Chapter 23
The boarding house they found on Front Street was the largest log cabin Maggie had ever seen—not that she’d seen all that many before coming to Alaska.
It was three stories, made of rough-hewn logs, with the ground floor one enormous room with a massive cookstove and two long trestle tables.
When they arrived, it was just in time for the noonday meal, and a serving girl, who looked no more than fourteen, wearing, to Maggie’s shock, bib overalls and a plaid shirt, was bringing out platter after platter of thick steaks, which Maggie later discovered were bear meat, along with slices of pork and vats of beans, all to be washed down with canned milk.
When her father approached the landlady, Mrs. Compton, a capable, red-faced woman, her plain dress swathed by an enormous apron, she informed them that they could have a shared room with three square meals a day for four dollars a week each.
Da paid for their first week then and there, and they sat down to one of the most unusual yet delicious meals of Maggie’s life.
Everything felt so startlingly strange—stranger even than when she and Danny had first set foot in New York and been overwhelmed by the noise and commotion of the city, the clatter of wagons and carriages and the tall buildings that had seemed to blot out the sky.
This was a different kind of strangeness—for while there was certainly nothing unusual about having a meal in a boarding house, everything about the meal and boarding house was entirely novel, in a way that was both entertaining and, Maggie had to admit, a little alarming, but at least the novelty kept her from dwelling on Brendan’s unexpected farewell overmuch.
How could he have left her like that? And yet, Maggie knew, it had been all too easy. Necessary, even—at least according to Brendan.
Their dining companions were, for the most part, some of the toughest, most weatherbeaten-looking men Maggie had ever seen, even when she’d been living on the Barbary Coast, which had certainly had plenty of rough characters.
The men seated around the table were a motley mix of grizzled miners and prospectors intending to strike out, often with a wad of chewing tobacco tucked in their cheeks even as they ate their meal.
They were dressed in a jumbled mix of flannel shirts and weathered denim overalls, along with mackinaws and what Maggie learned were called mukluks, soft, knee-high boots made from moosehide and caribou fur.
The conversation was a mix of cheerful complaint about the conditions at the mine with what Maggie soon discovered was absurd bragging about the gold they’d found, the cold they’d endured, the miles they’d traveled.
Sixty below zero was nothing, one old-timer assured the rest of the table, as long as he had his sleeping bag.
This boast was met with a chorus of guffaws and good-natured insults.
There was plenty of swearing, too, although at least half the time the man in question would catch sight of Maggie, his shoulders drooping as he’d mumble a heartfelt apology for his salty language.
Maggie accepted these apologies with a nod and a smile, not wanting to seem too prim, because it was quite clear that even so much as a hint of priggishness was not to be found anywhere.
Juneau was, she was quickly realizing, a mining camp that was still very much in the process of turning into a town.
In another ten years or so, one miner assured her, Juneau would have a proper main street with stone buildings and public parks; it already had electricity, just this last year, and there was talk of the telephone being added, as well.
“And,” he added meaningfully, “in ten years there’ll be no Indians. ”
Maggie stiffened at his suddenly surly tone. “No Indians?” she queried cautiously. “But don’t they work in the mines?”
“Yeah, takin’ our jobs,” another miner chimed in, propping his elbow on the table as he leaned over and jabbed a finger meaningfully in the air. “And willing to do the same work for less pay. We already got rid of the Chinese?—”
“Save for Joe,” the first miner reminded him, and the second man grinned, revealing a full set of blackened, broken teeth.
“Save for Joe,” he agreed. “Good old Joe.”
“Who’s Joe?” Maggie asked. She was curious as well as cautious, for she sensed an ugliness beneath the miners’ conversation that she didn’t want to probe too deeply.
“He runs a bakery right here in town,” the second man explained. “Back in ’86, they ran all the Chinese out of town, shipped ’em off to Fort Wrangell. They were workin’ in the mine for half-pay. It wouldn’t do.”
“And Joe,” the first man continued, taking up the story, “was the only Chinaman left. There was a mob from Treadwell that wanted to take him, too, but the good townsfolk wouldn’t have it. He’s still here, y’know. He’s a good guy, Joe. Always slips you an extra slice, or some candy for the kiddies.”
“And the Indians?” Maggie asked after a moment, disconcerted by the whole nature of the conversation.
A third man, grizzled and looking at least sixty years old, let out a long sigh.
“I’ve been in this country for twenty years now,” he told them, and from the eyerolls the first two men exchanged, Maggie suspected the old-timer had expressed this sentiment on more than one occasion.
“I’ve seen it all,” he continued in the same long-suffering voice, “and then some. And when we first came, we needed the Indians. We needed their knowledge and their hardiness and their boats. There’s not a white man alive who can work the way an Indian can. ”
“And there’s not a white man alive who can drink like one, either,” the first man replied with a sneer. “I like a drink, and that’s a fact, but the Indians and their damned firewater—beggin’ your pardon, miss.”
“And who gave it to them?” the old-timer demanded. “But that’s not even the point. The truth is, Miss…?” He paused expectantly and Maggie filled in,
“O’Halloran.”
“Miss O’Halloran,” he resumed with a surprisingly gracious nod, “is that we don’t need the Indians anymore. They’ve given us their knowledge, we’ve got better boats, we know the land well enough, if not the way they do. And since we don’t need them, we don’t want them.”
“They’re savages,” the second miner protested. “Living in those tumbledown huts on stilts in the mud?—”
“The only place,” the old-timer interjected mildly, “where we’ve allowed them to have their village.”
“Still,” the man grumbled, and reached for another slice of pork.
The conversation moved on, thankfully, to rumors of a gold stake up near Sheep Creek.
