Jason's Gold (3 page)

It was dusk and Jason was at the rail, admiring the mountains of Vancouver Island as they neared to the north and west. He could see the lights of Victoria twinkling, and they reminded him of the time his father had taken him and his brothers there on the ferry many years before. It wasn't rough-hewn, like Seattle. Victoria was civilized and stately and British.

“That's not much of an outfit you've got there,” his shadow said, twirling the derby hat on his finger. “Going to Dawson City, are you?”

“Planning on it,” Jason told Kid Barker.

“On your own, are you?”

Jason thought about mentioning his brothers. Not to this slippery fellow. “That's the shape of it,” he said.

“You're not lacking in self-confidence. I like that.” Barker leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The
real
money in this gold rush is going to be made in Skagway, by businessmen, not in
the Klondike by fools digging holes in the ground.”

“Maybe we're not reading the same newspapers,” Jason said. “I read Skagway's got two buildings.”

“That may be true today, but the Skagway I'm talking about is on its way north right now, in the form of lumber and nails, on all these ships. That's what the man I work for says. He's got a vision.”

“What kind of work does he do?”

“Business. Some of everything.”

Jason wondered if Kid Barker's boss knew about him prowling around in the hold.

“I'm going to tell him about you,” Barker said. “He might give you an opportunity.”

Jason didn't reply. Kid Barker was leaving; that was all that mattered.

Jason hid his packsack behind some boxes and set off to circle the crowded deck. He ran square into a line of Klondikers extending almost from bow to stern. The line turned a corner and continued down to the next level, and it didn't appear to be moving. All these people were waiting to get into the dining room, he discovered, and they were angry. The dining room seated only twenty-six people.

The stern was crowded with yapping and howling dogs, dogs that were whimpering, and dogs too beaten-looking to make a sound. They were confined in crates scarcely big enough for many of them, and many of them were large dogs: Newfoundlands, Great Danes, mastiffs, wolfhounds, huskies, Saint Bernards, and collies. He overheard one man telling another that he'd bought reindeer to use as his pack animals, but there wasn't room for them on this ship. He'd have to wait in Skagway for them to arrive.

Jason had denied his hunger long enough. He
returned to the spot near the bow where he had stashed his pack, anxious for his bread and cheese.

Kid Barker was there, looking around for him. “There you are, Hawthorn. This is your lucky day! Captain Smith wants you to have supper with us.”

“The ship's captain?” Jason asked, starting to panic.

Kid Barker laughed. “No. Captain Jefferson Randolph Smith is my boss. He's the man I told you about.”

Jason hesitated. “Line's too long. I think I'll wait until tomorrow.”

“We won't have to wait in any line.” The Kid gave him a long, meaningful look with a hint of menace in it. “Come on, I insist. It's an opportunity for you. These are the future business leaders of Skagway.”

Jason couldn't risk being turned in as a stowaway and getting put off the ship in the middle of nowhere. He had to catch up with his brothers. It would be a dangerous mistake to put more time between him and them.

Kid Barker led him up a flight of stairs, then ducked under a
NO ADMITTANCE
sign attached to a chain across a hallway. They passed by the cabins of the first officer and the ship's captain. Barker gave three quick raps at a door marked
RAINIER SUITE
.

A ship's steward in white jacket and trousers opened the door slightly. Through thick cigar smoke, Jason made out four men playing cards in a sumptuous lounge with ornate furniture and green-and-gold scrollwork on the walls.

“Come in,” a mellow southern voice called.

Jason didn't know what he was expecting. Here was a group as distinguished as he might ever like to meet, wearing wing collars, diamond stickpins, and polished high-button boots. The dark-bearded, gentlemanly Smith introduced him to the Reverend Charles Bowers,
Old Man Tripp, and Jim Foster, who looked Ethan's age and was disarmingly sincere. They called in supper for him, then went back to their game.

They didn't seem to want anything. The food was good, and Jason couldn't help but feel thankful for the meal.

Well? Kid Barker's expression seemed to say as they were leaving.

“Join us again tomorrow evening,” Captain Smith called.

Somehow, it sounded like a command.

 

Putting the three-hundred-mile barrier of Vancouver Island behind, the
Yakima
steamed into the open ocean. At once, the sea was hilly with wind-driven whitecaps, and the deck began to pitch with a sickeningly monotonous motion.

Within a few hours the ship entered a dark bank of clouds and it began to rain. The rain stayed with them for days, all the way through Canadian waters and into the archipelago of Alaska with its thousand islands.

Coughing and cold, Jason spent two nights on the open decks and one under a tarp with generous Klondikers who'd waved him in. Though he was dressed in his long flannel underwear and a woolen shirt, woolen trousers, wool socks, and his father's plaid mackinaw coat, this was still a penetrating, bone-shivering cold.

