Revolver

  “Yes, my love,” Einar said, sitting down on the floor by the makeshift cabin bed, stroking Maria’s forehead. Sig lay curled up by her feet. There was nowhere else for him to sleep. Anna stood, holding a ragged old doll, hopping from one foot to the other, trying to see through the frost-rimmed window, stealing a glance at her mother from time to time, trying not to think thoughts she didn’t like.

  “Yes, my love,” Einar said softly. “God will protect us now.”

  Maria’s fever was high again, and sweat poured from her face though she shuddered as if icy winds gripped her. Suddenly she winced, screwing up her face, her eyes shut fast.

  “Anna,” Einar called. “See to the fire.”

  The girl stared at her mother, not hearing her father.

  “Anna!” he called, louder now. “Anna, make up the fire. We must keep your mother warm.”

  Still she ignored him. She hopped onto her other foot and began to stroke her doll’s tattered dress and wooden head, with its few strands of real horsehair.

  “Anna!” Einar shouted this time.

  She jumped and stood straight like a soldier but still didn’t move. Sig woke and almost immediately began to cry.

  Einar cursed and shook his head.

  “Anna,” he said, more softly. “Anna, see to your brother while I see to the fire.”

  Anna nodded, dropping her doll onto the bare wooden floor and picking up her little brother bodily. She was tall for her age, he was small for his, and she held him like a baby against her chest, singing to him, till she could hold him no more.

  She put him down and with surprise saw her mother looking at her, a weak smile on her lips.

  “Have faith,” she whispered, so quietly that Anna didn’t really hear.

  9

  The Frozen Sea

  Never was there a winter like the winter in Nome as, somewhere over the course of seven months, 1899 became 1900.

  As the sea froze, a great cavernous silence descended on the town, an eerie nothingness, in which the few sounds there were traveled unnaturally far. It froze so hard that the enormous pressure of ice from far out to sea threw huge slabs of shore ice up onto the beach, twenty feet, thirty feet, even fifty feet. The Esquimaux called it ivu, “the ice that leaps,” but Einar took it as another strange omen of the desolate world to which he had foolishly brought his family.

  Was it good providence or bad that his cousin was a friend of one of the Three Lucky Swedes, the infamous trio who’d been sent to breed reindeer as an alternative food source for the Esquimaux but had instead found a hunk of gold the size of a man’s head?

  Good or bad?

  Einar and his family had been among the very first to arrive that summer, eager for a quick strike and retreat before the hordes descended. But Einar had found nothing, then winter had closed in just as Maria got ill, stranding them. Einar could do nothing to support them. While some men still tried to prospect for gold through the early winter, even if only by stalking along the beach hoping to repeat the Swedes’ success, Einar had to stay with his family.

  His were the only children in Nome, his was the only white woman. There had already been a death from a fight over a local woman, and aside from that Einar knew he couldn’t leave Anna to look after both her brother and her mother for more than an hour or so.

  Later that week, another man was found behind the dog sheds with his throat slit, all for a pinch of tobacco, someone said.

  So they clung to the inside of the shack, and as the price of coal went to a hundred dollars a ton, and eggs to ten dollars a dozen, Einar spent their last twenty dollars buying a slim but broad box from an old-timer, who went and drank the whole twenty dollars worth in whisky at the half-built building that was to become Dexter’s saloon.

  Anna stared at her father as he stomped back into the cabin with the box.

  “What’s that, Pappa?” she whispered, her eyes wide.

  Maria woke and propped herself up. Her movement disturbed Sig, who woke too, to witness one of the few scenes from his early childhood that he would remember forever, and clearly.

  He remembered the look on his mother’s face as she saw what Einar had bought. Only many years later would he finally be able to put a word to that look. Despair.

  “What is it?” Anna repeated. “Is it food? Is it for when the food runs out?”

  “No,” Einar muttered. “It’s something else. For when the faith runs out.”

  10

  Cabin Fever

  Know what you will of the world. Know what you can, know what men are and the things they do. Understand what God is to you, understand what you are to your loved ones. Love, sing, cry, and fight, but all the time, seek to know everything you can about the earth upon which you stand, till your time is done.

  Both Einar and Maria had tried to teach Sig this same message. It was simply that they went about it in very different ways, and sometimes, like all parents, they both failed to teach their children anything at all.

  At the darkest point that winter, when the sun barely rose in the sky, and then only for a couple of hours each day, the stores of food under the bed ran out.

  Maria slept fitfully, her Bible by her side, its gold edging gleaming from between the battered black leather covers.

  At about five o’clock one afternoon, in pitch darkness, Einar Andersson strode across Front Street, heading for the saloon. His hand opened and closed on something tucked into the waistband of his trousers, hidden under his sealskin coat.