Maggie finished her bear steak as she let the conversation drift over her.
It had been unsettling, what they’d said about the Indians, and yet not so different to some of the attitudes she’d encountered back in New York and Chicago, if more bluntly put.
Beyond all that, there had been so many new sights and sounds and experiences today that she realized she was feeling quite exhausted.
Their walk to the boarding house on Juneau’s main street had been as novel as the meal Maggie was eating—the road at this time of year had been nothing but a sea of churned-up mud, and the sidewalks raised wooden platforms on either side.
The stores that lined the street could have been seen back in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast—a mix of drinking saloons, dance halls, chophouses and the odd barber or hardware.
The buildings, however, were very different—log cabins, tin-roofed shacks, and a few more impressive ones with wooden facades.
Before they’d reached the boarding house, a fistfight had broken out across the street, and a man had been sent sprawling into the mud.
Danny had just laughed at the sight, while Maggie had hurried on, trying not to show the alarm on her face.
Now she felt that same alarm as she considered the miners’ conversation.
A scornful, sneering attitude toward other races was nothing new, she knew.
She’d experienced a similar reaction when she’d first arrived in New York, and seen signs in windows advertising rooms or work with the prerequisite that “Irish need not apply.”
But, she acknowledged as she chewed the surprisingly tender bear steak, as an Irishwoman, she hadn’t been run off to another city, or forced to live in a tumbledown shack in the mud the way the Chinese or Indians seemed to have been here in Juneau.
It was, she decided, a reminder that as open and expansive as this new land promised to be, with opportunity, like Brendan had said, for any man who was willing to take it…
that openness did not seem to extend to people who looked different from everyone else.
After the meal, she, Danny and Da took their belongings up to the room they were to share, which, Maggie discovered was divided from the others with nothing more than cotton cloth pasted to paper-thin boards.
Telephone walls, Maggie learned they were called, since you could hear every whisper, cough or fart on the whole floor.
“Well, that was a slap-up meal, if I do say so myself,” their father exclaimed once they’d put their suitcases away. “Now, how about we have a look around this town?” He winked at Danny, and Maggie knew what he really meant was to have a look around one—or several—of Juneau’s drinking saloons.
“I’m going to inquire if there’s a hospital here,” she told her father and brother, smiling briskly. “But you two go ahead.”
As they left with a lot of laughter and backslapping, Maggie hoped the two of them would stay out of trouble. She suspected they wouldn’t, but she told herself they were both men and they could handle themselves… hopefully even in a town like this.
And what was Brendan doing? she wondered. Had he found a place to stay? Was he looking for a job, as she was about to?
Pushing such pointless thoughts out of her mind, Maggie tidied her hair and clothes before heading back downstairs, where most of the men had left and Mrs. Compton and the serving girl were washing up.
There was no separate kitchen, and so they made do with a washtub of water and a rough wooden table in the corner, and not much else.
“Thank you for that delicious meal,” Maggie offered as she brought a dirty platter over to the washtub. “I’d never had bear steak before.”
“Well, you’ll have it plenty here,” Mrs. Compton replied with a laugh, “so you’d best get used to it.”
“It was delicious,” Maggie assured her and the woman eyed her up and down with a frank and obvious skepticism.
“What’s a young lady like you doing out here?” she asked. “There’s a few ladies about in this town, it’s true, but they tend to be married or nuns.”
“I’m neither,” Maggie replied with a smile. “I’ve come with my father and brother.” And Brendan, she added silently, whether he’d wanted her to or not.
“Those two were full of talk,” Mrs. Compton remarked with a huff of laughter. “Like all the other cheechakos that come through here. They’re going to set out and strike it rich, just like that.” She shook her head wearily. “Weren’t we all.”
“Your husband is a miner?” Maggie ventured.
“Was,” Mrs. Compton replied. “Died from a fall on his claim five years ago. That’s why I’ve got this place.
Bought it for a song when the miners were flooding in.
Elvira helps me as best as she can.” She glanced at the girl washing dishes with a set, miserable look on her face, and then leaned over and clipped her on her ear.
“Scrub them dishes, don’t just look at ’em, girl!
” she commanded, before turning back to Maggie.
“Your brother and father will learn what it’s really like soon enough.
There’s not much gold around here anymore, and what is here is stuck in that godforsaken quartz.
You don’t just stumble upon the yellow metal while you’re strollin’ about, takin’ the air. ”
“I’m sure they will learn,” Maggie agreed. At least she hoped they would and not continue chasing vain dreams of glory. “But I wanted to ask about whether there’s a hospital here, or perhaps a doctor? I trained as a nurse back in San Francisco, and I’m hoping to offer my services.”
Mrs. Compton’s eyes narrowed speculatively.
“A nurse, huh? Well, you probably want to make your way to St. Ann’s, then.
The nuns run the place, and they have a school, too.
For a decent woman like yourself, it’s probably best. There are a few medical men hangin’ their shingle on Front Street, but they’re drunk half the time, and that ain’t no place for a lady. ”
Maggie nodded, murmuring her thanks. A hospital run by nuns sounded promising.
“Fifth and Harris Street,” Mrs. Compton told her. “Take a right on Seward, and then another right on Fifth, all the way up to Harris. It’s a wooden building, painted white. Two of ’em now, the school and the hospital.”
“Thank you,” Maggie said again, and Mrs. Compton nodded, her gaze appraising but, Maggie thought, also kind.
“Keep your wits about you, walking around,” she advised. “And good luck.”
Her tone of voice suggested to Maggie that she might need it, and with a shiver of trepidation, Maggie thought she might, too.