24. The Storm
“Ijust don’t understand,” Steve said, as we huddled over a breakfast of beans and bacon. “The readings yesterday were clear—pressure rising, winds mild. Where did this storm come from?”
The wind continued to lash the cabin unabated. Between the snow falling from the sky, and the snow lifted back off the ground by the wind, visibility outside was virtually nonexistent. Anyone going into it would be disoriented within seconds, completely lost in minutes.
“Perhaps your instruments aren’t working due to the cold?” Eleanor suggested.
“The thermometer is frozen, but the aneroid barometer doesn’t use liquid.” Steve hesitated, then sighed. “Even so, you could be right.”
“Nothing wrong with your instruments, son.” Roland hunched over his coffee, eyes fixed on it as though the secrets of the world were to be found in the bottom of the cup. “This storm is unnatural. That thing…whatever is out there, whatever killed my poor Anna…doesn’t want us to leave.”
Steve shifted, as if he wanted to deny it, but couldn’t. How could any of us, given what we’d experienced? There was no natural explanation for the voices of our loved ones, crying out from the dark and snow.
“Is this some devil?” I asked aloud. “Some demon?”
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Eleanor protested. “Why us?”
Roland finally looked up from his coffee. “We should never have come here. Should’ve staked our own claim somewhere else.” His gaze found Eleanor. “We found a man’s arm, when we came here. When you and Anna stayed with the boat.”
Her eyes widened, and she looked to me, as if to ask if it was true. Shamed, I nodded. “We thought it was a bear attack. That Bill had been here alone, gotten between a mother and her cubs somehow.”
She straightened her back, nostrils flaring. “And you didn’t tell us because…?”
“We didn’t want to frighten you unnecessarily.” The words sounded pathetic even to me.
A sharp bark of laughter escaped her. “Unnecessarily? How dare you appoint yourselves the judges of what is and isn’t necessary?”
For a moment, I thought she might grab a skillet off the wall and split our skulls open with it. God knew, we’d deserve it.
“We knew it was a good claim, and the cabin was already here. Nothing to stop us from mining right away.” Steve looked up at her, eyes haunted. “I truly believed there had been an accident, the sort of thing that wouldn’t happen if more than one person was here.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” Eleanor turned her back on him. “Anna deserved better.”
None of us could argue.
The storm continued unabated, day after day. Steve didn’t bother to take any more weather readings; we’d all accepted Roland’s pronouncement. The storm was unnatural, meant to trap us here.
And yet, we heard no more dead voices calling from the forest. No more knocks on the door, or impossible scratches.
Was the storm too bad for whatever lurked out there? Or was it simply waiting and watching, like a cat crouched beside a mousehole?
The uncertainty meant our nerves were stretched tighter with each day that passed. With no clear enemy before us, we turned on one another. Steve and Eleanor ended up in a shouting match because he left the water bucket too far from the stove and it began to freeze; Roland almost hit me because I splashed coffee on his knee while passing a cup.
For most of us, the days were both dreadful and monotonous. Nothing but the storm outside, the fug of unwashed bodies within. Our meals consisted of beans, bacon, and bread, with little variation. We’d lost our stores of dried apricots and raisins in the rapids, as well as the sugar that might have at least allowed Eleanor to make a cake. I began to daydream of fruits and vegetables, even as our stores dwindled concerningly.
One troubling implication of our monotonous diet became apparent while I looked in the shaving mirror one morning. Miner wisdom was to keep a clean face in the winter, lest whiskers freeze into a solid block of ice. As I scraped stubble from my chin, my attention was drawn to the edge of the scar peeking out from under my overgrown hair. Its color had gone from old white to a fresher pink.
Scurvy caused old wounds to reopen. But I wasn’t feeling any other symptoms—no joint pain or blackening skin. My teeth remained secure, unlike Doug’s.
Was this some strange variation of the disease, focusing only in certain places on the body? I was no doctor; I hadn’t the slightest idea if it would even be possible.
I didn’t dare ask Eleanor, who was already puzzled enough by the fact that Doug insisted on going daily into the mine, but never showed the first sign of frostbite.
He was simply careful, I told myself. Humans had survived in this wretched place long before white men came.
Certainly he seemed…not healthy, exactly, but filled with vigor. He worked long hours, barely coming inside to eat or sleep. Weight fell from him, until even his union suit was baggy, and the stoop from working in the low-ceilinged mine persisted even when he came into the cabin.
Despite the poor visibility, he never tied a rope to make navigating between mine and cabin safer, yet again seemed to have no problems going back and forth. “I can feel the gold calling me,” he said the one time I dared asked.
I worried about him…but I was also relieved. If he was outside, alone, he couldn’t hurt anyone.
At times I considered telling the others about Tommy…but one thing would lead to another, and they’d find out we’d left their names off the claims register. That I was as much a liar and swindler as my brother.
If anyone found out he’d murdered a man, Doug would hang for it. I didn’t think Steve would kill him, but Roland? Especially if they decided he was somehow responsible for Anna as well? Eleanor would offer to tie the noose herself.
