Journey (25 page)

“What do I do then?” Luton asked severely, and the clerk replied: “Oh, sir, one of our fine, new steamers bound for Seattle will be waiting to pick you up the moment you arrive.” As Luton signed his name to the manifest, the young man said: “Evelyn, that's a funny name for a man,” and the noble lord stared down at him as if from a great height.

As he started to leave he grumbled to himself: “I came through Edmonton to avoid America. Now I'm heading into the heart of the damned place.” He shook his head: “The only other course is to return the way I came, but that would be insanity.”

Turning to Fogarty, he held out a ticket for the steamer, but he did this with a gesture so impersonal and demeaning as if to say: “Here it is, come aboard if you wish,” that the ghillie ignored it, and to Luton's surprise, said rather blithely, “No, Milord, I came to find me a gold mine and I shall.”

“You mean…” Luton fumbled, “you're not coming?”

“No, Milord,” Fogarty said brightly. “We've come to a free land and I aim to run me own gold mine…me own way.”

There was no rancor in what he said or how he said it, and that
afternoon when the flustered nobleman started for the gangway that would separate him forever from Fogarty, the Irishman demonstrated his good will by offering to carry Luton's two small pieces of luggage, one containing new clothes he had purchased in Dawson, the other the rucksack he had carried so far and with such uncomplaining determination. “No,” Luton said, returning the rucksack, “this is for you. To help you on the gold fields,” and he strode on ahead as was his custom.

But as he approached the steamer he knew that he could not in decency part from this faithful helper without some gesture of appreciation toward the man who had saved his life by grubbing for roots. Reaching out with his lean left arm, he grasped Fogarty's left shoulder and said in a voice so low that no passengers could hear: “Stout fellow, Fogarty,” and started onto the boat, indicating that the Irishman had been dismissed.

But Fogarty, as if already imbibing the spirit of raucous freedom that animated Dawson, reached out and grabbed Luton's arm, swinging him about: “I have a name, Milord. Me friends call me Tim. And I have a little something for you.” Rummaging in the rucksack Luton had just given him, he produced the treasured final can of meat and with proper deference handed it to Evelyn: “You guarded this faithfully during our long trip. I'm sure you'll want it for remembrance.”

Luton, neither flinching nor showing color at this forwardness of his erstwhile servant, accepted the can with a slight bowing of his head as if expressing gratitude, then said evenly: “It served its purpose, Fogarty. It got us here. And now, as you expressed it so eloquently, ‘Let's toss this in the ditch…' ” and with an easy swing of his arm, as if he were once more bowling in county cricket, he tossed the can far out into the waters of the Yukon. Then, turning on his heel without a gesture of any kind, he stalked toward the waiting ship. But he was not destined to board it on this first try, for as he stepped onto the gangway he was stopped by a rough voice accustomed to giving commands, and when he turned he saw Superintendent Steele, who was saying: “Lord Luton, this young woman came pleading to my office. Said she had come to see you,” and he pushed forward the one woman in all Canada that Luton was least eager to meet.

It was Irina Kozlok, the North Dakota castaway he had rescued from that bleak shore along the Great Slave Lake, the one who had caused him such anxiety as they drifted together down the Mackenzie
in the crowded
Sweet Afton
. What could she be doing in Dawson? And how in God's name had she got here?

In his first agitated glance he saw that she was as trim and self-assured as ever, with her freshly laundered military uniform, her heavy boots and her neat little kepi still cocked at a jaunty angle so an ample supply of silvery hair shone below. Against his better judgment he had to concede: Gad, she keeps herself appealing. What kind of story will she tell this time?

Before Luton could speak, Fogarty saw her, and with an almost indecent yell rushed forward, grabbed her by her slim waist, swung her in the air, and gave her a resounding kiss before he plumped her back on her feet: “How did you get here, Madam North Dakota?” Half ignoring Fogarty, she straightened the suit he had rumpled and addressed the man she had been so eager to meet: “Like I told you that day on your boat, Lord Luton, I was always determined to reach the gold fields, and as you see, I did.” She said this with just enough of her old icy force to make her point, but having done so, she quickly softened and said: “I never forgot how you rescued me from certain death…how out of Christian generosity you paid my fare back to Edmonton…how in fact you enabled me to do the things I've done.”

