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Authors: Victoria McKernan

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“Thanks,” Aiden interrupted. “I'm grateful.”

“Well, guess we're ready, then,” Jackson said. Aiden looked around at the other “bound” men. He hadn't spent much time with them during the journey, and they seemed even more foreign to him now. The gloomy widower seemed not to have changed a bit in two thousand miles. The Kansas boys, who of course did have real names but were so inseparable and nearly identical that everyone in the wagon train eventually just called them the Kansas boys, had lost a lot of weight but none of their enthusiasm. They had proven to be good workers, though Aiden knew Jackson found them suspiciously happy. William Buck was just meaner than ever, acting all the time as though the hardships of the trail were his own private tribulation.

“There's a river landing about a mile from here,” Jackson went on. “We're supposed to meet up with a drover there. Help him bring fresh mules and oxen upriver to the camp.”

“How far we gotta go?” Buck asked.

“Till we get there.” Jackson spat and mounted his horse.

It was a slow journey along a rough and rutted track, but finally, late on the afternoon of the next day, in a cold, steady drizzle, they arrived in East Royal St. Petersburg. The name would have been pompous for the biggest city in the region, but it was especially absurd attached as it was to the small collection of shacks and outbuildings that made up Napoleon Gilivrey's logging empire.

“Well, here you go, boys,” Jackson said. “You can wait there under cover.” Jackson pointed them to a woodpile in a three-sided shack. Even with the shelter the pile had sprouted a light carpet of moss. Buck stretched himself out over the stacked wood, took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco. Aiden leaned against a pole and looked around the camp. A couple of men eyed them from the barn, but no one came over. It was not a chummy sort of place.

In the center of the clearing there was a log cabin with a rough front porch. On one side, separated by a sheltered walkway and boardwalk, was a smaller cabin. There was a Chinese man outside, vigorously scrubbing shirts on a washboard in a tub. There was a clothesline nearby, empty right now, as Aiden expected it was most of the time in this damp place.

Fifty yards away was a bunkhouse, and farther down from that, a stable big enough for maybe a dozen animals. Chickens scratched at the grass in a small pen, while a dog dozed on some planks nearby. A toolshed, a cookhouse, a tack shop and a blacksmith's forge made up the rest of the “town.” Three outhouses were sheltered by some spindly saplings. A great haphazard pile of logs lay by the riverbank, but the only live trees within a hundred yards of the river
were no thicker around than a man's leg. It was a sad, dreary place. The gray drizzle made the world seem two-dimensional and especially grim.

Jackson went into the office and came out again in less than five minutes. He turned his collar up against the damp. Aiden could see the bulge of gold in his pocket. So the deal was done: five hundred dollars’ bounty for the men, and another five hundred for their passage—no, six hundred, Aiden corrected himself. There had been six passages. He did not begrudge the man a cent. Jackson had been fair all the way. Still, it was a painful lump of money to think about. The whole next year or more of his life was in that little bag.

Jackson walked over to the woodpile where the men waited.

“You'll stay in the bunkhouse here tonight.” He nodded toward the low building. “Head for your camps in the morning.”

“We don't work here?” Buck said.

“Hell no. Look around. What the hell you gonna cut here? Gilivrey works small camps up the streams from here. Floats the logs out whenever the water is high enough.”

“Wait a minute.” Buck got up. “That ain't what you promised! I ain't living up some godforsaken backwoods stream! Logging camps I heard about got saloons and whores nearby!”

“I imagine he ships in the whores now and then,” Jackson said in a steely tone. “But there was nothing to that regard in my promise, if you recall. It's a year. One year of your sorry-ass life. Ain't nothing so bad for only a year's time.”

The Kansas boys looked like startled pups. Jackson softened his tone. “Mr. Gilivrey, well, he's a hard man. Ain't
downright evil, see; ain't even cruel exactly, but—well, he operates on the rough side of things. If he had the plush sort of camp, he wouldn't be buying his hands this way, now, would he? Do your jobs, keep out of trouble, you'll be all right.

“Good luck, then. I'll be on my way. If you're ever down by Brightfish Bend, at the mouth of Toolkia Sound, come by the trading post. If you need boots or such, fishhooks, skillets, blankets, come see me there.”

One of the Kansas boys—Michael and Gerry they were, Aiden remembered; or Gary—held out his hand. “It's been good traveling with you, Mr. Jackson,” he said. Despite the momentary nervousness, the two of them were once again upbeat and ready for the next stage of their big adventure. “We'll be sure to come see you, sir!”

“You do that.” Jackson touched his hat and nodded to Aiden. “Walk along, will you, lad?” he said. Aiden walked the short distance to where Jackson's horse was tethered. She tossed her head and twitched her nose in the damp piney air, as if she knew the long journey was over and she was nearly home.

“I told you at the beginning how I'd figure things out to the day,” Jackson said awkwardly as he fished in his pocket. “In the event of … well, of you not both making it all the way.” He pulled out some coins. “So, it ain't much, but here's for the days extra.”

“Extra?”

“For your sister—for the days she didn't cost me for her keep.”

Aiden stepped back, staring at the coins as if they were hot coals.

“Go on, take it.”

He'd forgotten all about that part of the deal.

“No.”

“Don't be stupid.” Jackson grabbed his arm and pressed the coins into his hand. “Being poor won't make her alive again.”

“I don't want it.”

“Then don't take it against that, but for earnings. You done more work for me than I expected, so it's only what's fair to you.”

