18. Walker
Down, down, down into the earth we burrowed.
My world contracted to walls of frozen muck, a slurry of ash and thawed mud under my feet. More bones came up, often with rags of skin or tendon still attached. Caribou, wolf, bison, mammoth, and horse, all of them dead and hidden from the light of the sun for untold centuries, until we came along to disturb their rest.
When out of the pit, Steve and I tried to find excuses to be alone with each other—gathering wood, piling snow into buckets to melt for water, anything that would allow us a few snatched kisses. I tried to concentrate on the moment, to forget we’d left his name off the claims, telling myself all the while that somehow everything would work out by the time summer came.
Though I tumbled exhausted into my bunk every night, uneasy dreams kept me from true rest. I could remember only the smallest fragments when I woke, all of which featured voices calling to me.
At least I no longer heard Bessie during my waking hours. Doug had been right; hiding away the false reminder of the bracelet had soothed my nerves.
Until one night, when everything changed.
I lay in my bed, staring up at the bottom of Doug’s bunk. Something was outside, not far from the cabin walls. Feet crunched through snow, but their gait was somehow wrong, out of sync.
“Help me,” Bessie called, her voice edged in fear.
I squeezed my eyes shut, heart thudding. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
“Help me!” The fear turned to panic, then pain. “Colin! Colin!”
My eyes flew open, only to see blue sky above me in place of Doug’s bunk and the cabin roof. Stinking black smoke blotted out the sun, and flames roared as they came ever closer. Blood poured from a gash on my forehead, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t even lift my hand to dash it away?—
My eyes opened, in reality this time. For an instant, I would have sworn I could still hear screaming, smell burning oil and human flesh.
The moment faded. I was in my bunk, in the cabin. I turned my head to see if any of my companions were also having bad dreams, and realized Doug’s blankets hung down from above, almost in front of my face.
Concerned, I slipped out of bed. Deep cold instantly bit into me, even through my socks and union suit. Frost covered the walls, partly from the condensation of our breath and partially from the moisture slowly seeping out of the green logs.
Doug’s bed was empty. I put my hand to the blankets—cold, but that wasn’t unexpected, given the temperature and the fact he’d left them thrown back so any heat would instantly escape.
I slipped through the calico curtain into the main room. The sheet metal stove put out a soft red glow, its warmth beckoning. Doug wasn’t out there, and his coat still hung above the stove.
The front door stood open a crack.
Fear shocked the last of the sleep from my mind. If he’d gone out to the latrine, he would have taken his coat and boots to keep from freezing on the short distance there and back. Certainly he would never have left the door open so what little warmth we had could escape.
I yanked on my own coat and boots, too worried to put on any more layers of clothing. After hastily lighting a lantern, I opened the door and stepped outside.
I almost needn’t have bothered with the lantern; the white snow glowed in the light of the crescent moon and the aurora overhead. Great snakes of green light lashed across the sky, accompanied by an otherworldly hiss.
Doug stood at the very edge of the forest, wearing only his union suit and socks. He seemed to be staring into the darkness beneath the trees, or listening intently, or both.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, trudging through the snow toward him. “Doug? Doug!”
He didn’t acknowledge me. Only stood there, stock still, consumed by the trees.
I ran the last few steps and grabbed his shoulder, forcibly turning him toward me. And for a moment, so brief I could have imagined it, there was a sly, almost mocking look on his face.
Then it vanished, if it was never there to begin with. He blinked, looked around in confusion. “Colin? What…why are we out here?”
“Shit—you must’ve been sleepwalking.” I tugged on him urgently. “We need to get you inside, now.”
“My feet…I can’t feel them.”
I pushed down a surge of panic, pasting a reassuring expression over my face. “Come on; let’s get you in by the fire.”
As soon as we were inside, I shouted for the others. There was a general commotion before Steve stuck his head around the curtain. “Colin?” he asked sleepily. “What’s going on?”
