Despite their exhaustion, the fact that they were moving at last, with the prospect of the night ahead in a tent and a fire to warm them, perked them up. At some downhill points of the trek they even rode on the sledges, shrieking with laughter like children. Some people had rigged up a sail on theirs and even overtook the few that had a dog team.
It was clear why the camp had been named Happy, for it was flat and therefore easier to pitch a tent there, and at last they were back in the timber line, so they could cut wood for fires.
Happiness was all around them that evening, despite the thick snow and promise of more to come. The relief of being able to rest up before going on, the conviction that nothing else could be as bad as the Golden Stairs or the summit, and to be able to sit around a big fire and dry out wet clothes was enough to bring smiles and laughter back.
After they’d made a meal of bacon and rice, Beth got out her fiddle and began to play by the fire. In twos and threes people came across from their tents to listen, cheering at the end of each number. Someone brought a bottle of whisky over to share with Beth and the boys and the fiery liquid went straight to their heads, making them laugh about everything.
Later, as people left to go back to their tents, Beth stood for a moment looking around her. There was a full moon, and the sky was clear and studded with stars. The trees around the camp were poor, thin specimens, but with their snow covering they looked magical. Even the tents all around theirs, which she knew to be stained and worn, looked pretty in the golden light from the fires outside each one. In all the anxiety of the last week she hadn’t noticed the scenery at all, but now, at peace again, she saw how beautiful the wilderness was, and found she was excited about the adventure before them.
‘One day I’ll be able to tell Molly about it all,’ she thought, glancing round at the boys sitting half asleep by the fire. They were all so dirty and unkempt, with red-rimmed eyes, straggling beards, tangled hair and bundled into so many clothes, they could have been mistaken for three bears. She hoped that there might be a photographer somewhere among the people going to Dawson City. It would be good to have a permanent memento of how they all looked on this trail and something to show Molly.
A wolf howled somewhere close by, and its cry was picked up by some of the dogs in the camp. Beth shuddered and hurried back to the fire. For a moment she had forgotten that wild animals lived in this wilderness.
Chapter Twenty-nine
‘We’re here at last!’ Jack chortled gleefully as he ran with the sledge through the narrow end of Lake Lindemann on to Lake Bennett.
Most of their fellow stampeders on the Chilkoot Trail had stayed on the shores of Lake Lindemann to build their boats to sail to Dawson City, but as Jack had heard that when the ice melted the rapids between the two lakes were very dangerous, he had decided that they should tramp through to Lake Bennett and build their boat there.
Theo had been disgruntled at what he saw as an unnecessary trek. He had liked the tented city at Lake Lindemann, where a gambling saloon, bars, shops and even restaurants had sprung up, and he’d been sure he could win enough at poker to buy one of the many collapsible boats brought over the Chilkoot Pass by a dealer. He and Jack had almost come to blows about it, for Jack had claimed these boats weren’t strong enough to get them ten miles, let alone five hundred, and he accused Theo of being too lazy to work at building a safe one.
Beth had been on tenterhooks during the few days they spent at Lake Lindemann, as she could see how exasperated Jack was becoming with Theo. Jack had willingly hauled extra weight for him over the mountains. He’d let him ride on the sledge from Happy Camp to Lake Lindemann when his shoulder hurt, and excused him from helping to cut wood and other strenuous jobs. But he resented Theo swanking around treating him like his servant. Beth feared Jack would push on to Dawson City on his own, and she wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.
But as it was, Theo lost most of his remaining money in a poker game, so buying a boat was out of the question, and ultimately he had no choice but to fall in with Jack’s plans.
He hadn’t taken it well, though. Beth felt that underneath all Theo’s superiority, he was actually jealous of Jack because so many people looked up to him, while he was seen as something of a parasite. He’d hardly said a word as they walked along the frozen lake, not even to her.
But then, Beth had her own private irritations with him too. While she wanted to put aside the hurt he’d caused her back in Skagway and have things back the way they were in Vancouver, she was finding it difficult.
As they all moved forward on to Lake Bennett, however, any ill feeling between them fell away, for the sight that met their eyes was truly astonishing.
Aside from the spellbinding beauty of the long, narrow frozen lake insinuating its way through a range of snow-covered mountains, there were tents spread along its shores for as far as the eye could see.
The thousands of tents came in all shapes and sizes, from brand-new ones to old, tattered ones, from tiny improvised ones, which would only shelter one man, to marquees big enough for a circus, and every other kind in between.
They had known that the White Pass, the alternative, longer route over the mountains from Skagway, ended up here, so they had expected a crowd of people, but they hadn’t anticipated this many, or to see so many animals.
The White Pass had been dubbed ‘Dead Horse Trail’, because so many hundreds of horses died on it from starvation and ill treatment. One of the Mounties at the border had spoken out angrily at the cruelty and stupidity of people setting out without enough fodder for their animals. Yet there were many horses here, along with dogs, oxen, donkeys, goats, and even pens of chickens.
It was also a cacophony of sound: the thud of axes on wood, the buzz of saws, insistent hammering, dogs barking and people yelling to one another. Just a couple of years earlier this must have been a silent wilderness which only Indians and the occasional trapper passed through. Now it was a city in the making.
