Tisha (2 page)

Aside from Mr. Strong’s stable and the stables of a couple of other freighters, the schoolhouse was the only other building here at the edge of town. Mrs. Rooney had showed me the inside of it and I was looking forward to teaching in it when I took over from her next year. Made of squared-off logs, it was good and sturdy. I only hoped the schoolhouse I was heading for now would be as nice.

Farther up the line of pack animals a few men were rechecking some of the loads, making sure that whatever they were sending out to mining partners or friends wouldn’t fall off. But most people were just gathered around talking.

The Indians stood apart from the whites, and I wondered
where they’d spent the night. There were about twenty-five of them, mostly men. Compared to the whites, who were laughing and joking about how much they’d drunk and danced, the Indian men were quiet, just watching what was going on or making an occasional comment to each other. They looked so serious, all of them, that if I hadn’t seen them having such a good time last night, I’d have thought they were angry or resentful. That was what I’
d
thought about them when I’d first seen them standing around in White Horse and Dawson. But now I knew better. They’d laughed more and danced better than almost all the whites in Eagle. And probably had more fun too. They were just different from the whites. When they didn’t have anything to say they didn’t say anything.

I felt kind of sorry for the Indian women, especially the girls. Most of them had changed to moccasins, but a few still had on high heels and bright shawls. In the crisp morning air they looked out of place, their silk stockings full of runs and their makeup all smeared. For all the attention the white men paid them now they might just as well have not existed. It hadn’t been that way at the dance. The white men had been pretty free with them then—a little too free. The Indian women hadn’t minded it, or the Indian men either, but the white women hadn’t liked it at all. Only one or two of the white women had even danced with the Indian men. The rest looked down their nose at them or, like Mrs. Rooney, disliked them outright “Dark faces all packed full of bones,” she complained to me, “you never know what they’re thinking.” She hated the Indian women, saying that the way they carried on with white men it was no wonder the women like herself who were matrimonially inclined couldn’t find a husband.

“How’s the weather up there, Teacher?”

“Cabaret” Jackson’s hatchet face grinned up at me, his Adam’s apple looking as though it was going to pop through his skin. One of his eyes was closed and there was some dried blood in his nostrils, but he’d cleaned himself up pretty well and he didn’t look too bad.

I wished I could give him a clever answer, but I
never could think of the right thing when it came right down to it. “The same weather you have down there,” I told him.

“Hate to see you leavin’ here,” he said. “Don’t suppose you’d change your mind about what I asked you last night?”

“Thanks, Cab, but I don’t think so.”

He was the one who’d given me the revolver, telling me that I shouldn’t be going into the wilds without a little protection. Last night, before he got too drunk and had a fight, he’d proposed to me, promising he’d give me everything under the sun. He’d been a real gentleman, but as soon as he got drunk he turned mean. In the fight he’d had, he’d beaten the other man bloody and got so wild he tried to bite the man’s ear off. The whole thing had made me sick to my stomach. He probably wasn’t a bad fellow at heart, but he wasn’t the type I’d want to keep company with.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll be mushin’ out there to Chicken some time after the freeze-up, and I’ll just try you again when I do.” He grinned. “Take care, Teacher.”

“Teacher?” A girl with kinky hair and close-set eyes had come up near me along with her husband. I couldn’t remember her name, but there was something so nice about her, a kind of a sweet smile she had, that I’d liked her right away. She was going to have a baby and she was a little embarrassed about her big stomach, so she kept kind of stooping over all the time. “Teacher, do me a favor, will you?”

“Sure.” I liked that—the way everybody called me Teacher.

“My ma runs the roadhouse out to Chicken—Maggie Carew. Tell her I’m comin’ along real good an’ that I’m expectin’ middle of December.”

“And tell her it’ll be a boy,” her husband said. He was about as young as she was, a big stringbean. Last night he’d had to practically drag her out on the floor to fox-trot with him, but she’d been so embarrassed by her stomach she didn’t even finish.

“You tell her it’s gonna be a girl. I know it. My name’s Jeannette,” she said to me. “Jeannette Terwilliger. And this here’s Elmer.”

“Maggie Carew,” I said. “Middle of December. I’ll tell her.”

