Alaska (84 page)

'What would we need?' Missy asked, for since listening to the Kernel she had begun to surrender hope of finding gold in the customary way.

'Money,' the Kernel said. 'Here in Seattle and in Dawson the rule's the same. If you have ten dollars, you're infinitely better off than if you have only nine.'

'But if you don't have ten?' she persisted, and he ignored her, digging into his plate for more of the good stew. Finally he looked up: 'Can't you see the situation?

Don't go to Alaska now. Wait till April, when the snows stop and the ice begins to thaw. And the boat fares drop.'

'And what do we do while we wait?'

'Work. Get jobs, all of you. Save every penny. So that when you do leave for the Yukon, you arrive with enough money 508

to make a splash. If you're clever, and I think you are, you can double your money and then double it many times again.' 'How?' Missy insisted, and he said: 'Once you reach Dawson, you'll see a hundred ways,' and later, when she saw one of the photographs of the famous gold town she saw that one of its characteristics was the blizzard of carefully painted banners hanging from the false-fronted stores which provided some kind of service:

DOUGHNUTS AND HOT COFFEE 20?

GOLD ASSAYS IMMEDIATE

LAUNDRY MENDING FREE

DR. LEE, TEETH PULLED

As Missy studied the photographs, Buck did some figuring: 'If we don't sail north till April . . . that's eight or nine months to wait. What should I do? What should any of us do ... to earn money?'

'Aha!' the Kernel said without hesitation. 'You find the best-paying job you can . . . anything,' but Buck, remembering a year without employment of any kind, could not visualize getting work so easily, and it was here that the North Carolinian proved most helpful.

'Tom?' he asked. 'What can you do?'

'Deliver papers. I was good at that.'

'No, no! It doesn't pay enough,' and he was about to dismiss that possibility when the boy said with the enthusiasm that the Seattle waterfront engendered: 'I don't mean one door to the next. I mean this whole wharf area . . . going out to meet the ships coming in. Lots of new possibilities.'

'And what can you do?' the Kernel asked Buck, but Tom broke in: 'Pop can manage furniture accounts better than anybody.'

'What experience?'

'Hardware. Big furniture.'

'You're the man they need,' the miner cried, rising from his chair and dragging Buck three blocks toward the center of the city, with Missy and Tom following.

He took them to Ross & Raglan, the store that had outfitted him years before when he first went into the arctic and which now was crowded with goods required by gold seekers. Calling for Mr. Ross, the Kernel reminded that industrious Scotsman of who he was and displayed the newspaper clippings to prove his identity: 'I want you to hire this man, Mr. Ross. He knows goods. He can bring some order into this place.'

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So many of Ross & Raglan's clerks were leaving for Alaska that the merchant was eager to find a responsible replacement, and after a series of inquiries as to Buck's capabilities, he asked: 'Can I write to your former employer for a reference?' and Buck said: 'No.

We left St. Louis after a misunderstanding. But you can see that the three of us are responsible.'

'Are you married to this lady?'

'He certainly is,' the North Carolinian said, and the enthusiasm of this miner who the papers said had brought nearly sixty thousand dollars on the Portland was so infectious that against his better judgment, Mr. Ross employed Buck on the spot.

The Kernel then took Tom to the offices of the Post-Intelligencer and insisted that the paper hire this intelligent lad to organize the distribution of the journal in areas that had been served only sporadically before: 'I mean the waterfront, the new bars, the ships coming in.'

Again, the excitement of the gold rush was so pervasive that the managers of the paper listened to a proposal that would have been dismissed as outrageous a year before. Tom got a job, on trial, and now the restless miner turned his attention to Missy.

It was not yet completely dark as he hurried the Venns along one of the major streets until he came to a fashionable restaurant, where he left Buck and Tom at the front door while he took Missy to the back. There, forcing his way into the kitchen, he asked to see the manager, and since in these frantic days Seattle was accustomed to bizarre behavior, the manager listened when the Klondike Kernel introduced himself, showed his credentials, and said: 'My young friend here is a master waitress, widely regarded in St. Louis. She's on her way to the gold fields and needs a job till April.'

'Can you do hard work?' the manager asked, and when Missy said, 'Yes,' he said, almost with a sigh: 'You can start right now.'

'I can start in an hour,' she said, and he said: 'Don't disappoint me.'

