Gold Mountain: A Klondike Mystery (18 page)

Angus woke early. Clouds had moved in, and Sterling suggested they put up the tents in case it rained in the night. He lay on his back with his eyes open, staring up at the grungy white canvas. Fingers of light were stroking the tent walls and seeping through the cracks. Constable McAllen snored heartily. Otherwise, all was quiet.

Angus crept out of the tent. Graham Donohue had been given the last watch. He was stretched out on the ground, jacket under his head, Millie curled up against his belly. Both of them sound asleep.

Some watch
, Angus thought. He didn’t bother to be quiet as he nurtured the campfire back to life. He put some of the water he’d collected before going to bed into the coffee pot and measured out the beans. He would much rather be having tea for breakfast, but they hadn’t brought any tea, and Angus was trying to pretend he liked the coffee. Donohue awoke with a shout, which startled Millie, and she jumped to her feet with a loud bark. The newspaperman sat up, rubbing his face. He saw Angus watching him. “Just resting my eyes.”

“Sure.”

The newspaperman untied the dog. “Might as well take Millie into the bushes with me.”

Angus fed a bit of kerosene into the stove and lit a match to start it up. He didn’t want to cook breakfast; he wanted to be running down the trail after his mother. He would never say so, but he was getting increasingly worried. He thought they’d come across her the first day, with or without Paul Sheridan, sitting by a fire at the side of the trail, nibbling on a piece of toast, sipping tea, and demanding to know what had taken them so long. But she’d been gone more than two days, and she and Sheridan were moving at the same pace as their pursuers.

Suppose Sterling lost the trail?

Angus’s eyes filled with water. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand and looked around to make sure no one had seen him cry. Sterling was up now, down at the river splashing water on his face. McAllen continued to snore, and Donohue and Millie were out of sight in the bush.

They’d been walking for two days, and the vegetation was changing. The trees were getting smaller and sparser, although the underbrush was still thick. Sterling had said he’d never been there, but he’d been told that the boreal forest ended not far out of Dawson, and the great empty tundra of the true north began, stretching all the way to the ice-covered sea. On the tundra, Sterling said, a man could see for miles in all directions.

“We brought food for five days,” Angus said when Sterling joined him by the fire. “We’ve been out for two now, and that means two back. How long can we,” he swallowed, “keep going?”

“Long as we have to. Don’t worry about that. In this country, least in summer, no one has to go hungry. I’m getting tired of beans and bacon anyway. I’ll try and get us a duck or goose today. Rabbit maybe. Have you ever hunted?”

Angus wanted to say yes, but he shook his head.

“Perhaps you’ll get the chance. But right now, I’m afraid it’s porridge.”

McAllen came out of the tent, wiping sleep from his eyes. “Fish’d be nice. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Not now!” Angus said, “We have to go. We don’t have time for fishing.”

“We need to make time to eat properly,” Sterling said. “Coffee’s not ready yet. Constable, see what you can do.”

Angus felt almost guilty enjoying the fresh trout McAllen cooked over the open fire. In only a few minutes, he’d caught enough that they could toss a few fat chunks as well as the guts to an eager Millie. Once they’d eaten, they broke camp, loaded up, and continued walking north. The river had been getting smaller and its banks flatter and broader, becoming a creek and eventually a stream, trickling down the centre of the watercourse.

The horse and the people with it had come down from the high banks, where the trail wound among the tress, to travel on the packed earth of the drying riverbed. The ground had hardened quickly after the latest rain, but it was soft enough to record the passage of any large creature. Small clumps of earth had stuck to feet and hooves before being kicked lose, and damper spots showed the edges of shoes in muddy outlines.

They’d only walked for about an hour when Sterling stopped. He walked toward the riverbank, and Angus could see that a patch of earth on the bank was smoothed down. “Someone sat here,” Sterling said. He pointed out the outline of a bottom, the depression of their weight, and handprints where they’d pushed themselves back up.

“Hey!” Angus shouted. “What’s that?” An unnatural shade of purple lay on the ground. Sterling knelt as Angus peered over his shoulder.

Sterling put his fingers around the object and lifted it up. It was a clump of grapes. He tapped it with his fingernail. It was hard, not real grapes. The sort of fake object used to decorate a lady’s hat.

“My mother bought a new hat for the wedding,” Angus said. “It has grapes, just like that.”

“So it does,” Donohue said. “I thought it a most attractive hat.”

Sterling cast around for a few minutes, but didn’t find anything else Fiona might have dropped.

Angus watched him, thinking. Had the grapes dropped off her hat, or had his mother left them here deliberately? The creek floor was mostly rocks at this point, gravel and small stones. Hard to see any prints. Sterling waded into the creek, the water scarcely coming up past his ankles. He climbed the bank. Then he turned and waved for the others to follow.

