Revolver

  “I said, do you like games?”

  “We don’t have time,” Sig said, giving a truthful answer.

  There had been days when he and Anna swam in the lake or played in the snow, but those days seemed to have curled up in the distance like a dying dog, never to return, though they’d found an amazing thing on their first winter in Giron. A trick of the snow, that they’d never seen before, despite having spent all their short lives in the far North.

  They’d been exploring the short, scrubby trees behind the cabin, on the verge of the forest, and as Sig walked across the snow, it suddenly gave way, sending him crashing up to his waist.

  From several paces behind, Anna laughed.

  “Sig! I have you now!”

  She scooped a snowball that she delivered right into Sig’s face, and Sig, held fast by the deep snow, was unable to dodge it.

  He cursed her and laughed at the same time, then called, “You try it! There’s some kind of crust to the snow. These trees aren’t really this short. They’re up to their necks, too. Just like me!”

  Anna saw what he meant and gingerly began to step across the snow after him. Her feet sank in only a few inches, and she was within a foot or so of Sig when she sped up—and immediately sank to her waist as well.

  It was a peculiarity of snow falls, thaws, and refreezes, and it seemed to happen only every once in a while, when the weather was just right.

  Later that day, finding a fresh patch to try, they lured Einar to the trees and laughed as his greater weight sent him floundering up to his chest almost immediately. Still laughing, they pounded him with snowballs.

  “Well,” said Wolff. “We have the chance for a little game this evening, don’t we? It will pass the time till your sister gets home.”

  He moved the chair back from the table, swinging his legs to place his boots beside Einar’s, poking out from the blanket, but this time he didn’t touch the body.

  “Here’s how the game works. I will ask you a question. If you tell me the right answer, I will walk out of here, get my horse, and leave. If you don’t tell me the right answer, I will stay here. And if you tell me an answer that is wrong …”

  He smiled, and Sig thought he might finish the sentence, but he didn’t bother. Sig didn’t want to know, anyway, what awful thing the man would do to him.

  “Are you ready to play? Good.”

  Sig stood by the window that looked at the lake and prayed that his sister would return, not alone, but with Nadya and some men from the mine. Mr. Bergman perhaps, or some of the younger men.

  “So, here’s my first question. Where is the gold your father stole from me?”

  21

  Sun Day, night

  Can you feel something, see something, smell it, and touch it just by thinking about it?

  As Sig wondered what he was going to say that wouldn’t get him hurt, he found himself unable to concentrate on anything but the Colt. It was as if the gun were calling to him from the storeroom, and though it was ten feet away in a closed wooden box, Sig could feel the cold weight in his hand, smell the metal and oil and even the delicious waft of the burned powder after it had sent its little parcel of death spinning through the air toward Wolff.

  It had sometimes puzzled Sig why a bullet did so much damage, how a small thing like that could kill so easily, even if it didn’t hit your heart or your head, until Einar had explained how the enormous force held in the bullet rips open a cavity as large as a fist, maybe bigger, in whatever it hits. If the thing is flesh, then the cavity collapses again, but the damage has been done, and the loss of blood is great.

  Sig stared at Wolff but didn’t see him. All he saw were the sights of the Colt; the hammer at the rear, cocked and ready to fall on the cartridge, and the target sight at the tip of the barrel. It had been years since he had held the gun, but it was all still crystal clear in his mind.

  Wolff was waiting for an answer to his question. He leaned back in his chair, and there was his own revolver again, lurking in the hip holster. Wolff let his hand drop toward the gun, making an obvious show of it. His hand reached the butt and his fingers tickled the backstrap and hammer, but he left it where it was.

  His eyes bored right through Sig. He didn’t have long.

  “Would you like some more coffee?” Sig stumbled out.

  Wolff paused before answering, and when he did, merely nodded.

  Sig held his breath, trying to steady himself.

  “G-good,” he stuttered. “I mean, I’ll get some.”

  He turned for the door out to the hallway and the storeroom, and even as he did, he realized his mistake.

  “Wait!”

  Wolff barked the command, stopping Sig in his tracks. “The coffee’s already in here, boy. Over there, on the side.” Then he spoke more quietly, the words curdling in his throat. “Where you left it.”

  Sig turned quickly back into the room, trying to hide his guilt.

  “Yes, I forgot. Yes.”

  He began to fumble some more water into the kettle, slopping it onto the stovetop, sending a hiss of steam into the cabin. He turned to the coffee grinder, and was almost relieved when Wolff spoke.

  “Forget the coffee. Answer the question.”

  Sig turned back to Wolff.

  “I’m sorry. My father has no gold.”