At the front of the line Mr. Strong had mounted up. Holding a coiled bullwhip, he wheeled his horse and slapped a few of the animals on the rump. To the accompaniment of whoops and hollers from the crowd, the pack train slowly moved out

“Don’t you fall in love with any a them gum-boot miners out there, Teacher,” I heard Cab yell to me, “they’d marry ya just for a grubstake.”

“Make sure you come on back after break-up,” someone else called, “and don’t ride ol’ Blossom too hard.”

There was no chance of that, for after all his fussing and dancing around, Blossom wasn’t moving. I kept trying to kick him in the ribs, but my feet were out too far, and he hardly felt it So all I could do was jiggle the reins and tell him to giddap.

Then someone behind me whacked Blossom across the rump and I grabbed for the saddle horn as he plunged forward. Cries of encouragement went up from the crowd and I held onto Blossom for dear life as he caught up with the pack train and kept going. I felt my hat slowly lifting from my head, and then it was gone. But I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was stay on. By the time we passed Mr. Strong I was sliding off and I braced myself for a fall. And then miraculously Blossom slowed down and stopped just short of a corridor of birches that led into the forest.

Shaking, I watched Mr. Strong ride back and pick up my flowered hat. I knew I was as white as flour when he rode up and presented it to me, and I was ready to burst into tears. But he was a gentleman, not even giving the slightest sign that he noticed it. “Madam,” he said graciously, “since you’re not familiar with the trail, I think it better if you allow me to lead.”

As he went past I looked back at Eagle. There were a few people waving good-bye, including Mrs. Rooney, and I felt sad. For the past two weeks I’d done more traveling and met more friendly people than ever before in my life. Up to now the longest trip I’d ever made had been from Colorado, where I was born, to Oregon,
where I’d been teaching. But in the past couple of weeks I’d traveled to Seattle, taken a boat up the Inside Passage to Juneau, then come North through places I’d only read of but never thought I’d see—Skagway, the Chilkoot Pass, White Horse, Dawson, the Yukon Territory, and finally here.

Along the way I had so much attention paid to me by men that sometimes I didn’t think I was me. Even though I’d heard that there weren’t too many women in the North, I hadn’t expected to be treated like a raving beauty wherever I went. But I was. In White Horse and Dawson, when I checked into a hotel overnight, the clerk told me there’d be a dance given in my honor. And during the week that I’d spent on the river-boat, sailing north down the Yukon, I’d been invited to sit at the captain’s table every night. A couple of times, in my cabin, I’d look at myself in the mirror thinking that maybe I’d changed in some way, that maybe I was really much prettier than I’d always thought I was. But after a good examination I knew I was just the same plain Anne Hobbs—same gray eyes, not a bad nose, good white teeth. One of the front ones was a little crooked, so about the best I could say was that if I didn’t open my mouth and if my hair were still long I might have a faint resemblance to Mary Pickford. But even here in Eagle, where the riverboat had left me off, there’d been a dance given for me.

The last of the pack animals passed me and I took one more look at the town. People were moving off now, and beyond them the log cabins and white frame houses looked snug and comfortable. It was a beautiful place and I was sorry to leave. I couldn’t see the wharf from here, but I could see the green waters of the Yukon River snaking for miles in each direction.

Blossom started to move, following the pack animals along a rutted wagon road that disappeared into the corridor of birches. The birches were beautiful, flaming with the colors of autumn, and they grew so thick on each side that I couldn’t see the mountains beyond them. Wanting to ride alongside Mr. Strong, I gave Blossom a little kick, but he didn’t pay any attention. I tried giving him a few more, then I gave up.

It was easy going for the first couple of miles, the wagon road gently curving through the forest, the only sounds the clatter of the pack animals’ cowbells and the clop of their hooves. After a while my backside began to ache a little and I felt some stiffness in my shoulders, but I didn’t mind. Blossom wasn’t giving me any trouble and it was warm enough so I could open my jacket. It was hard for me to believe this was Alaska. Even though it was only the beginning of September, somehow I’d expected to find snow on the ground and cold weather. So far, except for a few nippy days and some nights when it came near to freezing, it hadn’t been much colder than it would be back in Forest Grove, Oregon.