“Doug sleepwalked outside.” I eased him into one of the chairs. “Eleanor! We need your help!”
She rushed out, her heavy nightgown covering her union suit, her hair in a long braid to keep it neat at night. Despite her haste, she remained calm as she examined his fingers and had him wiggle them, then went on to his feet.
“I can sort of feel the right one,” he said and that night, for the first, I saw fear bloom in his eyes as reality set in.
“Move him away from the fire,” she instructed me briskly. “Steve, fetch some snow from outside.”
We obeyed. Once Roland and I had reoriented the chair with Doug still in it, she went to her knees and inspected his socks. “They’ve frozen to his feet, so we’ll have to go slow,” she said. “We’ll take turns rubbing them with snow. Doug, tell us if you regain feeling.”
While Doug balled up his fists and tried not to look at his feet, we rubbed the socks loose. Beneath, the flesh was white and unnaturally hard. Eleanor kept us calm with rubbing more snow on his feet, until Doug winced.
“Pins and needles,” he said.
“Good. Keep going, until the skin turns red,” Eleanor told me, as I worked on one foot and she the other.
The snow was cold as hell, and my own fingers turned bright pink. As the feeling returned it was obvious Doug was in pain. He gritted his teeth and endured it, until we’d finally coaxed the blood back to the skin. After Eleanor was satisfied, we turned him back to the fire and let him warm himself.
“That should keep you from losing any toes,” Eleanor said. “I’ll stay up with you to make certain—tell me if you lose feeling at all, or if things become more difficult to move.” She sat back and fixed a stern eye on him. “You’re very lucky Colin noticed you were gone. In this weather, you could easily lose more than a foot.”
“I know,” Doug said without looking at me. “Thank you, Col.”
Did I detect a false note in his thanks? No—that was ridiculous. I was exhausted, worn out from worrying, and from my disturbing dreams. “Sure thing,” I said, and turned back to the bedroom.
The next morning, we hit paydirt.
* * *
Doug let out a shout when his shovel struck gravel instead of yet more muck. Thanks to Eleanor’s ministrations, he’d fully recovered from his near miss with frostbite the night before. Indeed, when we’d dragged ourselves from our bunks at first light, he’d been filled with energy and zeal to start digging, barely sitting down long enough to eat breakfast before rushing out to the mineshaft to begin work.
“Look!” He turned the shovel back and forth, and I brought one of the candles we worked by closer. Rather than the usual mix of decayed plant matter, bones, and dirt, the shovel held gravel glued together by thawed mud. “This is where we’ll find gold.”
Hopefully he was right. Excitement thrilled through us all—were our many weeks of digging about to be rewarded? Doug dumped the shovelful into the bucket, yelled at Roland to haul it up, and began to climb the rickety ladder. We followed him one at a time, unwilling to wait a moment longer to find out if we’d struck gold.
I emerged last, into a fierce wind that shook the trees behind the cabin. Roland’s coat and trousers were covered in a fine layer of wind-blown snow. He’d taken to working the windlass more and more lately, claiming he didn’t mind the cold. Doug emptied the gravel into a pan, then hurried inside as we tromped after him. Was it my imagination, or was Roland limping more than he had been?
Once inside, Doug crouched by the water bucket near the stove, dunking the pan, swirling the water, and letting the mud wash out over the edge. Anna knelt by him, her hand resting on his shoulder, Eleanor on her other side.
Roland’s gaze went to Anna’s hand and he frowned.
“There!” Eleanor cried. “I see color!”
Doug continued to wash away the dirt, grinning like a madman as he did so. When he was done, several nuggets rattled in the pan, along with large gold flakes.
We weighed them out on the scale, Steve quickly doing the math in his head. “Fifty dollars,” he said in amazement. “In just one shovel’s worth.”
My spirits rose as if they’d been given wings. Suddenly nothing else mattered—the hard work, the cold, the isolation, all of it paled before the metal shining in the lamplight.
Our wildest dreams were about to come true.