  Anna watched him go through a spy hole she’d scraped in the ice on the inside of the window. Sig stood by the table, just tall enough to peer into the box that Pappa had left there, its lid open. The inside of the box was organized into special shapes and compartments, all lined with short, dusty velvet. Whatever had been in there was gone, leaving behind a long triangular hole, a few unfamiliar metal objects, a little brush, a tiny tin of oil.

  Sig reached toward the box, fascinated.

  “Sig,” Anna called from the window. “Don’t touch that. Come here and watch with me.”

  Sig’s hand hovered in midair above the box, but then he did as he was told and silently trotted over to join his sister at the window.

  “Where’s Pappa?” he said, after a while.

  “Gone out.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has he gone to get us something to eat?”

  Anna paused. The two of them stared out of the window.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  11

  Peacemaker

  How things unwind.

  Mean and makeshift, the black heart of the brawling, gambling, thieving, starving slop bucket of Nome was its half-built saloon. With no way out of the camp, even those with money or gold had soon realized that they couldn’t buy food or drink if there’s none to be had, and the saloon was the last supply of both.

  Einar went up to the bar, a few eyes on him, but many too absorbed in their own problems to worry about the idiot who’d brought two kids and a woman who wasn’t a whore to this hellhole.

  He stood at the bar.

  The barkeep, a thin, surly man called Jack, wandered over, wiping the bar top with his cloth as he came, as if this were some fancy joint in San Francisco with a mahogany counter, not three planks nailed to the top of a couple of filthy barrels.

  “Einar?”

  “Drink.”

  “Whisky or gin?”

  “Gin.”

  Jack plonked a bottle without a label and a dirty glass down on the bar, and Einar helped himself to a long drink. His hand was shaking, and he spilled some on the rough-grained wood.

  “Hey,” said Jack. “It’s not like we have any to spare.”

  He grumbled, wiping the mess while Einar drank the whole thing in one go. He set the glass back down and immediately began to refill it.

  “Dollar,” said Jack, taking the bottle from Einar’s hand before he could spill any more. r />
  “And another for that,” the barkeep added. “Two dollars.”

  Einar lifted the glass to his lips and drank it down in one swallow again.

  “I don’t have any money, Jack,” he said quietly.

  “What you say?”

  “I said, I don’t have any more money. Or any gold. Or any food. I have a wife and a daughter and my boy, but I don’t have any money.”

  “You have to pay for that drink,” Jack said, his face clouding. “You have to pay for both of them, or what’s to happen next, if people don’t pay.”

  Einar shrugged.

  “Hey!” Jack cried, grabbing Einar’s sleeve.

  “What’s the matter?” said a voice at Einar’s shoulder, and he turned to see a man whose face was familiar but whose name he didn’t know.

  “Won’t pay for his drink,” Jack snarled.

  “That so?” said the man, his voice level and his face impassive.

  Jack still held Einar’s sleeve, but imperceptibly Einar began to edge his other hand behind him, under his coat, his fingertips feeling for the heel of the grip.

  Suddenly Einar felt himself whipped around, as the stranger spun him as easily as a top. There was a loud slap on the counter, followed a moment later by a second, lighter one, with the tinkle of metal.

  “You looking for this?” the man said, glaring at Einar.

  On the bar top sat Einar’s revolver, still rocking from the force with which the man had set it there. Next to it lay three dollars. The man shoved the coins at Jack.

  “That’s for his, and for the one you’re about to pour for me.”

  Jack poured a shot and went off grumbling, taking the bottle with him.

  Einar made to take back his gun, but the man caught his wrist.

  “You fool. What are you doing, walking in here with that thing?”

  Einar shrugged again.

  “Is that your answer to everything?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Einar said. “I … I don’t know what to do.”

  “So you came in here trying to get your head blown off?”

  “No …”

  “No? Or were you going to stage a heist all by yourself? Once someone starts shooting in this place, every gun in the room is going to get warm. Then we might as well all lie down in the snow and die.”

  He picked up the gun.

  “Colt Single Action Army, 1873 model. The Peacemaker.” He smiled. “This particular piece must be near to twenty years old.”

  “You know your guns,” Einar conceded.

  “I know more than guns, Einar. And I know enough about them not to bring one into a place like this unless you mean to kill or be killed.”

  “So, what would you have me do?” Einar said, anger stinging his voice.

  The man smiled.

  “Have a little faith,” he said.

  “So my wife’s always telling me.”

  “Then she’s right.”

  “She’s dying.”

  “I know. Maybe she’s dying, maybe she’s not, but either way, you got those two lovely kids.”

  Einar’s eyes darkened, but the man raised a palm.

  “Easy, Einar,” he said. “No one’s going to hurt your kids. And they’re not going to starve.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going to give you a job.”

  12

  Silence

  “I start in the spring,” Einar explained to Maria when he got back. “Mr. Salisbury works for the government. Governor Brady sent him in when they heard about the rush. You know that man who got knifed? I told you about it. He was going to be the Assay Clerk. Now they’ve got no one.”

  “What’s an Assay Clerk?” Anna asked.