She said this with such an engaging accent, with such an appropriate smile that Luton was almost forced to think: Now that she's not endangering a young Bradcombe, she's really not such a bad sort, and he shuddered to think that he had once considered pushing her off his boat in the dark of night. To make amends, he asked with unfeigned interest: “How'd you get here?” and she was glad of the invitation, because she desperately wanted to tell him of the sequel to their exciting but abortive acquaintanceship.

“That big ship you put me on, and thank you again for paying my fare, steamed its way up the river just as ice formed behind us. I got into Edmonton in October, I guess it must have been, and just like you advised, everyone wanted me to go back to North Dakota. But I'd have none of that. I got me a job as waitress. Last autumn in Edmonton anybody could get a job.”

“What miracle happened to get you here?” Luton asked, and she said almost demurely: “There was a big Australian who had dug for gold in his country and was eager to try his luck on the Klondike, but like all sensible ones he hadn't rushed north when your team and mine did. He sat the winter out in a warm boardinghouse in
Edmonton. He came to our restaurant for his meals, and what with one thing and another we got married. That's him, standing over there. He jokes that he's the only man in Alaska with no neck, but he's fierce in a fight.” Then she added one of those extraordinary touches that distinguished her, amusing, revealing and just a bit self-deprecatory: “An unmarried woman in Edmonton, especially a widow with no children working in a public place, I do believe I received six proposals of marriage a week, and Verner had three big fights before he drove the others off. It was dreamland, Lord Luton, and it seems so long ago.”

Then, putting her own affairs aside and grateful for the domestic felicity she had attained, she asked: “Where are your other three? That delightful young fellow who cared for me so thoughtful? Wasn't his name Philip?”

When Luton could not bear to answer, Fogarty said gently: “Drowned. Those boots you warned him about. They dragged him down.”

Uttering a cry of grief, she covered her face and soon was sobbing: “I told him he was too young to go.” Then she recovered her poise and asked: “Carpenter, the nice one?”

“Dead. Scurvy in the second winter.”

“You spent two winters? How about the one who quoted poetry?”

“Dead.”

“Oh my God! What happened to you men? Did you miss the easy route or something?”

Neither Luton nor Fogarty dared answer that terrible question, but after a moment Evelyn asked: “And you? How did you negotiate the Mackenzie? On your second try, that is?”

“Come early spring we're back at Athabasca Landing, same four Germans sell our group, three couples, a new boat, bigger and stronger this time, and the rest was easy.”

“Easy?” Luton asked in a distant, displeased manner.

“Yes. That fall when you put me on the big boat, ice chased us up the river. In the spring in our boat, we chased it down. Like everyone advised us, we found the Peel, then the Rat, where we cut our boat in half along the line the Germans had painted on it, and we hauled it inch by inch—what hellish work—over the Divide, but when we reached that other little river…what do you call it?”

“The Bell,” Luton replied in a drained whisper.

“Once we hit it, no more trouble. It fed into the Porcupine, and
after being careful to turn right at that junction we sailed so fast, first thing you know we were on the Yukon, where we bought six tickets for that steamer right there, the one you were boarding, which whisked us into Dawson in a proper hurry.”

“How long did it take?” Luton asked, and he listened almost benumbed as she calculated: “Well, we left Edmonton earlier than most, maybe twentieth of May, so we could beat the crowd to Athabasca and get one of the good boats. The rest, pretty normal except that portage was no fun. We got into Fort Yukon, where we bought our tickets for Dawson…” Losing count, she beckoned for her husband to join them, and the big Australian, a veteran of gold fields, ambled over. “Verner, what date did we reach Dawson last year?”

“Eighth of September. Everyone said it was one of the speediest trips. So it would be twenty May till early September, fifteen, sixteen weeks.” He said this in such a barbarous Australian accent that Lord Luton almost winced to think that this man, and a million like him, were full-fledged members of the British Empire.

