Alaska (85 page)

Painfully the recollections of that terrible time returned, and in reluctant pieces the three told how she, Missy Peckham, had made contact with the Venns, how a few dollars of church money a week had kept them alive, and of how their courage kept them afloat, but Tom said something else: 'It was Missy who did it. I know that whenever the church money ran out, she gave us her own, and that's when we all fell in love with her.'

On this extraordinary clue, the Kernel raised his two forefingers, pointing one at Buck, who had not yet spoken, one at Missy. 'You also? You fell in love?'

'He had a wife,' Missy said, and before she could describe the situation, Tom broke in: 'A terrible woman. My mother, and a really terrible woman.'

'Now, that's a harsh thing for a boy to say,' the Kernel said reprovingly, and Missy said: 'But she was. She tricked Buck into marrying her because . . .'

'Do you really need to tell me so much?' the Kernel asked, for he realized that he was getting more answers than he had sought, but Missy said: 'Yes. You asked, and you're the only friend we have in the world.'

At last Buck felt free to speak: 'We thought you were a detective. Sent out from Chicago to trap us.'

'What did the pair of you do?' and again he pointed at each at the same time. 'Murder her?'

'No,' Missy said, 'but we might have. After Tom was born she abandoned him, ran away with two or three different traveling salesmen, a woman of great vanity.'

Again Tom broke in: 'She left me for eleven years, then when my father he's not my real father but lots better than that and Missy and I were a good family, she came back to Chicago and wanted to claim me as her child.'

'It was unfortunate,' Missy said. 'When she brought two lawyers around to make us give up the boy, Tom told them all to go to hell. Very wrong, because when the judge heard

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that a son had told his mother to go to hell, he became furious and said he would not only take Tom away from us, he would have Buck put in jail for adultery.'

'That was when we decided to flee to Alaska,' Buck said quietly. 'The judge handed down a court order, and we ignored it.'

The Kernel leaned back, ordered drinks for everyone and sandwiches, too; then, pointing to the crowded bar, he said: 'Half the men in there are probably under some kind of court order, and if they wanted to dig up my record in Dawson, I'd be under one, too.'

They spent the next two hours unraveling the tangled story of Chicago, one in which the three fugitives had been treated so very badly, and at one point the Kernel said: 'You know, Buck, I guessed some of this that first day when I saw you talking in the street with your family. You looked like a man who'd been defeated .. . carrying a terrible burden. And you, Missy, you looked like a bossy woman who had to provide backbone for three.'

'Not for me,' Tom said, but the Kernel looked at him indulgently and said: 'Yes, many a boy younger than you goes out to find a job when he has no father or the father he does have can't find one,' and Missy said sharply: 'Maybe you did, sir, in your day, but that wasn't 1893,' and very sternly she added: 'There were no jobs, and with the skimpiest church funds I tried to keep eleven families alive.' Placing her hand in Buck's, she said: 'We know. For us the gold fields will hold no terrors.'

At five in the morning, when the first rounds of breakfast coffee were being served, the Kernel gave the Venns some solid advice: 'What with Missy's new job and Buck's, you'll be making good wages. Save them in a bank, not a stocking somewhere that can be rifled by thieves or wasted when you think you need something. Go to the Klondike with money in your pockets, for then you can set your own speed.'

At six, as he and Missy stood in the middle of the street while Buck and the boy climbed to their quarters to fetch her bag, she asked: 'Why have you been so kind to us?' and he remained silent, for there were too many answers his loneliness, his inclination always to back the underdog but finally he selected one: 'You're the kind of people that Alaska was invented for. Down on your luck, struggling back.'

Then he offered a strange one: 'And because you back your man so strong.'

'And you?' Missy asked. 'What drove you, years ago?' and again he had a score to choose from: lost battles, little country villages reduced to ashes, mortgages in peril, but he voiced one that truly pertained: 'You and I are cousins, 516

Missy. Marry him,' but she said: 'We've done so much already, kidnapping and disobeying court orders, we don't need bigamy, too.'

'But isn't the other one divorced . . . and remarried?' and she said gloomily: 'She don't bother with things like that.'

At seven the three men walked her down to the Alacrity, where they kissed her goodbye as she boarded for her maiden voyage. 'You're my family,'

the Kernel said. 'Behave yourselves.'