Aiden felt all the blood draining out of his brain; like everything inside him was small and breakable and spinning. The coins felt extraordinarily heavy in his hand, the awful weight of missing days.

Jackson squeezed his arm hard, which brought his brain back around. “Stand up now,” Jackson said. “You'll do all right. Stay out of trouble. Watch your temper. Don't rile William Buck.” The worn saddle creaked as he mounted. The horse whinnied and nosed Aiden's arm as if to say farewell. Jackson touched his hat. “She was a good girl,” he said. “I got to like her some.” He clucked at the horse and rode off without a backward glance.

The door of the little office creaked open and Napoleon Gilivrey stepped out onto the narrow porch. The first thing Aiden noticed was that he was cleaner than any man he had seen since Virginia, and certainly cleaner than anyone out here had any right or need to be. While most men had dirt crusted in their skin all the time, his face glowed a pearly white. His black mustache was perfectly trimmed, as if chopped straight across with a cleaver. His black hair was thinning, but what locks remained were smoothed with po-made
and grown long, so that the ends curled extravagantly on his shoulders. He was an average height but had a curious build, his body very square both front to back and side to side, like a stone gatepost. His posture was perfectly erect. He had a broad forehead, wide-set gray eyes and a nose that might have been elegant on a kinder face but that on him just looked sharp.

“Gentlemen.” Gilivrey stepped to the edge of the porch and eyed the muddy street disdainfully. “Please listen carefully, as I've neither the fortitude nor the forbearance to repeat myself.” He folded his hands lightly, so as not to crush the elegant cuffs of his starched white shirt.

“You are now in my employ and subject to my rules and whims, which may or may not conform to your ideas of justice and fairness. For this I do not care. You are bound to me for a debt. I will see that debt fulfilled.”

He had a slight accent that Aiden couldn't place. It was a bit like Hans and Friedrich's, but smoother.

“There is a gold rush in British Columbia at the moment, so there are only two ways to keep loggers working right now,” he said. “One must be nice, or one must buy them. I'm afraid, gentlemen, I'm not very nice.” Gilivrey flicked a handkerchief at the mosquitoes that hummed above his oiled hair. “You may not be slaves, technically, but until you pay off your debt, you belong to me as surely as any of those chained beasts. You will start at one dollar a day. Those are standard wages, the same as you would get in any camp. If you develop skills, your pay will rise accordingly. Buckers and fallers make a dollar fifty. Your room and board are two dollars and fifty cents a week, also standard. You will receive fifty cents in cash each week for personal money. We work seven days a
week, half day on Saturday, noon start on Sunday. There are some minimum standards of clothing I require for safety and health. I will not have my operations hampered by illness or injury. If you do not have them, they will be provided to you from company stores and the cost put on your account. Most of you will make up your debt in a year, at which time you will be free to stay or go as you wish.”

Gilivrey looked at Aiden and lifted his long pointy nose. “You're the lad in for two, aren't you?”

“Yes, sir,” Aiden said.

“I do hope she's worth it.”

Aiden felt his face burn with anger but would not give this man the satisfaction of a reaction. “Yes, sir,” he said.

The door of the other little house opened and a man came out, stooping to get beneath the doorframe.

Gilivrey pivoted neatly and nodded toward the man. “This is Mr. Powhee,” he said. “My boss-logger. He will handle you from here on. Do what he says, do not give him trouble.”

Aiden doubted that anyone anywhere was likely to give Mr. Powhee any trouble. He was the biggest man Aiden had ever seen. He was six foot two at least, and his chest was broad as a wagon. His legs were bigger around than most of the nearby tree trunks. His skin was tawny brown and his black hair was wiry, almost as curly as a Negro's. He had a round face, exceptionally white teeth and fierce, dark brown eyes. The most remarkable thing, however, was that his face was covered in tattoos. Lines and scrolls were inked on his chin, and wavy patterns curled around the sides of his eyes. At his neck, a curled, polished pig tusk the size of a saucer dangled from a leather thong. Aiden guessed, from so many readings of the
Atlas of the World,
that he was from Polynesia.

“I care nothing about you, or your hopes or dreams or sufferings.” Gilivrey turned back to his new loggers and glared at them. “I want trees cut and money made. It isn't that hard to do here. Succeed and I will be satisfied. Fail and I will make your lives miserable. Run away and I will have you killed. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” one of the Kansas boys said brightly. Gilivrey glared at him and he shuffled back a little.

“Mr. Powhee will acquaint you with your accommodations. My clerk will arrange your kit. Supper is in an hour. No lamps after dark. You leave at sunrise.” He spun around and disappeared into his house.

de govis, ana boos. Ye ‘ave udda troosa?” Gilivrey's clerk looked Aiden up and down over his spectacles, the lenses of which were so smeary Aiden didn't know what good they were to the man: everything must have looked as if it were underwater. He was a small, wiry, one-armed Scot with an extravagantly brushy mustache. He had been a logger once himself until a rigging chain snapped and whipped his arm off just below the shoulder. The tail end of the chain had also crushed part of his upper jaw, so half his face was caved in. What with the injury, the mustache and his naturally thick accent, his speech was barely intelligible.

“He says you need horsehide gloves, hobnail boots and do you have other trousers?” Mr. Powhee translated.

“An wooo sock, free air.”

“Wool socks, three pair.”

“I have two pair,” Aiden said. “I don't need three.”

“You do,” Powhee said. “Nothing dries in a day here, and foot rot costs the company. One pair wool socks,” he said to the clerk, who wrote in careful script in the account book.

BOOK: The Devil's Paintbox
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