He could have been sleeping on a cot in the Rainier Suite all the while, but he'd told Kid Barker that he preferred to sleep in the open, no matter the circumstances, and halfway convinced him it was true. It was important to keep as much of his independence as he could without riling them.

He had to keep coming for dinner, though. Smith had insisted. Had Kid Barker, at the outset, told Captain Smith that Jason was a stowaway?

Without a doubt.

What did Smith want, then? Every evening, Jason showed up like a wet dog from the alley, and they fed him. They weren't saying what they wanted yet, but Jason knew it was coming. Was there any chance they would wait until Skagway?

If they did, he'd be gone before they even noticed.

Contemptuous of the Klondikers, Barker stayed away from the crowds on deck. Jason relished their talk, especially when it came to panning and placers and sluice boxes and “shiny nuggets thick as gravel.” In his mind, he was already on a northern creek with his brothers, panning and shoveling and sacking up the gold.

As Jason was leaving the Rainier Suite the fourth evening, Smith beckoned him over and said in his mellow drawl, “Time you started learning the ropes. I've asked the Kid to take care of it tomorrow.”

Jason was caught off guard. What was he going to say? What was Smith talking about? The safest thing he could do, he thought, was to stall for time. After tonight, only one more night. He couldn't afford to be put off the ship. The following day they'd be in Skagway.

He nodded, said nothing.

The sleepy-eyed Smith nodded in return, then showed his cards to his companions—a royal flush. The tall, curly-haired young man, “Slim Jim” Foster, exclaimed, “And they call
me
Magic Fingers!”

There'd been no money on the table. The Reverend Charles Bowers, who Smith said was going to open the
first church in Skagway, was one of the players. If Smith had cheated, apparently it was all in fun.

Jason left the suite as confused as ever.

In the morning the sun broke through at last and burned the clouds away. Their only vestiges clung to the high peaks. On the deck of the ship, the stampeders' wool clothes steamed vapor into the sunlight and people were excited to be drawing near to the starting line. They gaped at the mountainsides pitching up from the sea, all cloaked with dark timber, and they pointed to the glaciers high above and to waterfalls that plunged in steps thousands of feet to the sea.

Kid Barker appeared on the deck that day and said, “Stick close and learn.” Suddenly Barker was among the passengers he disdained, cheerful as a songbird with his British accent. After exchanging pleasantries with a short, well-groomed man and his wife—the woman was especially charmed—Barker said, “No doubt you've heard the warning from C. N. Bliss, the United States Secretary of the Interior.”

“No, what is it?” came the anxious reply.

“An official government warning, no less, to the effect that it might already be too late to reach the Klondike before winter. That it would be dangerous even to attempt it.”

“Surely no. What do
you
think?”

“I think it all depends on a man's funds. If he can afford to pay for horse packing over the White Pass, or for the Indian packers to carry his outfit over Chilkoot Pass, then it certainly won't be a problem. But if a man has to carry his own outfit on his back in stages, with a boat yet to build and five hundred miles of the Yukon River to descend…well, then it can't be done.”

There was a hard thump as the Klondiker rapped his wallet in the breast pocket of his mackinaw. “We won't be left behind,” the man vowed as he cast a reassuring glance at his dainty wife. “Don't you worry, dear. We'll be hiring those packers. Before you know it, we'll be picking nuggets and shoveling gold. We won't be caught by winter.”

“Glad to hear it,” Barker said with a smile. “Well, good fellow, Godspeed to you.”

Jason didn't know what to think of this encounter, and several others like it, until late that afternoon when crew members passed among the crowd warning of pickpockets. “A man and his wife have lost all their money—a considerable amount. Keep a close watch on your wallets and valuables!”

“You,” whispered Jason to Barker. “It was you.”

With a smile. Barker said, “I assure you, it wasn't. It's a team effort. Hawthorn. I showed you how my half is played. Fingers even nimbler than mine played the other half.”

“You found out who had money and plenty of it, and where they kept it.”

“Which is to be your role, once we get to Skagway. You have an honest face—you'll be good at this. There will be hordes coming off the ships, Hawthorn, tens of thousands flooding into Skagway. There are a thousand ways to separate a fool from his money once we know who has it and where he keeps it.”

His face flushing, Jason was about to speak. With a raised hand. Barker held him off. “A month or two from now you could be rich beyond your wildest dreams. Isn't that why you wanted to go to Dawson City?”

“I had a father—,” Jason replied.

“So?”

“He fought at Gettysburg. He taught me a few things about honor.”

Barker started to laugh, then saw that Jason was firm as granite. “You're a fool, Hawthorn,” he said, his voice heavy with malice. “You'll regret this.”