“What are you doing now?” Fogarty asked, and the couple, taking turns, explained: “We arrived here too late to hit that big strike on the Klondike, but so did most everyone. Anyway, Verner said he was tired of mining. We operate what you might call a pawnshop, buy and sell anything,” and Irina added: “You can make surprising money if you're sharp.” Luton gasped inwardly: A pawnshop. This couple is right out of Dickens. But Fogarty cried: “That's wonderful! You have your own store and all?” and Irina said: “We do. Verner built it. We used the timbers from six Yukon riverboats abandoned by those who couldn't wait, they were so eager to be off to the diggings. We bought two for one dollar American each.”

But now, in her moment of triumph, Irina, like the responsible woman she had always tried to be, wanted to repair ancient damage, and she asked: “Lord Luton, could we please sit over there?” When they were apart from the others, but still within the shadow of the steamer that would separate them forever, she said quietly: “You never liked me, and I didn't like you. But I did understand you, and I pray you understood me. You were a man frightened by the onset of winter, I was a lone woman who had just survived a terrible tragedy.”

Luton started to speak, but she held up her hand, and when it was in the air she used it to brush off her cap, so that her wealth of silvery hair fell free to frame her face: “No, let me finish, then you. I knew your problem. You were terrified that your nephew would fall
completely in love with me. As a proud man from a proud family you couldn't allow that. You would do anything to prevent it and so would Mr. Carpenter, because you understood how such an affair…the woman six or seven years older…it could unbalance a young man for life. You knew that, but so did I, Lord Luton. I would never have allowed it to happen…”

“But you encouraged it. Harry and I could both see that.”

“I was not thinking of Philip,” she said contritely. “I was thinking of myself. I had suffered terrifying loss. At the end of the world. With no one. With not one penny there or back in Edmonton. Lord Luton, I needed assurance. I needed the affection of some other human being. In that cold, cold land I needed warmth.” Covering her face, she wept silently for several moments, then said as she wiped her nose with her sleeve: “He was such a dear boy, so good, so promising. I share your grief at his loss.”

Luton, a man who had in the last year also suffered defeats few men experience, needed to exorcise himself, and confessed: “At one point I was so distraught I contemplated shoving you overboard in the dark of night. Harry prevented me. He thought I was joking, but I wasn't.”

Irina stared at Luton, who averted his eyes, and she wondered what alchemy the deaths of his friends had wrought on his soul that he would now admit this monstrous thought to her, his intended victim. A few moments later she asked: “Why did things go so wrong that three of your team died?”

“Nature dealt us a series of dreadful blows…much like the storm that sank your first boat on Great Slave.” He was still unwilling to admit that he had abetted an uncharitable nature, had indeed invited her retaliation for his blunders: “You could call it rotten luck.” Then, to his own surprise, he asked: “Have you ever known anyone who stood this close to death from scurvy…the slow rotting away of the human body?” And he held his thumb and forefinger only a millimeter apart.

“So now it's back to England and a castle somewhere, I suppose?”

“Yes, I do now have a castle and many new responsibilities.”

A gush of tears overwhelmed her, and at the end she said: “I can see the faces of each of your three men, of my own three farmers. They will be with us forever.”

When Luton said nothing, she concluded: “On the first time we parted, you refused to accept my kiss of thanks. Don't refuse me
again.” He rose, stood very erect, and striving to mask his distaste, he allowed her to kiss him but she had to stand on tiptoe to do it. Then he asked: “What will you do when the gold runs out?” and she shrugged her shoulders as she replaced her kepi: “Who knows? Verner might rush off to another gold field. Who can guess what we will do? We are voyagers headed for destinations we cannot see. But like traveling the Mackenzie, if you get thrown back the first time, you keep trying.”

Signaling to Fogarty and her husband that she was ready, she joined them and watched Lord Luton briskly climb the gangway and turn at the railing of the
Jos. Parker
to salute her in farewell. “Where are you heading?” the big Australian shouted, and he called down: “Back to civilization,” and with a kind of sardonic amusement Evelyn lingered there, watching the three as they walked jovially away: There they go, an upstart Irish peasant trying to be better than he is, a hulking Australian with no neck nor any command of good English, and a Yankee farm girl of no background whatever. He shook his head in a gesture of surrender and mumbled: “Barbarians take over the world while proper men huddle like bears in icy caves.”