.”
A gold-rich creek, largely untouched, just waiting for us to stake our claims? “Doug, give me the map,” I said, then passed it to Clarke. “Mark the creek.”
Clarke studied it for a moment, then scrawled a line with the stub of a pencil and labeled it Coffin Bone Creek. “There.” He thrust it back to me.
Doug peered over my shoulder. The creek branched off of the Yukon River about seventy miles below Dawson City. We’d have to pass right by it to reach Dawson.
“We might as well,” I said, and Doug nodded.
Clarke leaned forward, so close his sour breath brushed against my face. “You promise you’ll take this back?” He gripped my hand that was still holding the shotgun shell filled with gold. “I have your word?”
His intensity took me aback. “Yes?”
“Swear it!”
“I swear,” I exclaimed, pulling my hand free.
“Thank you.” All the energy seemed to drain from him, and he slumped against the boulder he’d been sitting on. “It’s done.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he reached into his coat. The glint of sunlight on the barrel was the only warning we had, before he put a revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.