When the three crewmen pulled him aside, Jason had no ticket to show them, no Klondikers on board to name as his companions. After searching his packsack, they patted him down and took the ten dollars Mrs. Beal had given him. He'd been hoarding it for Skagway. Then they walked him down the gangplank at Juneau in the dark. The three never said who had fingered him as a stowaway, yet Jason never wondered for a second.

“Thief!” one of the men snarled as they yanked him into deeper darkness behind a warehouse. Another punched Jason in the stomach, and the wind went out of him. As he buckled, he saw the silhouette of a raised nightstick. Pain broke like a lightning bolt; then the world exploded away and he felt nothing.

 

Jason came to in the middle of the night, trembling and alone. He put his hand to the back of his head, where the
worst of the pain was coming from. His hair was matted with blood and his scalp screamed at the slightest touch. Beyond the docks, lights were twinkling. This was Juneau, he realized, remembering what had happened. He'd failed to make it to Skagway.

He had failed. He had no money, no food, no home to go back to, and his brothers had no notion he was in Alaska and in bad trouble.

His fear flared into anger at his brothers for what they'd done—taken his $500!

But as he pictured their faces, his anger wouldn't stick. He knew they thought they were doing a good thing. Ethan and Abraham believed they were going to make him rich.

Baby-faced Kid Barker came to mind instead, then “Captain” Smith and “Reverend” Bowers and “Slim Jim” Foster and “Old Man” Tripp. Imposters and crooks, all of them. This was their fault.

A few feet away, the dark shape of his packsack caught his eye. At least he hadn't lost everything—he still had some clothes and his pack. And
The Seven Seas
.

Jason reached for the packsack and dragged it under his head, which he lowered gingerly until it came to rest. He slept.

At dawn he was standing at the beach with his pack on his back and his head throbbing, trying to figure out what to do next. Two piers away, a steamer called the
City of Topeka
was loading cargo and chuffing smoke.

Jason's head felt like it was in a vise and the heavyweight champion of the world was battering it with a sledgehammer.

He'd come so close! One more night on the
Yakima
and he would have been there.

Normally he could keep self-pity at bay. But at the
moment, he was too exhausted. Maybe it was time to give up and head back to Seattle. Maybe the
City of Topeka
is heading south, he thought. They might need coal stokers. I can work my way home.

Jason battled his own weariness. Get up off the mat, he finally told himself. You aren't licked yet. You have more staying power than that.

If he could just get to Skagway somehow, without losing much more time, he could rejoin the race, or the fight—whichever it was going to be.

His stomach twisted on itself and clamored for attention.

You've been this hungry before, he told himself. Many times.

Jason looked north along the gravelly beach. At the high-tide line, the blue smoke of a campfire wound its way into the tops of the giant spruces.

An early-morning campfire meant food. It wouldn't be the first time he'd resorted to a handout. He started walking. His eye was drawn to a patch of bright red halfway down the beach, a red-shirted man using a driftwood log for a backrest.

The man was reading, Jason realized as he got closer. He looked a little over twenty, right around Ethan's age.

The fellow was so engrossed in his book, he was unaware that anyone was approaching. Clearing his throat. Jason stepped up and asked, “What are you reading? Must be pretty good.”

Surprised, the young man looked up with deep-set blue-gray eyes that sparkled with intelligence. “
Origin of Species
, by Charles Darwin,” he replied. Red Shirt's broad smile owed part of its cheerfulness somehow to a missing tooth.

“Isn't Darwin the one who says we're descended from apes?”

“Yep,” Red Shirt said, springing athletically to his feet. He was of average height, only an inch or two taller than Jason, with powerful square shoulders. The fellow stuck out his hand. “Name's Jack.”

They shook. “Jason.”

“And what if we
are
descended from apes, Jason?” the young man asked with a provocative, playful gleam in his eyes. “How would that suit you?”

Before Jason could answer, the stranger's eyes went to the matted hair toward the back of Jason's head. “Got a bad whack there, looks like.”

“Pirates,” Jason said with a smile. It was easy to banter with this fellow, Jack.

“Ah…did they get your gold?”

“Fortunately, I hadn't gotten it yet.”

“You're on your way to the Klondike?”

“I
was
. I'd like to be.”

Jack looked toward the pier and Juneau, where Jason had come from. “Where's your outfit, Jason? Your partners?”

“I'm on my own hook,” he replied.

“A man after my own heart, but I wouldn't like my chances solo on this trip.”

“It's not by design. I'm trying to catch my brothers; they're only a few days in front of me. How far is Skagway? Do you know?”

Jack grinned. “You're closing in on it, my friend. Eighty miles or so. I didn't see you on the
City of Topeka
.”

“I was on the
Yakima
. It stopped here last night to take on water for its boilers.”