So through a chain of happy accidents the Venns found themselves locked in with the fortunes of the merchant shippers Ross & Raglan. Buck's excellent work for the firm assured his promotion and the offer of continued employment should he wish to stay in Seattle and forgo the gold rush. Missy was so able aboard the Alacrity

that she, too, was promoted to jobs of greater responsibility.

Even young Tom had been drawn into the Ross & Raglan orbit, for as he enlarged his operations along the waterfront he had, as his service for the captain of the Alacrity proved, been of use to the smaller ships controlled by the firm. One morning as he delivered papers to Ross & Raglan's dockside office, the manager, Mr. Grimes, called from his desk: 'Young man?' And when Tom, a husky, well-mannered boy big for his age, reported to him, Grimes said: 'We could use a young fellow like you.'

'Doing what?'

'Running messages to the ships. Tracking down freight. Many things.'

'I like working down here.'

'I noticed that. You'd be suited for what I have in mind,' so Tom signed on with Ross & Raglan, but he also retained his lucrative newspaper route, starting at four o'clock each morning, finishing well before the ship office opened.

The Venns were now prospering so reassuringly that considerations for the future had to surface, and during the next layover of Missy's ship, the family held long discussions, in which Tom was the spokesman for staying in Seattle: 'We have good jobs. We've saving money. And Mr. Grimes said I could have free mornings if I wanted to go back to school.'

When the Kernel heard that Tom was talking of skipping the gold fields and staying in Seattle, he thundered: 'Son! What is the matter with you? The great adventure of the century, and you want to miss it?'

'But you've warned us a dozen times we'll find no gold.'

'Gold? Who's talking about gold? Four of the best men I ever knew in Dawson found no gold. I'd rely on those men any day of my life, and I'll wager they're just about as happy

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now as I am,' and Missy added: 'I see it on the Skagway run. Men who come out of the gold fields seem to carry a secret. ”We did it. We were there.”'

So it was agreed that come the middle of March they would take their savings out of the bank, catch a Ross & Raglan steamer to Skagway, go over the low ground to Dyea, and start up the Chilkoot. When they informed the Klondike Kernel of this decision he said: 'My heart explodes with happiness for you. You'll never regret it,' and a few days later he was gone. No one knew where he went, or even by what means he left Seattle. Missy was surprised, and said so frankly, that he had not bid them farewell or given Tom a going-away present, but a month later she received a registered letter from St. Louis, sent in care of Buck at the store. It contained two one-hundred-dollar bills, the first she had ever seen, a beautiful green on the face, resplendent gold on the back. Each had a brief note pinned to it, and one read: 'This is for you.'

The other said:

When you reach Dawson City, look out for a lady in the cribs on Paradise Alley called the Belgian Mare. Give her this and tell her the Klondike Kernel sent it.

On 15 March 1898 the Venns regretfully terminated their various jobs with Ross &

Raglan, assembled their carefully chosen gear, and booked passage on the next trip of the

Alacrity

to Skagway. The fare, with a place to sleep and full meals, was thirty-four dollars for each adult, twenty-four for Tom, but when Buck went to pay for the tickets, Mr.

Grimes said: 'Total bill fifty dollars, courtesy of Malcolm Ross, who hopes you'll all come back to work for him.'

Buck, who had never been on a ship before, stood transfixed at the railing as Missy explained which parts of the land were American and which Canadian. For him, this inland passage, with mountains to the east, large islands to the west and vast glaciers snouting their way into the ocean, was both a delight and a wild promise of greater scenes to come. He was sobered by the magnitude of the adventure they had undertaken and determined to succeed in it. As he contemplated the dreaded Chilkoot, the ominous rapids in the Yukon, he found himself thinking less and less of the gold that the Kernel had warned would not exist.

Tom deplored leaving Seattle, and as the Alacrity moved away from Schwabacher's Wharf with a steam-driven speed that really was alacritous, he felt tears coming to his eyes: This is a great city, I'd like to live in Seattle.

I hope we find a million dollars in gold and bring it back here. As he stared 518

at the receding profile of the town he had grown to love, he could identify almost every watery inlet along the broken shore, every hill that he had climbed with his papers. He could feel the vitality of this fine port hidden deep behind the protective mountains, and he loved even the strange sound of the name: Seattle! I'll be back!