In slightly over an hour, the North Carolina miner had landed three good jobs for his new friends, and when, back at the bar, they asked why he had done this, he said: 'I wish I was thirty. Starting up the Chilkoot again, rafting down the Yukon in a thing I built myself. I want to see you do it right.' But as they rose to leave, he terrified them by placing his hands on the table, staring at each in turn, and saying: 'I like you three. People of character, and I'm going to help you all the way. But you have got to tell me who you are and why you're here.”

'What do you mean,' Buck stuttered, and the Kernel pat-510

ted him reassuringly on the arm: 'When you came into that shipping office you were scared to death. Looked at me twice to see if I was a policeman or a detective. What have you stolen? What crime? What are you running away from?” Before the man could respond he turned to Missy: 'You! You're the salt of the earth, I can see that. But you can't possibly be the mother of this boy, can you? How old are you?'

'Twenty-two.'

'And you're not married to this one, are you?' When she began to remonstrate, he said: 'How do I know? You don't look married. You don't treat him as if he was your husband.' When she asked what this meant, he said: 'You treat him too nice.'

Now it was Tom's turn: 'And you, young fellow? Have they kidnapped you? Get you out of a reform school?' When Tom started to speak, the Kernel put his hand on his arm: 'Not now. Think it over. Decide if you can trust me. Half the people coming through here have secrets they'd rather not reveal.' He then looked seriously at each of the three: 'But if I am to help you any further, wherever you're from, and it certainly isn't St. Louis, you must tell me the truth.'

Badly shaken by the Kernel's final salvos, they convened at midnight, following Missy's stint at the restaurant, and leaped into an agitated discussion of their plight, with Missy saying: 'He was uncanny. Twice I remember him looking at me funny when I said something that wasn't exactly true.'

'But how did he know we weren't from St. Louis?' young Tom asked, and then Buck raised the real question, the one that each of the other two had wanted to ask but had been afraid to: 'Suppose he is a detective? Suppose the Chicago police telegraphed him with our descriptions?'

The tiny rented room fell silent as the three fugitives contemplated this frightening possibility, and with the sounds of life crashing down about their ears, they went to bed and tried to sleep.

IF THE KERNEL WAS A DETECTIVE, HE BEHAVED IN Contradictory ways, for in the days that followed he did everything possible to help them start successfully in their new jobs, and after their working hours he reviewed item by item the things they 'must buy for their great adventure in the gold fields: 'Six thousand pounds and each ounce must mean something.' He arranged for Ross & Raglan to give Buck, as an employee, a discount on the purchases he made there and located a grocery that was eager to get rid of large supplies of dried goods before the New Year: 'Buy them, Buck.

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They'll keep.' But it was Buck himself who compiled the famous list that so many newcomers used as their buying guide. It itemized the hundred or so necessities a prudent gold seeker ought to purchase before he left Seattle. At the top the card said: 'You will find every piece of this equipment at Ross & Raglan,' and then he demonstrated his growing ingenuity by adding at the bottom a helpful reminder: Ross & Raglan, always mindful of their customers' welfare, most urgently recommend that each prospector take with him a small kit containing medicaments sure to be needed.

Borax Essence ginger Laudanum

Iodine Chlorate potash Chloroform

Quinine Toothache drops Acetanilid

lodoform Spirits of nitre Witch hazel Paregoric Belladonna plasters Carbolic salve Such a kit can be purchased for less than ten dollars at Andersen's Drug Store, which is connected in no way with Ross & Raglan. Andersen's also recommends that men take along MonselPs salts for hemorrhages, in quantities according to each man's susceptibility to attack.

The disclaimer that R&R had no financial interest in Andersen's Drug Store and received no return on this free advertising was only partially true, because Buck did collect a small commission on each medical kit he helped sell.

But whenever they met up with the Klondike Kernel they were aware that he was watching them with far more than casual interest, and they grew nervous when he invited them to take meals with him. 'You're my Seattle family,' he said, and when Missy asked: 'Haven't you any in North Carolina?' he parried: 'That place seems to grow ever more distant.' Then, instead of goading them to reveal their secrets, he confided his: 'When I left this harbor years ago for Alaska, I had one ambition. To show those bastards back in Carolina. And all the time I grubbed along the Klondike, I consoled myself with the thought that with my increasing hoard of gold, I'd show them back home.'

'What changed it?' Missy asked, and he said: 'North Carolina don't seem so important now,' but quickly he amended the statement: 'Fact is, there's no one there who would remotely understand what the Klondike meant.'

The three felt honored, in a way, that he had shared his thoughts with them, but this did nothing to alleviate their 512

suspicions about him, for as Buck warned repeatedly when they were alone: 'He could still be their detective.'