The wagon road ended suddenly and turned into a trail that was barely wide enough for one horse to pass through at a time. Trees and buckbrush pressed in on each side. Branches and bushes tore at my jacket and pulled the threads out. Now I realized why Mr. Strong had offered me the coat. If I could have I’d have ridden forward and asked him for it before my jacket was ruined, but even if I could get Blossom to move faster, the trail was too narrow for me to pass the animals ahead. Most of the time I couldn’t see more than half a dozen of them because the trail twisted and turned so sharply. Twice when I caught sight of Mr. Strong through the trees I yelled to him, but the growth was so thick and the cowbells made so much noise that he couldn’t hear me. Once I thought he saw me and I waved to him frantically, but he just gave me a pleasant wave back and went on.

The farther we went the more uneven the trail became and I kept slipping and sliding all over the saddle. The muscles in my legs were aching from trying to hold on. After a while I tried to stop Blossom so that I could get off, but no matter how hard I pulled on the reins he kept going. When I kept it up, he turned and tried to bite my foot.

An hour later when we were climbing up the side of a steep hill, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. We’d been climbing for about fifteen minutes,
and I was hoping that when we reached the top I might be able to jump off. But as soon as we did the land dipped suddenly and Blossom started down a canyon side that was so steep I was afraid I was going to go tumbling over his head.

By the time we were halfway down my hands were hurting so badly I could barely hold onto the saddle horn. My jacket was just about ruined and all I wanted to do was whimper. Then things became worse. Without warning the sun disappeared and everything was gray and chill. A few minutes later big feathery snow-flakes were drifting down and it was like being in the middle of winter. When I finally reached the bottom of the canyon, my teeth were chattering. My hands were so numb I couldn’t move my fingers.

The pack train had stopped and so did Blossom. Mr. Strong came riding back, the olive-drab coat over his arm. He shook his head when he saw how I looked, but he didn’t say anything. If he’d asked me how I was I would have started crying. Leaning over, he helped me on with the coat. “I believe you’ll be more comfortable now,” he said. “There are mittens in the pockets.”

“Could we stop here for a while?”

“I’m afraid not, madam, I have U.S. mail to deliver and we have twenty-five miles to cover before nightfall. I must stay on schedule. We’ll have a rest stop at Gravel Gulch.”

“How far is that?”

“Seven or eight miles.”

I knew I wasn’t going to make it without a rest and maybe he suspected it, because whenever he could he rode back to see how I was. Snow kept drifting down, melting as fast as it hit the ground. Finally it stopped. Once when he rode back he complimented me on how much better I was sitting. “You’re not sliding all over the place now.”

“Thanks,” I told him, “but it’s not me. The snow melted on the saddle and my pants are stuck.”

He smiled for the first time since I met him. “Are you hurting badly?”

“Kind of.”

I wasn’t a crybaby, but for the third time in as many hours I was ready to burst into tears.

He thought for a moment, then he said, “We’ll stop at the next creek for about twenty minutes and you can stretch your legs.”

The twenty minutes went like twenty seconds. Then I was back in the saddle again. I tried as hard as I could not to cause Mr. Strong any bother or hold up the pack train, but I just didn’t have the strength in my legs to keep holding on without a rest once in a while. Besides that, the saddle was rubbing me raw in a couple of places. We finally figured out the best thing to do. Every time we came to the top of a hill or canyon Mr. Strong took Blossom’s reins and led him while I walked or slid down by myself. It worked out fine because I could make it down five times faster than the pack animals. By the time I got to the bottom my shoes were full of dirt and stones and I had to spend some time getting stickers and foxtails out of my stockings, but it gave me a rest.

When we’d started out from Eagle I’d been looking forward to what I’d see along the way, but long before we reached Gravel Gulch I was aching so badly that I didn’t care about anything except getting there. I had leaves and all kinds of twigs down my back and I’d been slapped by branches and brush so many times my face was raw. On top of that I was getting so hungry my head was aching. So when Gravel Gulch came into view I hardly minded when Blossom speeded up, even though it hurt.

It was only a few cabins nestled in a gulch, the slopes around them thick with willow and tamarack, but it looked beautiful. Before we came to them we crossed a few acres of ugly ground that was dotted with excavated mounds of yellow-looking dirt. They were tailing piles, I found out later, the gravel that was left over after gold had been taken from the ground. But then I didn’t care what they were, all I wanted to do was get off Blossom before I fainted or died.