Theo brightened visibly as he saw a marquee advertising faro and poker games nightly, and although Beth could take no pleasure in him gambling away the last of his money, she was glad to see him smiling again. She thought too that she could make some money by playing her fiddle, as she had at Lake Lindemann.
‘How much further?’ Theo grumbled when an hour later Jack was still heading onwards down the lake.
‘There’s more trees down here. It’s bad enough having to chop them down for the boat without having to haul them a distance,’ Jack said tersely.
Beth exchanged glances with Sam. She knew he felt awkward being stuck in the middle, for he liked both men and had sympathies on either side. He too enjoyed a game of cards and a drink, and he still believed that Theo was the one who would eventually make them all rich. Yet at the same time he knew the three of them depended on Jack, for he had all the skills required to get them to Dawson safely.
Sam pulled a face at Beth. He didn’t need to say a word — she knew he was thinking that Jack was a little too forceful and bossy, and that they could all do with a couple of days of complete rest before starting to build a boat.
She decided that she should intervene, so, picking up her skirt, she ran after Jack. ‘Can’t we have a couple of days off before we start on the boat?’ she asked him. ‘I mean, it’s only March, and the ice won’t melt until the end of May, so we’ve got lots of time.’
Jack stopped short, letting go of the rope on the sledge he was dragging, and looked at her with some amusement. ‘Do you see how many people are here already?’
‘Well, yes.’ She shrugged.
‘Every single day that number will grow larger,’ he said patiently. ‘They are pouring over the two trails in their thousands, and before long all the trees we see now will be chopped down. We have to start getting our wood right now as soon as we’ve made camp, or risk someone else getting it.’
Beth looked at him appraisingly. He was as dirty and bedraggled as every other man, with his bushy
beard, matted long hair and his exposed skin raw from the bitter weather. But he didn’t have that intense gold lust that was in every other man’s eyes. She doubted he even dreamed of great riches the way Theo and Sam did.
‘Fair enough.’ She nodded. ‘That makes sense, but tell me, Jack Child, what drives you? I don’t think it’s the gold.’
He chuckled softly, looking back at Sam and Theo who were resting on their sledge. ‘Someone has to make sure you three get there safely.’
‘That doesn’t really answer my question,’ she retorted.
He smiled and reached out and patted her cheek. ‘I thought it did.’
By the middle of May their craft was completed, a sturdily built raft with a mast, a rudder to guide it, and slats around the sides to keep them and their kit safe in turbulent water. The boys had named it Gypsy, painting the name and the craft number, 682, on the rail across the prow. Samuel Steel, the superintendent of the Mounted Police, had decreed that all craft must be registered, and he had gone around the stampeders giving them each a number and logging down the names of everyone on each craft and their next of kin, in case of accidents on the long sail to Dawson City.
The raft sat on the ice on the edge of the shore, along with thousands of other craft, waiting for the day when the ice would break up. Many bore little resemblance to any boats Beth and the boys had ever seen; triangular shapes, round and oval ones, huge rafts big enough to take horses, scows, skiffs, catamarans, canoes, and some were little more than crude boxes.
Many were still being built, and despite the sunshine and clear blue sky, the air rang with squabbles, sawing, hammering and often curses, for those who hadn’t finished their boats were stressed and panicked, and everyone else was in a state of high expectancy.
It was estimated that there were now 20,000 people here on the shores of Lake Bennett, their tents and equipment covering the entire length of it. Every possible amenity was here, including bath tents, barber-shop tents, a church, casino and post office, along with shops selling everything from bread to gum boots. Yet because of the Mounties’ vigilance, there was none of the crime and skulduggery seen in Skagway. It was said that some of Soapy’s henchmen had come over the Pass, but had been sent back with dire warnings not to return.
The only serious trouble was between men in their saw-pits, cutting green timber into planks for their boats. They had to work in pairs either end of a six-foot-long blade. The one above on the scaffolding guided the saw along the chalk line on the lumber, while the man below had to pull it down, but as the big saw teeth bit into the wood, the one below was showered by falling sawdust. He was often convinced that his mate was not guiding the saw correctly, just as the man above claimed the lower one was holding the saw handle too tightly. Bitter arguments often exploded into bloody fights, and life-long friendships that had endured through all the trail had thrown at them were destroyed permanently.
Jack, Sam and Theo had avoided much of that because they had decided to build a raft made from whole slender trees rather than a boat of planks, but even so there had been a great deal of cursing and squabbling. Theo felt he was above manual work, and often disappeared. Sam was willing, but he would cut corners if Jack wasn’t standing over him. Beth had often heard Jack berating both of them and threatening that he would leave without them if they didn’t pull their weight.
But the work was all done now. All that was left to do was fix up the sail and stow their kit on board, and as the spring sunshine became a little warmer each day, and the days grew longer, they could hear the distant rumble of avalanches in the mountains and the gurgle of melting snow.