ON THE EVENING OF 23 MARCH, PRIOR TO ARRIVAL OFF

the Alaskan port of Skagway navigable water ended about a mile from the town, which was approached over a wide sandy beachBuck held a long family meeting to discuss a strategy for getting through the concentration of thieves without losing savings and property.

'It can be done,' Missy said. 'I've been to Skagway many times. Crooks everywhere, but if you stay clear, nothing happens.'

'I have the money sewed in my clothes,' Buck assured them. 'Talk to no one. Hire the horses and let's hurry across to Dyea.'

These precautions proved unnecessary, for at supper that night the captain of the Alacrity

announced: 'Because there's a big buildup of people coming out of Dyea, we'll move the ship over there three days from now. Anyone wishing to disembark at Dyea is invited to stay aboard.'

So transiting the hellhole of Skagway was avoided, and during the two days the ship stood off that infamous port, Buck stayed in their cabin, guarding his family's funds and keeping his eye on their luggage stored on deck. But Tom wanted to see the notorious place, and to Buck's surprise, Missy said she was eager to chat with two women she had come to know while working the Skagway run, so on the second day she led Tom to the gangway, descended to the flats, and paid a sturdy man twenty-five cents to carry her through the low waves and deposit her ashore. Tom, refusing such aid, sloshed along behind her, watching everything: how lighters drawing only a few inches came out to unload the ship, how horses drawing carriages came far onto the sands, and how the little coastal town loomed up from below its crest of mountains.

Ashore, Tom found Skagway to be an intriguing place, for Missy kept warning him against practically every person they saw: 'He's not a minister. He's Charley Bowers. He talks sweet and steals every cent you have.' Later she said: 'He's not a real policeman.

He's Slim Jim Foster, shoot you dead if you bump into him.' And according to her, the institutions in Skagway were as bogus as the people: 'See that bank; it 519

really isn't one. They accept your funds and you never see them again.' Nor was the post office really a post office; letters dropped in its slot were never heard of again.

'Why doesn't someone report such stuff to the sheriff?' Tom asked, and she explained: 'There is a sheriff, sure. Right over there. But he's not really one, either. Uses anything you say as an excuse for stealing you blind.'

'What is real?' Tom asked, and she replied without hesitation: 'The saloons,' and when Tom studied the main streets, rough and unpaved, he saw at least three dozen whiskey joints.

Missy, however, was not awed by the boomtown, and with what Tom considered great courage she led him to a false fronted building serving as the 317 Oyster Bar, with parlor attached. Marching boldly in, she said: 'My name is Missy Peckham. I'd like to see Soapy, if he's in,' and she indicated the back room where the notorious boss of Skagway held court.

A waiter stopped shucking oysters and disappeared, returning in a moment with a slim, fine-looking bearded man dressed in a business suit which would have passed muster in Denver, from whose worn-out gold fields he had come only a year before. He was about thirty-five years old, reassuring in appearance, and old-world polite in greeting Miss Peckham, in whose care he had once sailed.

'Tom,' she said as the man gravely bowed, 'this is Jefferson Randolph Smith, an important gentleman in this town.'

'You were so attentive to me aboard the Alacrity,'

the famous gambler said, 'could I invite you and Master Tom to an oyster stew?' She said: 'We'd be honored, Mr. Smith, but Tom here wants to see the start of your White Pass.'

'He'll see that in due course, I'm sure.”

'No, we're entering by way of Dyea.'

At mention of this rival town, a hated competitor for the Klondike traffic, Soapy stiffened: 'Surely you're not going by that miserable route? Son, you climb that Chilkoot Pass once, you'd be exhausted for a week, and you'll have to climb it forty times! Do, please, for your own sake, Miss Peckham, take the easy route. Unload your baggage here at Skagway and let my people help you get organized.'

'Tom wanted to see White Pass. He wants to see everything.'

At this rebuff, Smith bowed graciously: 'My good and trusted friend, if your young man wants to see the start of our commodious trail, the only practical way to enter the Klondike, you and he shall go in comfort. You were very kind to me aboard your ship, and I can do no less when you're in my city.' He summoned from the back room a man named Ed