Even if they didn’t, even if they tied him up until spring and delivered him to the Canadian authorities, the penalty for murder was death.
I loved my brother. I couldn’t be complicit in killing him, no matter what he’d done. I’d just keep a careful eye on him, make sure no one else was alone with him outside the cabin. He wouldn’t dare try anything inside.
Or so I thought, until the night he tried to murder Steve.
* * *
I stood in the wheat field, the heat of the burning train on my face. An ancient caribou skull, stained from its time frozen in muck, stared at me from atop a pole. Bessie’s voice issued from its unmoving jaw.
“Colin! Help!”
Thump.
A drop of blood slid down my face from the gash on my forehead. I tried to flee, but the flames spread rapidly, devouring the wheat. Somewhere far away, I heard my father’s voice like a cold lash.
“You’ll never amount to anything. I wish neither of you boys had come out of your mama’s womb.”
Thump!
I jerked awake and felt warmth trickling down my face. I didn’t have time to puzzle over it, because a weak thud sounded from the other side of the cabin.
The sound hadn’t been part of my nightmare. I sat up and struck a match to see by.
Doug had climbed on the top bunk with Steve, and determinedly bore down on a pillow covering his face.
I let out an incoherent yell and dropped the match, plunging the room back into darkness. The sound woke Roland and Eleanor; she struck a match of her own as I rushed past to grab Doug’s arm.
Heat poured off of him, as though he burned with some terrible fever. But if so, it had done nothing to weaken him. His muscles were like iron beneath my hand, and just as hard to move.
“Stop!” I shouted, pulling ineffectively on him.
“Let go of him, you crazy bastard!” Roland grabbed his leg, but had no more success than me.
Doug looked utterly deranged, his lips pulled back from bloody gums, eyes glinting yellow. Beneath him, Steve’s struggles grew weaker and weaker, but Doug refused to stop the assault, even when Roland punched him in the side of the head.
He meant to murder Steve right in front of our eyes.
“Let him go,” Eleanor said, brandishing a kitchen knife from the outer room. “I’ll cut your throat, and don’t think I won’t do it.”
I didn’t doubt her, and apparently Doug didn’t either. He abruptly released the pillow and stood up. Steve hurled it off his face and rolled on his side, gasping for air. Roland and I both reached for him.
“Are you all right, boy?” Roland demanded frantically. “Come on, Stevie. I can’t lose you too.”
“I’m fine, Pa,” Steve managed to gasp out after a minute. “What…who?”
“Doug,” I said unhappily.
His eyes widened, and he reached for my forehead. When he drew back, his fingers were stained with blood. “He hurt you, too?”
“No.” Another drop of blood slid free, tracing a path down my face. “My scar is coming undone.”
He swore softly.
“Excuse me,” Eleanor said. She stood with knife outstretched, gaze fixed on Doug. “Can someone please tie this man up?”
Reassured Steve was in as good a shape as he could be under the circumstances, Roland and I hustled Doug into the front room. He went without protest, a faint smile hovering on his lips.
He’d gone mad. That was the only explanation; the cold and dark had driven my brother insane.
We tied him to the chair. Once he was secured, Roland leaned heavily against the chair and grabbed him by the collar. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Don’t hurt him.” I tugged on Roland’s arm. “Please.”
Steve emerged from the back, having pulled on his shirt and trousers. His appearance made me aware I was wearing only my union suit, which, while warm under a pile of blankets, was now letting in the deep chill. But I didn’t dare leave the room, not with Roland glaring at Doug as if he meant to kill him. Instead, I pulled my coat off the line and put it on, then pulled Doug’s down as well and draped it over his shoulders.
Steve folded his arms and glared at Doug. “You meant to kill me.”
Doug didn’t deny it. “I would have gotten away with it if you hadn’t woken up my brother with your thrashing.” The look he shot me was disapproving. “And if he hadn’t gotten involved. Everyone would have thought you’d died in your sleep, with no mark of violence on you.”
Eleanor shivered, and I fetched her coat for her. “He’s lost his mind,” she said.
Doug merely shrugged.
I couldn’t hold back any longer. “I think…that is, I’m pretty sure he killed Tommy Tatum.”
They stared at me in horror. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” Steve demanded.
The words made me flinch. But then Doug made it all worse.
“That’s not the only thing my dear brother’s been keeping from you.” The words were aimed at them, but his mocking gaze was fixed on me. “Is it, Mark?”
* * *
I hadn’t heard the name in so long it came as a shock.
Mark, my parents had named me. Like the mark of a rigged shell game, easily led.
“What is he talking about?” Steve asked warily. “Why did he call you that?”
Doug sneered at me. “Yes, why don’t you tell him?”
In that moment, I almost hated my brother. But I hated myself more.
“We ran away from home when we were still children,” I said, carefully choosing my words. “Our father was not a kind man, to say the least.”