Mostly everyone who had finished their boat tended to spend their days now sitting on the shore, idly watching the dark green lake water visible through the ice as they whittled another paddle or oar. Someone had joked a few days earlier about the rush to the goldfields being called a ‘stampede’. To all of them such a name was a joke, for it had been quite the opposite so far. It had been a slow, painful trudge, a three-month trial of endurance. There were no pot-bellies on any of the men now, their bodies were lean and muscular, and their gaunt faces, thick beards and long hair were all proof that they were no longer greenhorns. They smirked with pride as they spoke of those who had given up and gone home. There was a bond between them because of all the hardships and obstacles they’d overcome.
The women still had no time to sit on the shore. For them there were clothes to wash and mend, food to be prepared, letters to be written and dozens of other small jobs to be done which would make their men’s lives more comfortable. But Beth took time off to watch the geese flying overhead, to study the carpets of flowers that appeared as the snow melted — mountain forget-me-nots, Dutchman’s breeches and wild bleeding hearts.
After living in an all-white, snow-filled world for so long, the colours that appeared as the snow melted seemed fantastically bright. Red mountains, dark green fir trees and the acid green of lichen and mosses vied with the pink, blue and yellow alpine flowers that carpeted the ground away from the squalor of the camp. The sparrows and robins were coming back, and often the sound of birdsong almost drowned out the sawing and hammering.
Sometimes Beth would go off with her fiddle, away from the constant noise of the camp, and play for herself, glad to be alone. One day she saw two baby bears frolicking in the sunshine beneath a big rock and she hid herself away to watch from a safe distance, feeling privileged that she’d seen them. Their mother soon returned to them, cuffing them playfully with her big paws, and the sight evoked memories of Molly back home and brought tears to Beth’s eyes.
It often struck her when she was entirely alone that she had no plans or even dreams for the future any more. Everyone else on the trail had the dream of gold; at night around the campfires they discussed what they’d spend it on, where they’d go next. But Beth seemed unable to think beyond the next day. There were many things she wanted — a real weatherproof house, a hot bath, a soft bed, fresh fruit, and to be able to put on a pretty dress and know it wouldn’t be soiled with mud in five minutes. She would like Theo to make love to her, for that had been impossible since they left Dyea, what with the cold, how dirty they were, and always having Sam and Jack so close. She also longed to see Molly and England again, but even that seemed so far away she couldn’t call it a plan.
She wondered what had happened to all the dreams she used to have. Of the house with a lovely garden. Of her wedding day, or a holiday by the seaside. She thought of them only occasionally now. Was that just because she’d already seen so much more than she could ever dream about? Or that she’d become disillusioned?
Theo often wove dreams about them living in a fancy apartment in New York, or in a grand mansion back in England. She would have liked to believe they might come true, but she couldn’t. Theo had won back the money he lost by Lake Lindemann, but then he’d lost it again. The reality was that this was how it would always be with him, never secure, never settled, always looking out for the big chance.
Beth was aware of all his faults, and knew too that they were major ones that would never change. Sometimes she wished she’d taken note of what Ira had said about gambling men and had never given him her heart. But when things were good between them it was wonderful, for he was funny, clever and so loving, and she tended to overlook the bad parts — the disappearing acts, the lies or half truths, the laziness and conceit.
Her real security came from within her. She knew she could earn a living anywhere with her fiddle, and she loved that as much as she loved Theo. Maybe she didn’t need a dream because she was already living it?
∗
They heard the first crack in the early hours of 29 May. Beth thought it was a gunshot and sat upright in alarm. But then another came and she realized it was the ice breaking up.
It never really got dark at night now. The sky turned pink and purple around midnight, as if the sun was finally setting, but it didn’t go completely dark at all. So she leapt up, pulled
on her boots and, shouting to the others, ran down the few yards to the shore.
By the time the boys had joined her, there were hundreds of people gathered to watch. The ice was creaking and rumbling, dark green water spurting out through the cracks and washing away the building detritus, wood shavings, nails and patches of tar where they’d caulked their boats. Someone cheered and everyone joined in, holding hands and spinning one another round like children in a playground
That last day on Lake Bennett was one of pure joy for everyone, for the following morning they would be able to sail away. Beth dug her red satin dress out to wear in the evening. It had some black mould on it from being packed away so long, but she sluiced it off and hung it up to dry, excited by the prospect of looking like a real woman again, even if it was only for one night. She washed her hair too, leaving it to dry in the warm sunshine.
Everyone else was busying themselves with similar tasks. The queue for the bath tent was the longest she’d ever seen it, and someone told her that they were resorting to using the same water for twelve men, and offering them a rinse-off with cold water.
Some of the men, Jack included, pitched in to help the folk who hadn’t yet finished their boats. Even the dogs picked up on the excitement and ran around the camp barking wildly.
At eight that evening, Beth played her fiddle to a packed house in the Golden Goose, the big gambling saloon marquee. People who had never been seen in there before turned up, and everyone danced.
Much later, as Beth was leaving to go back to the tent with Theo, the sound of the thunderous applause still ringing in her head, and over thirty-five dollars in Theo’s hat, she heard a young man singing ‘Sweet Molly’. Until that moment she’d forgotten her mother used to sing it to Sam and her when they were small, and hearing it again now, so far from home, on the eve of the last stage of their journey, seemed portentous.