11. White Horse
Harsh winds blew as we crossed Marsh Lake, past the Tagish River, accompanied by miserable bouts of snow that stung any exposed skin. Steve’s expression often grew anxious, though he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to; we were all thinking the same thing. Winter nipped at our heels and our time was growing shorter with every day that passed.
Which was why we decided to run the rapids rather than portage around them.
Marsh Lake emptied out into the upper Yukon River—but here it was no wide, navigable flow, but rather wild and untamed. The silt-laden waters rushed between banks that grew steadily higher, until we spotted a tattered red flag attached to a crude sign warning: CANYON AHEAD. The river narrowed to only fifty feet across, roaring and dashing over the rocks and smashing into the walls.
We put in at a well-used spot just before the canyon to consider our options. “Portage is one possibility,” Steve said, nodding in the direction of the men and women plodding along the canyon’s rim, carrying both boats and luggage in stages. “That will cost us days.”
Especially with Roland’s bum leg, but none of us said it aloud. I peered at the churning rapids, the wild spray. To say it looked incredibly dangerous would be an understatement. “Are you suggesting we take the boat through the rapids?”
“It will take only minutes to travel the same distance,” he said.
Anna shrank back against Eleanor. “Is it safe?”
Crosses lined the river’s edge, along with shattered oars with names scrawled on them to mark the lives lost in the canyon. Under no circumstances could it be referred to as “safe.”
But neither was losing yet more time. If we found ourselves stranded in some forsaken place, the river frozen and our tents unable to stand beneath a crushing blanket of snow, we would certainly die.
“We have to try it,” Doug said. “We don’t have a choice.”
“Agreed,” Eleanor said, putting an arm around Anna.
I hesitated, unsure. Steve clapped me on the arm.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve navigated rapids before, on the Tieton River. Just man your oar and follow my commands, and I’ll get us through.”
“That’s my boy,” Roland said with a relieved grin. “Let’s go—we’ll have lunch once we’re past the rapids.”
I exchanged a rueful glance with Anna. Even if we didn’t have any other option, the idea of challenging the river filled me with fear. It was millions of gallons of water hurtling through a canyon, smashing into rocks, indifferent to any poor creature trying to cling to its back. The makeshift memorials and graves warned us of the peril of trying to tame it.
But others were attempting it, launching even as we debated, and Steve seemed confident he could guide us through. So we pushed off from shore and were soon in the inexorable grip of the current.
Steve sat at the stern, gripping the tiller, while Roland and Doug manned the oars. I was stationed in the prow with an oar of my own to fend us off rocks and to help steer. Anna and Eleanor clung to the mast.
My heart pounded as we raced toward the white, frothing rapids, and my palms grew sweaty inside my gloves. The moment we hit the rapids, the boat picked up even more speed, surging into the narrow canyon like a racehorse out of the gate.
“Oars in!” Steve shouted above the roar of the water. Roland and Doug hastened to obey; now they, like the two women, were helpless passengers with nothing to do but cling to the boat for dear life.
Steve fought the current to keep us in the calmer center portion of the river, while it did everything in its power to toss us like a bathtub toy. A rock loomed up, far too close for comfort. I shoved away from it with my oar, the shock of wood on rock traveling up my arms. Then we were past, but there was another rock and another. My heart pounded madly now, my every sense sharpened to the highest alert, as Steve and I desperately tried to keep us off the rocks.
We hit a curl of water, and the bottom seemed to drop out beneath us, the prow catching on nothing but air. For a moment, we hung suspended—then the bow came crashing down.
Icy cold water poured over it and into the boat, striking me with physical force. It dragged at my clothes like a hundred grasping hands, heaving me dangerously close to the side.
And not just me. One of the ropes lashing down our outfit came untied, and hundreds of pounds of supplies were suddenly afloat—and washing away over the side.
Roland and Doug both lunged for them, but the river tore the sacks away too fast. I could do nothing to help, only jam my oar into the gunwale to keep from following our things into the water. My body left the seat beneath me in the rush of water, then came back down hard on the wooden plank as the bow lifted again.
The boat spun like a top, then rightened, heading full speed at the ice-slicked rock wall. I thrust out my oar to fend it off, and the wood broke with a crack I felt to my shoulders.
But it was enough—just enough—to keep us clear. We howled down the river, passing barely inches from the canyon wall that would spell our death should we hit it. Steve was shouting, but the endless roar of the rapids blotted out his words.
We shot out of the canyon and directly into the grips of another set of rapids—the White Horse, so named for the mane of foam marking the only safe route through. I had only the shaft of the oar in my hands now, but I still used it to fight off the snaggletooth rocks.
Another boat came into sight ahead of us through the spray. A good thirty feet long and low in the water, it clung to the mane, seeking the same route through as we did.
Perhaps it hit a curl in the current—impossible to say, as all my focus was on keeping us alive. One moment, the other boat rode the white mane. The next, it slipped into one of the furrows—and vanished beneath the angry water.