Because each of them worked diligently, their savings grew, and this gave the two adults a happy feeling of security, but it was Tom who was enjoying himself most, for as he became familiar with the waterfront, meeting the dazzling steamships which came up from San Francisco or the old ones limping down from St. Michael, he began to sense what a magical city Seattle was. It dominated the extreme northwestern corner of the nation, with great trains arriving daily from various parts of the country; it also dominated trade with Alaska, which had no other outlet. It was a city built on a captivating waterfront, with lakes and islands and stretches of water reaching to the horizon north, south and west. It was girt with massive mountains both east and west, and what surprised Tom, as it did Buck and Missy, the city did not lie on the ocean, as they had always supposed; it lay some eighty miles inland along waterways that served both Canada and the United States.

'I like this city!' Tom often cried when he saw it from the deck of some incoming ship to whose passengers he had sold copies of the Post-Intelligencer, or when he met a decrepit scow, barely afloat, which had limped down from Skagway and Juneau bringing three men who arrived with gold and sixty-three with nothing.

He knew the operation of the Seattle waterfront as intimately as a boy could in the limited time he had worked it, and one night he went running to the restaurant where Missy worked: 'Wonderful news! The Alacrity, that little steamer owned by Ross & Raglan, -they need a head stewardess for the Skagway run and they told me you can have the job.'

'When?'

'They sail tomorrow at four in the afternoon.'

'How much pay?'

'They said tips were plentiful . . . really generous.'

She told Tom to wait till she could leave work, then accompanied him to where the Alacrity

was docked, preparing for her return run to Skagway. As they neared the trim little vessel, Tom said: 'A new ship like this, it makes the run to Skagway in six days, even with two stops.'

Nervously, but with pride, he took Missy to see the captain, who was in his nightshirt: 'Captain Reed, this is the one I told you about.'

'You a hard worker?'

'He told you I was, didn't he?'

'I mean really work. Get this crew in the dining room straightened out?'

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'I can, but what's the pay?'

'The tips are very generous.'

'But from you? For getting things in order?'

Captain Reed considered this, then parried: 'I suppose you'll jump ship the minute we hit Skagway.'

'You know that my son will be here in Seattle.'

'He said he was your brother.'

'So, how much pay?'

'Two dollars a day. Your bunk. Your meals. And the tips have been very generous.'

'Three dollars and I'll take it.'

'I said two and I said you'd be treated generously. Take it or leave it.'

'I'll take it.'

'Be here at oh-seven-hundred.'

'He said you sail at four in the afternoon.'

'But we feed people at oh-eight-hundred. Be here.'

Now Missy faced three obligations: she must inform her present employer that she was leaving the restaurant, she must tell Buck that she would be on the Alacrity during the coming months, and she must in decency explain matters to the Kernel, who had been so helpful. Grappling with the easiest first, she asked Tom to walk back to the restaurant with her and wait outside while she talked with the owner.

He understood: 'In Seattle everything happens. Good luck in the gold fields.'

'I'm not going there at once,' she tried to explain, but he said, not unpleasantly: 'When you go, you go.' To her astonishment he gave her an extra five dollars: 'We can use you when you come back broke.'

Explaining to Buck presented no problems at first, for he appreciated the fact that she would be earning substantially more than at the restaurant and that she would also be learning how prospectors reached the gold fields, but when she added that now they must level with the Kernel, he cried in real anxiety: 'Why? Why?' and she said: 'To clear things,' and he said: 'But suppose he really is a detective?' and she said: 'There is no way that good man can be evil,' and Tom supported her.

So at about one in the morning of the day she would make her first tour to the north, the three of them walked soberly to the saloon where the Kernel was sitting at his usual table, and Buck said: 'They want to talk,' and the Kernel rose, bowed politely, and said: 'Why have you decided so late at night?' and Missy said: 'I start work on an R&R ship tomorrow, and we owe you an explanation. You've been like a father to us.'

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'I've tried to be,' and to his astonishment it was Tom who broke the ice, saying, 'It was during the starving time in Chicago. My grandmother, my father and me, we had no food at all, no jobs of any kind . . . nothing.'

'It was the Panic of '93,' Missy explained, and Buck, who was still ashamed of those days when he failed the family, remained silent, so Tom continued: 'Missy was in charge of charity for our church, and that's how we got to know her.' He looked at her with love, there in the smoky saloon, and she said: 'The minister came to me and said: ”Missy, there's one of our families, the Venns, we haven't seen for three weeks. They may be starving in silence.”And they were.'