Angus’s boots were not waterproof. The shock of the icy water almost took his breath away. But in a couple of steps he was standing on the far side. The bank was disturbed where a horse’s hooves had scrambled for purchase.

“Two people,” Sterling said. “One climbed here, and the other,” he pointed a couple of feet downstream, “over there.”

“Can you be sure we’re still following Fiona and Sheridan?” Donohue asked. “Not someone else?”

“The trail’s mostly unbroken from where we picked it up outside town, but other than that, these are definitely not Indians. Indians wouldn’t leave a trail as obvious and clumsy as this one. Could be trappers, prospectors, sure. But coming the same way, in the last couple of days, with a bunch of fake grapes? Safe enough to assume not.”

Footprints, human and equine, led into the forest.

“Far as I remember,” Angus said, pulling out his map, “there should be a place where the trail branches off from the river. Do you think this is it? Those mountains in the distance could be the triangles here.”

“They left the river here, at any rate.” Sterling gave Angus a grin. “Your mother gave us a sign. If I hadn’t seen that ornament we might have carried on up the creek for a spell before realizing the trail had stopped.” He handed the grapes to Angus, who tucked them into his jacket pocket with the map.

The next time I awoke, it was by a frightened horse. Branches broke and Soapy screamed. Something fell to the ground, and I heard metal clanging against rock. Sheridan yelled, sounding genuinely frightened. The rifle was lying against the sides of the tent, where he’d left it in his haste last night. I picked it up and scrambled outside. It was daylight, and the sun was a cheerful yellow ball in the soft blue sky.

Sheridan was backing away, heading into the bushes. The horse reared up in terror, its front hoofs thrashing, trying to break free of the rope tying it to the tree. A loud grunt came from the vicinity of the campfire. I got to my feet, holding the weapon as though I knew how to use it.

A bear was sitting on the ground, the frying pan in front of its face. Eyes as small and black as currants watched me without much interest, and a pink tongue moved in and out of the mouth. It was licking the pan.

It wasn’t a very big bear, not that I know what a big bear looks like, and it was black, not brown. I tried to remember what Angus had told me about the wildlife of the Yukon. Grizzlies were the big ones, the dangerous ones. They were brown in colour with a hump on their back. At least I think that’s what Angus said. I sometimes don’t pay as much attention as I should when my son tries to educate me about things he finds fascinating. I gripped the rifle and glanced around. No sign of any cubs. I assumed that was a good thing.

“Off you go,” I said, waving the rifle in front of me. “There’s a good boy.”

He tossed the pan aside and lumbered to his feet.

“Shoot, Fiona,” Sheridan cried from behind a tree. It was more of a sapling than a tree. The bear would be able to rip it up by its roots if it so desired.

“Shoo.” I lifted my skirt with my free hand and waved it in the air. “There’s nothing for you here.”

The eyes studied my face. Looking for a meal? I tightened my grip on the rifle. I might be able to use it as a club if necessary. I thought I saw a flicker of understanding deep within the impenetrable black eyes. The bear grunted once. It turned and lumbered into the woods. Trees bent and branches snapped, and then it was gone.

“Why didn’t you shoot?” Sheridan shouted at me when he’d crept back into camp.

Best not to tell him that I didn’t shoot because I didn’t know how to operate the rifle. “Why didn’t you wash the dishes last night, as I instructed you?” I replied. “Go and settle poor Soapy before he succumbs to heart failure.”

At least the bear had cleaned the frying pan. I nursed the fire back to life and dug into the sacks, looking for coffee. The bag containing the oatmeal had been ripped open and the precious grains scattered across the ground. My heart sunk as I uncovered a couple of cans of vegetables and a single package of bacon. Our supply of food was getting perilously low.

Twigs broke behind me as I gathered up what I could of the oatmeal. “You’ll have to fish today. We’re almost out of supplies.”

“If I see any more geese or ducks, I’ll shoot them. I’m not wanting to delay by going hunting.”

I lifted my eyes to the heavens. An eagle flew overhead, circling on outstretched wings. No doubt checking us out for size and weight. “You’ll delay a lot more if we starve to death.”

“We’re almost there. Come and see, Fiona.” He unfolded the map. Almost against my will, I looked.

He punched his finger against the paper. A blue line led north from what was supposedly the Klondike River; a black line broke off from it heading east. “That mountain range.” Sheridan pointed to the peaks in the distance. “Would be here.” He tapped at a row of triangles on the paper. The triangles could be the Black Cuillins of Skye or the Himalayas for all the detail on this map. “And the valley,” Sheridan pointed at the red circle before the triangles, “is here.”