* * *
I barely had time to cry out before we were past. Flotsam from the drowned vessel raced us: bits of shattered wood and rope, sacks of flour briefly heaved to the surface before vanishing again, a tin cup, a scattering of photographs.
A hand reached from the water right next to me, knuckles banging against the side of our boat. I leaned over, meaning to help the unfortunate.
But no miner stared up at me from beneath the water. It was Bessie, her hair swirling in the current, her mouth open in a scream. Her eyes locked on mine, and she reached toward me, the wrist with her bracelet on it breaking into the air.
Doug grabbed a fistful of my mackinaw coat, yanking me back from the side. “What the hell are you doing?”
I didn’t know, other than perhaps losing my mind. I braced myself in the center of the prow, my broken oar lost somewhere without my noticing, and held on for my life.
We were in Steve’s hands now, the rest of us simply helpless passengers. Our craft shuddered and spun, icy spray soaking us. Boulders flashed past, inches away. Death surrounded us on every side, and I shut my eyes so as not to see any more mad visions.
The craft dropped, forcing my eyes open again. Ahead through the crashing foam loomed a whirlpool. The swirling waters ate up half the river, leaving only the narrowest path between its hungry grasp and the deadly boulders lining the shore. I held my breath, expecting Steve to thread the needle.
He didn’t. Instead, we were heading for the whirlpool.
“Whirlpool!” I screamed, assuming he hadn’t seen it. I twisted half around to see him clinging to the tiller, his face wild with a mix of terror and excitement.
We entered the outermost edge of the whirlpool, and our speed instantly increased. Steve let out a whoop, then leaned his whole body against the tiller. Propelled by the swirling water, we hurled forward as though from a slingshot, out of the whirlpool’s grasp, through a narrow slot between boulders…and into an eddy.
I clung to the gunwales, utterly soaked, pulse pounding and breath heaving. The river widened, turned placid, all its fury spent at last.
Steve steered toward the shore, and everyone except for Roland and him stumbled out and helped beach our little craft by unspoken agreement. My body shook, but my heartbeat finally slowed. Steve sprang out of the boat and waded the last few feet onto the shore.
He’d guided us safely through, kept us alive when otherwise the river would have eaten us up. I embraced him gratefully, unable to trust my voice not to shake. He hugged me back. We were both soggy and smelled like wet wool and fear sweat, but I never wanted to let go.
“Who didn’t tie the ropes down right?” Roland demanded.
We released each other. The color was high on Steve’s cheeks, his eyes still a bit wild from the challenge of the river. “It doesn’t matter, Pa,” he said as he hurried to help his father from the boat.
“Like hell it doesn’t! We’ve lost half our supplies.”
“Maybe it was you,” Doug replied.
“I’d never—” Roland began, but Eleanor cut him off.
“Arguing won’t help anything,” she said. “First, we need to change into dry clothes. Once that’s done, we should unload what’s left and spread it out to dry. We can take stock at the same time and find out exactly what we have.”
We hung a tent canvas from a nearby tree for modesty’s sake, then hurriedly changed into dry clothing before the wet cloth froze to our skins. Soon our belongings were spread out on the bank, while Eleanor tallied up what remained.
About half of our food stores were gone, along with our Yukon stove. Even without the Mounty’s warning, I would have known that didn’t bode well.
“Don’t look so glum,” Roland said. “I’m telling you, someone will find a way to get food to Dawson City. We’ll buy what we need with the gold we dig up.”
“We can set out snares once we have a claim,” Doug added, thumbing through his guidebook. “There must be something we can trap.”
I left them to the discussion and walked to the water’s edge. Hard to believe the river quietly flowing past was the same that rampaged only a short distance away.
At least, such was my first thought, until a noticed a few bits of flotsam wash past. Pieces of a boat, a broken oar, waterlogged bits of newspaper. How many people had been on the boat in front of us, and were now drowned in the depths of the rapids?
A photograph bobbed in the same eddy that had eased us from the rapids, and I plucked it from the river’s grasp.
Jack Clarke’s face stared up at me. The bloody bullet hole oozed at his temple, and his eyes were sunken back into their sockets. The skin had gone putrid, sloughing off the muscle and bone beneath, and a feast of maggots writhed in his open mouth.
I cried and flung the photograph from me. It landed face-up in the mud; no longer did it show the doomed man who had shot himself in front of us, but a stranger. Studios in Seattle had offered snowy backdrops for those making for the Klondike, and this photo of a cheery young man had clearly been taken in front of one.
I raised a trembling hand to my brow. First Bessie, and now Clarke. I was seeing things, hallucinating people I knew to be dead.
It was the stress, nothing more. We were trapped in this wilderness, racing to find shelter before winter caught up with us. Everything was on the line, from our wildest dreams to our very lives.
I needed to sleep, that was all. Exhaustion was clouding my mind.
Careful not to look at the photograph lest it change again, I turned my back on the deadly river and returned to the fireside.