“Oh no, that won’t do.” Doug’s eyes bored into mine, glinting yellowly in the lantern light. “We left because you killed our little sister.”
The world tilted under me. All these years he’d been my champion. First lying to our parents, then working hard to create a new life for us both, even if it was a criminal one. We always had one another’s backs through every scheme.
We supported whatever lie or half-truth the other told; we had to in order to live as we did. To have him throw away the script, force me to tell the truth…
In a way, it was more shocking than the fact he’d killed a man and tried to murder Steve. Those acts might have been put down to madness.
This was betrayal.
Or retribution for raising the alarm. We’d lived and lied together; if one of us was to fall, Doug was determined to make sure the other did as well.
“What did you do?” Steve asked, horror in his voice.
I swallowed thickly. “It was an accident.” My hands clenched and unclenched, as I tried to tell the story without actually envisioning the memories. But of course that was impossible. “A railroad track ran in back of our farm. There was a switch nearby, so the trains would slow down enough for us to jump on and hang off the roofwalk ladders on the boxcars. Doug and I would do it all the time, so we could ride to the next town. We never had a problem.”
“Until the day you left me behind,” Doug said.
I didn’t look at him, but stared down at the rime-coated floor. “Bessie—our little sister—wanted to go. She whined and whined, and when I told her no, she said she’d break a window and tell Dad I’d done it. That would have meant a beating with the buckle end of his belt, so I gave in.”
My stomach soured, and the words tried to stick in my throat. “We jumped on just fine! Everything was fine! I’d done this a thousand times. But this time…I don’t know what happened, if it was a problem with the switch or something else. The train derailed, and something in one of the boxcars caught fire. It spread fast, so fast.”
A drop of blood slipped down my face from my reopening wound. I touched my hand to it, looked down at the red smear on my fingers. “That’s where I got this. Something hit me…I don’t know what. I was thrown off, ended up outside the burning train. But Bessie was trapped under the shattered car, the fire licking at her already. It was so hot my skin blistered even at a distance, but she was still alive. Screaming for me to help her, to save her.”
“But you didn’t,” Doug said, sly as a snake.
“I froze.” The words came out a whisper. “I froze, and she died.”
The silence around me felt like a weight on my shoulders. Then Roland asked, “What’s this got to do with Tommy Tatum? With trying to kill my boy?”
Maybe if I spoke quickly, got it over with, somehow things wouldn’t get worse. “Doug saved me—Dad adored Bessie; he would have killed me if he knew the truth. So Doug claimed I was with him all day, and we ran to the accident together. I got hurt trying to save her.”
More blood seeped down my face, but I only closed my eyes. “We ran away a few months later. We had to live, so we became swindlers. We’ve spent years lying about everything: our names, our background, all of it. I thought getting rich here would make Doug happy, but he wanted to steal everyone else’s gold?—”
“Oh, no, little brother,” he broke in. “You were in on it, too. Whose names are on those claim certificates, anyway?”
A stinging slap across my face. My eyes flew open; Eleanor stood before me, eyes glittering with a mixture of rage and tears. “I should never have trusted you,” she snarled. “It’s your fault—all of this.”
“I thought I could talk him out of it.” The words sounded weak even to my own ears. “I thought shared hardship would bond us together, that he’d agree to an equitable split once we had the gold in hand.” I swallowed. “I didn’t realize he’d kill for it. I swear—we’ve never done any physical violence in our lives.”
“So you’re a confidence man and a cheat,” Steve said. His blue eyes were cold as ice, and the memory of all the kisses we’d shared rushed back to me. He was so kind, so capable, so damned honest, and…
And I loved him.
It hurt like a knife to my chest. Did he think none of my affection had been sincere? Of course he did—he’d be a fool to believe otherwise, given my past. Given Doug’s murderous intent.
“I never meant to hurt any of you,” I said feebly.
Steve didn’t dignify me with an answer.
“What should we do with them?” Roland asked.
Fear startled me—did they mean to turn us out, the way the miners had turned out the thief in Dawson? No gear, no warm clothes, nothing to survive in?
I abandoned whatever dignity I had left. “Please don’t hurt us.”
“We stick with the plan,” Steve said. “Wait until the storm breaks, then march them to the next camp. We’ll recruit help there and take them to the Mounties in Dawson.”
So Doug would swing, and I probably would too, if the miners got their hands on me.
“Should we tie up Colin—whatever his name is—also?” Eleanor asked.
Thankfully, Steve hesitated. “He did save my life,” he said after a moment. “And we can use another pair of hands for the chores. He won’t cause any more trouble—will you?”
The threat in those last two words didn’t escape me. “No,” I said. “I swear.”
“We should keep watch over Doug, or whoever he really is.” Steve fetched his hunting knife. “I’ll take first watch. The rest of you get some sleep.”
I obeyed without protest. Back in my bunk, I lay looking up at the bed that had been Doug’s, and cursed the day the Klondike Kings ever set foot in Seattle.