  Wolff stood up.

  “I’m only going to ask this question three times,” he said. “Second time. Where is the gold your father stole from me?”

  Now the words tumbled out of Sig.

  “Please,” he said rapidly. “I don’t know anything about it. My father doesn’t have any gold. I’ve never seen any. We’ve never been rich; we’ve always been moving till we came here. We never had anything, or stopped anywhere for long, until we came here. I don’t know anything about anything. We don’t have any gold.”

  “You had enough money to buy this place.”

  “No,” Sig said. “The Company owns it. Bergman’s Mining. They own everything.”

  “That may be true, or it may not,” Wolff said, “but the fact remains that your father owes me a lot of money. In gold. That he stole from me. We had an arrangement.”

  “What arrangement?”

  Wolff took a step towards Sig.

  “That’s between him and me. And he’s dead.” Wolff smiled, yellow teeth showing behind the ragged ginger beard, and then said, “Though even the dead tell stories.”

  “What did you say?” Sig asked incredulously.

  “What?” Wolff grunted.

  “That was one of my father’s sayings,” Sig stated flatly, as if it had been stolen.

  Wolff grinned, remembering.

  “Yes. It was. Even the dead tell stories. But it seems to be another mistake your father made. He’s saying nothing, I think. So now, you had better do his storytelling for him. I’ve followed him for ten years, wanting to hear how the story ends.

  “I’ve nearly frozen to death. Twice. I have starved. I have eaten things no man should eat. I’ve crawled through the snow and the ice and damn near lost my other thumb to frostbite like I lost my first. And a man without thumbs is nothing. I could have laid down and died a thousand times over the last ten years, but I didn’t. I kept going, because all the time, I knew my gold was waiting for me.

  “And now I am here, and I have asked the question twice, so I will ask it one more time, and you will tell me the answer.”

  He took another couple of steps toward Sig, who backed away, and felt his heels kick the wall. Nowhere else to go.

  Wolff thrust his neck out and pushed his head and his mad eyes right into Sig’s face.

  “Where,” he whispered, with a voice as from a slit throat, “is the gold your father stole from me?”

  Sig closed his eyes. It wouldn’t be long now. He only had to be brave while it happened.

  He took a breath.

  He spoke slowly, so slowly, and gently, as if speaking to a young child on a summer’s day.

  Each w
ord became a sentence.

  “I. Don’t. Know.”

  There was an infinitesimal pause, a tiny gap of space and time in which Sig felt his heart stop beating, and then Wolff shoved Sig’s head against the wall, reopening the cut from earlier.

  Sig howled and dropped to the floor. His eyes swam from the pain and he crouched on all fours. In the corner of his vision, he could see Wolff’s boots, saw one swing back, ready to aim a kick at his head.

  Then there was a stamp of footsteps on the porch outside, and moments later, a fumbling at the latch.

  The swinging boot stopped midway, and Sig tilted his head to the door, like a dog waiting for his master to come home.

  The door opened.

  Anna came in.

  As Sig pulled himself to sit against the cabin wall, Wolff’s eyes ran all over Anna, from her snowy feet to the last strand of her long and wavy brown hair, falling in places from underneath her fur hat, to her rosy cheeks, flushed from the cold, and ended on her round young lips.

  “Well.” The words slipped from his mouth and crawled over her. “Haven’t you grown?”

  Sig strained to see past Anna, then hung his head.

  She was alone.

  Even God leaves on the last boat from Nome.

  ANON

  1900 Nome

  66 LATITUDE NORTH

  22

  The Rim of the World

  For the newborn population of Nome there was a little joke they liked to quote at each other all the time. They would say, “There are only two seasons in Nome, Winter and the Fourth of July.” Einar and Maria shared the joke, though they knew the reality that lay behind the casual words.

  But by the time the Fourth of July came around, things were good for Einar and his family. Maria’s illness and the horrors of the long grim winter of almost perpetual night had been forgotten. Einar had put the Colt back in its box and hid it out of sight of the children, as Maria wished.

  Maria would stay at home with her son and daughter during the day, gradually turning the shack into a place fit to live in, getting them to help with a little simple cooking and cleaning, or she’d go shopping and nod a greeting to the other few respectable ladies who’d arrived now.

  The town itself was improving. A pipe was built to run from the creek in the hills right down Front Street, so everyone there could get clean fresh water with ease. The saloon was finished—the first two-story building in town, with twelve rooms upstairs and none of them for whores.

  There was a rustle of gossip around the town one day, as news leaked out that there was a new co-owner of the saloon, no less than the infamous gunslinger Wyatt Earp, who’d bought a stake in the bar and would soon be arriving by ship.