  “He’s a man who tests the gold. He sees how pure it is. The purer it is, the more it’s worth. Every town needs an Assay Office, and this place is going to have one. And I’m going to be the man who does the testing and the weighing and the paying.”

  Maria smiled.

  “But how will that help us now?”

  “He’s given me some money; they’re going to bring some food over later on. We’re going to be all right. We …”

  He stopped, catching himself. He looked down into the dim eyes and gray face of his wife and didn’t know what to say.

  “That’s all right,” she whispered. “That’s all right. It will be all right. You’ll see. Have faith in God.”

  Einar smiled. With great effort, Maria propped herself up.

  “But why did he choose you?” she asked.

  “Well, that’s the thing. He said he chose me because he says the only man you can trust in a town like this is one who’s got too much to lose.”

  Maria looked blankly at him.

  “You three,” Einar said, laughing. “You and the children. He said he could trust a family man. See? You two have been some use after all!”

  He pulled Anna toward him and gave her a hug. She felt the bristles of his beard against her cheek and giggled.

  “Here, son,” Einar said to little Sig. “Here’s a job for you. Take this and put it back in that box. Carefully. Understand?”

  He pulled the Colt from his waistband and handed it to Sig, who beamed at his father. An almost comical solemnity came into the little boy’s face, and he walked steadily off to do his job, holding the gun before him as if it were as fragile as a dream.

  “Einar!” Maria cried. “No! You mustn’t let him touch it. You mustn’t. Guns are evil. Evil, Einar.”

  Einar laughed.

  “The boy must learn respect for it while he’s young.”

  “No,” Maria said, her anger wearing her out so quickly. “No, he mustn’t … My children must not know evil things. They must learn to trust in the love and the care of God.”

  Sig ran back to Einar.

  “I did it!” he cried happily. “I did it.”

  “Good boy,” Einar said, ruffling Sig’s blond mop of hair.

  Silently, Maria turned her face to the wall.

  “Good boy,” Einar repeated.

  “Pappa,” Sig said, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Yes?”

  “The thing in the box.”

  “Yes?”

  “What is it?”

  13

  The Call of the Wild

  “Love,” Maria said to her children on the day she got out of bed for the first time. She held up her black Bible, brandishing it as if it could speak for her. “God teaches us many virtues. Above all, he teaches us faith, hope, and love. It was our faith that kept God with us through the darkest times. It was our hope that brought Mr. Salisbury to your father and gave him the job, but both of these would not have been possible without God’s love. The Bible teaches us that faith, hope, and love abide. These three, and the greatest of these is love.”

  It had seemed as if the spring would never come, but for weeks now there had been the first signs of its approach. The frozen sea began to send loud and mysterious noises across the ice, breaking the unnatural stillness. Creaks and groans of ice starting to break shattered the air every now and again. There were more birds in the sky, and the Esquimaux began to gather in their own camp farther along the shore, cautiously content to trade with the miners, offering fresh meat and seal oil in return for drink and gold and trinkets.

  The little community had survived, and though more than a few had died from alcohol or a bullet or starvation, Maria had got better.

  Far out to sea, the ships were gathering.

  For now, news of the Swedes’ gold strike had spread not only to the Yukon and the Klondike, but right across America. Ships had sailed from Seattle, even from distant San Francisco, having waited all winter until it was time to set out.

  Even though they had waited, they arrived too soon, and four miles of ice kept the newcomers from the beaches they believed to be strewn with gold. Fifty ships, maybe sixty, lay moored, waiting for the ice to break, to melt.

  Every day, Einar would spend
an hour or so on the shore, watching as the boats edged a little closer.

  One day, there was the sound of shouting and dogs barking from way out on the ice. After two months on board ship, someone had clearly lost his patience at having to wait a few more days at the ice barrier.

  Shouts rose and fell, the barking of a dog team hauling on the ice reached Einar, and then suddenly the barking was gone, and the speck that had been the dog team and the rash prospector was gone too.

  The shouting from the watching ships grew louder for a while, but all too soon it faded away.

  Einar shook his head. How foolish to attempt to cross ice that is starting to break. There would be no more impatience of that sort, Einar thought, but what a way to go. What a way to go.

  Finally, the last of the ice was no more than a thin, glasslike crust, with a heaving green sea eager to get out from beneath it, and the ships weighed anchor and headed as close to land as they could get.

  Just as he’d promised himself the day the last ship left, Einar went down to the shore, joined by Mr. Salisbury and a few of the others who’d survived the winter, to wait for the rowboats to pull their way in the final half mile to the beach.

  They came fast, hordes of them like swarming flies, and as keel after keel crunched onto the stones, none of them noticed the desperation in the survivors’ eyes, or their faces, haunted and drawn.

  They ran like rabid dogs up and down the beach, pushing each other out of the way, scrabbling through the stones, some heaving picks at the ground, hunting for the gold they’d been promised was there for the taking, just lying on the beach.