Jack's blue-gray eyes were speculating why Jason had ended up on the beach alone in Juneau. He pushed a tangle of his wavy dark hair back from his forehead and looked north to the campfire. “At least one of my partners is vertical. That's a hopeful sign. You wouldn't be interested in some flapjacks and bacon by any chance?”

“I'd cut off my right foot for breakfast, I don't mind saying.”

Jack's open, laughter-loving face was radiant with generosity and the offer of friendship. “Let's walk slow,” Jack said. “You got me dying of curiosity on a number of counts. Would you swap me your story in exchange for those flapjacks?”

They started down the beach, Jack pausing to pick up a throwing stone and sail it out toward one of the buoys marking the shipping channel. Jason joined in and it became a friendly contest. In between throws, Jason sketched his story all the way from New York to the nightstick on his head.

At the last, Jack winced. “Could have come out far worse—you might have ended up in Juneau's jail. What happened to you last night brings to mind a month I spent in Buffalo, New York, in the state penitentiary. You look surprised…. It was during a year I tramped from California to the East and back. I went to see the falls at Niagara and ended up on the rock pile for vagrancy. They locked me up because I couldn't name a local hotel…. It doesn't take much if they're out to get you.” As if for emphasis, Jack reached for a stone and heaved a splendid throw that came up barely short of a buoy.

Inspired by the combination of Jack's toss and his
story, Jason put everything he had into his next throw and actually struck the buoy. It rang like a bell.

“Well, I'll be,” Jack declared, shaking his head. “I've never been bested at rock throwing in my life. You've got not only distance but accuracy. Where'd you get an arm like that?”

Jason chuckled, disbelieving his own success. “Don't ask me to repeat that. It's from tossing a baseball with my brothers—I've had a lot of practice. You should see my mitt. It looks like a chewed-up scrap of leather that a dog's been hauling around.”

They were close enough to camp now that they could smell the bacon frying. Four men were moving around. At Jason's bidding, his new friend went on to tell a little more of his own story. Jack was from Oakland, California. He'd worked in a cannery too—ten cents an hour, twelve hours a day—and a jute mill and a laundry. At seventeen, he was working on a sealing ship in the Arctic. He'd hoboed east after that, then returned to Oakland and the life of a “work beast,” as he put it, until the Klondike broke.

Jack had been on fire to go north but had no money. His sister Eliza and her husband, Captain Shepard, had grubstaked him in exchange for helping to get Captain Shepard to the goldfields. Jack's brother-in-law was sixty years old and a veteran of the War Between the States.

On the voyage north, Jack and Captain Shepard had formed a partnership with the three other men on the beach.

“You weren't able to get a ship going all the way to Skagway?” Jason wondered aloud.

“Not one that was leaving soon enough. But last
night we hired the rest of the trip in Indian canoes. We met a party of Tlingits on their way north to work in the packing trade.”

Jason was about to ask if there might be room for him in a canoe, but they'd arrived in camp, and four pairs of eyes were on him.

Jack introduced him to his partners and made a joke about Jason helping to lighten the mountain of food they were going to have to carry over the Chilkoot Pass.

Jason remembered that Kid Barker had mentioned the Chilkoot Pass. “Is that a better route than the White Pass?”

“Ten miles shorter,” one of the men said curtly. Merritt Sloper didn't look overjoyed about one of his partners inviting a sixth for breakfast.

“Supposed to be an old Indian trail,” rasped Captain Shepard, who seemed short of breath. Shepard had a grizzled beard and wore a wide-brimmed Stetson over his silver hair. “The Chilkoot's so steep at the last pitch, they say your chin might overtop your eyebrows if you look up to the summit.”

Everyone laughed. Jason thought he heard a good deal of apprehension in the old man's voice about this Chilkoot Pass.

Another partner, a man named Goodman, was pointing south toward the end of the pier. A number of tall-prowed Indian canoes were paddling in their direction.

Eleven canoes, it turned out to be. The Indians kept their streamlined and somewhat fragile dugouts in the shallows and walked ashore, men, women, and children. With no discussion, they headed directly toward the mounded outfits and started shouldering the supplies to the canoes.

In half an hour, everything was loaded. Jack's partners were wading out to the canoes. Jack was last. He seemed to be eyeing the space that was left, if any.

So was Jason, as best as he could from the beach. The canoes were heavily loaded.

A steamer passed them by, heading north. Hundreds of stampeders were waving at them from the decks. A voice like a foghorn hollered down, “Klondike or bust!”

A second steamship appeared behind the first, and here came a third. Sloper yelled from his canoe, almost frantically, “Come on. Let's go!”

Boarding the last dugout, Jack looked inside it for a moment, then waved Jason forward. “Get in. You need to catch your brothers!”