He had taken down the tent and was rebalancing the load in the packs prior to readying the horse for the day’s travels, and I was attempting to comb some of the knots out of my hair with my fingers when I announced, “I will not be able to walk any further. My feet are a mess. I will ride Soapy.”

“The horse has to carry our things,” Sheridan protested.

I smiled at him. “You’ll have to do that then.”

The sun was touching the tops of the trees when we broke camp. Paul Sheridan walked ahead as he had before, but with the largest of the saddlebags slung across his back beside the rifle, the bag containing the knife draped over his front, leading the horse upon which I balanced precariously. The third bag had been tied to the horse, resting against the back of its neck so I had something other than the mane to cling to, and the dull axe was fastened to its side. I had expected the horse would give me difficulty as I tried to mount, but like me it no longer seemed to be able to be surprised and had stood patiently beside a fortuitously placed boulder while I clambered aboard.

I could almost pretend I was a fine lady out for a Sunday excursion in High Park.

The train at the back of my hat caught on a tree branch and I grabbed for it. A length of lace ripped loose. Fortunately, enough was left behind that it would still provide a veil to offer some protection from ravenous insects.

Before folding his map and putting it away, Sheridan had said, “Another day or two if we make good time.”

I would attempt do my best to ensure we did not make good time.

The days were beginning to blur into each other. By my account today should be Tuesday. Then again, we might have fallen off the world into a place where time moved in a different rhythm and there really was a tropical valley and a mountain made of gold ahead of us.

The question then would be, could I ever get back to
my
world?

The mountains in the distance did seem to be getting closer.

In the early afternoon, the trail met a small river, and we stopped there for something to eat.

I simply could not sit on that horse another moment and slithered down from Soapy’s back, not bothering to hide a groan. That morning, I’d taken the last of the bread and put it in the smaller saddlebag. I fished it out. It was all we would have for lunch. The banks of the creek were lined with bushes fat with blue and purple mossberries. If they were poisonous, too bad. I began gathering the fruit while Soapy stuck his head into the water and drank silently.

I looked over the creek at the bright blue flash of a kingfisher, gliding low above the water. Its wings were stretched out and not moving. As I watched, a hawk dropped from the sky. Both the kingfisher and I screeched in shock. It headed for the trees, the hawk in close pursuit. The two birds dodged and weaved in the air above the creek, swooping and feigning and soaring in a three-dimensional chase of life or death.

The kingfisher turned sharply, almost directly in front of my face, and raced for the treetops. The hawk overshot, pirouetted in the air without slowing, turned, and followed.

And they were gone.

“Wow,” Paul Sheridan said. “That was something.”

I placed the heel of bread and the berries onto a rock, and we sat down to eat. The fruit was tart and delicious. It left purple stains on my fingers and hands. Sheridan was quiet, and I wondered if he had any doubts at all about the viability of his mission.

The sun was very warm and the air very still. Slowly, I became aware of the silence. A bird chirped, water brushed against the banks of the creek, and the horse munched on grasses and shifted his feet. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so aware of silence. In Dawson the racket never stopped; the Chilkoot trail groaned with the effort of men stretched beyond endurance; in Skagway, trees were constantly being chopped down and buildings built up; the boat from Vancouver had been packed so full some people didn’t even have a cabin.

Even when I’d walked the hills of Skye with my father, we couldn’t go far before we’d come across a crofter wanting a chat, his wife cooing over the
bonnie wee lass
, their rambunctious children chasing each other and screaming in delight.

I leaned back and drank in the silence. I felt my chest rise and fall, and for perhaps the first time in my life, I was aware of my own breathing.

“I’d knew you’d come to love it,” Sheridan said. His face was soft and round and dreamy. For a very brief moment, I found myself almost liking him.

I stood up and brushed off my torn, tattered, mud-encrusted skirt. “I prefer my dance hall, thank you. As those berries appear not to have done us any harm, I’ll collect more for supper.”

Before I could move, a flutter of wings and the sound of many bodies hitting the water had us looking once again at the creek. Geese, seven or eight geese, large and fat, had landed on the water, and more were streaming in behind them.

“Time to go.” Sheridan started to stand.

“Mr. Sheridan,” I said. “Speaking of supper.”

“What?”

“For heaven’s sake, man. You may not need to eat, but I do. I will dine on goose tonight.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good idea, Fiona.”

His first shot missed, but before the geese were aware they were in danger, Sheridan had killed two.

I refrained from clapping my hands.

Fortunately, the creek was shallow enough that Sheridan was able to wade in and capture his prize.

He tied the two geese to the largest saddlebag, and once again we set off. He made a strange sight, moving up the trail ahead of me, back bowed under the weight of the packs, horse lead in hand. Two dead geese flapped against his legs.