  And Einar was working, bringing in if not a fortune, then certainly enough money to clothe and feed his family, with some to spare if they were careful.

  He’d been working at the Assay Office for a few months and was doing well. Mr. Salisbury made a visit every now and again to see how he was getting on, and each time said he was very pleased with Einar’s work.

  “You’ve had no trouble learning the chemistry, Einar?” Mr. Salisbury asked.

  Einar shook his head.

  “No, sir,” he said truthfully. “I’ve always had the kind of mind that likes to know things. Things about the world, about how things work. Do you know what I mean, sir?”

  Mr. Salisbury laughed.

  “Yes, I do. But there’s not many people who do, it seems to me. Good for you, Einar. Keep learning and there’ll always be work for a man like you.”

  He leaned in close so that no one else in the Assay Office could hear.

  “The truth of it? You want to know the truth? None of these miners, the prospectors, are ever going to be rich. Most of them will keep finding just enough gold dust to make them think their dreams are around the corner, but they will never come. Some will even find a strike, and be rich for a few days till they blow it all. And the only people who are actually going to get rich are you and me, the people in the town running businesses. Like Mr. Earp with his saloon, when he gets here.

  “So don’t fall for the lure of gold again, Einar. That’s the truth of it.”

  Mr. Salisbury left, and at the end of the day, Einar was closing up the office.

  He shuffled out through the door, turning to lock it, and when he turned again he bumped straight into someone.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and then realized it was the bear-man. His name was Wolff, he’d learned, and he’d also learned that he was trouble.

  “Got some to test,” Wolff muttered.

  “I’m very sorry, you’ll have to come back in the morning,” Einar said. “The office has closed for the day.”

  Einar tried to go on his way.

  “So open it,” Wolff said, not moving.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, you can. You have the key. You just locked it, you can open it again.”

  Einar felt his throat go dry.

  “I’m very sorry. Mr. Salisbury is strict about things like that. I’d open it for you, but I’d be in a lot of trouble, you see. We don’t want trouble.”

  Suddenly Einar found himself pressed against the glass of the door.

  “No,” Wolff said. “We don’t want trouble. So open the door and test my gold.”

  “First thing in the morning, I promise.”

  “Can’t do that. Have to get back to my claim tonight, in case someone jumps it. So I need it tested now.”

  Einar thought the chances of anyone trying to steal Wolff’s claim from him were pretty slim, but he didn’t say that. Still, he refused to be bullied by the man.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said slowly.

  “You will be.”

  Einar saw the glint of a blade coming out of Wolff’s pocket.

  “You okay there, Einar?”

  A voice called from the street.

  Einar peered over Wolff’s shoulder to see four of the regulars from the saloon watching the altercation.

  “You okay? Need any help?”

  Einar said nothing, but watched as Wolff’s knife slid back into his pocket.

  Wolff turned.

  “He’s fine,” he said, and slunk away down the street.

  “Okay, Einar?” called his friends. “Coming for a drink?”

  “No. Thanks. No, I think I’d better get home. Supper on the table, you know how it is!”

  “Sure do, you lucky man!”

  His friends left, and Einar hurried the other way up the street, heading for home, while his friends congratulated Einar on having such a beautiful wife, even if she did quote the Bible too often for their comfort.

  Standing on a porch two buildings away, Wolff watched him go.

  23

  The Book of Job

  Even the dead tell stories. Einar had inherited the saying not from his Swedish father, but from his mother. It was a proverb that meant, as far as the young Anna could work out, nothing is ever truly finished; the past is always with us.

  She worked it out for herself, as she worked out many things for herself that summer while Einar toiled in the Assay Office and Maria tried to turn a hut into a home.

  There was a saying of Maria’s, too, which Anna learned quickly, because her mother said it often: “Let’s not speak of the snow that fell last year.” Anna noticed her mother said it when people were arguing over something that had happened a while ago.

  Mr. Salisbury heard her say it one day and decided to teach her the English version.

  “Let bygones be bygones,” he said carefully, playing the schoolmaster, but Maria had laughed when she tried the words herself.

  “I’ll stick with what my mother said. ‘Tala inte om den snö som föll i fjol.’ It sounds better.”

  It was around then Anna noticed something else about her mother. She noticed Maria quoted the Bible constantly, at every waking moment there would be something to learn from the Bible that Maria kept, stored preciously in a bo
x, the same way Einar kept his Colt 44-40. The only difference was that one was out all the time, the other hidden. But waiting for its moment.

  When Sig argued with Anna, which was rarely, Maria would admonish them both with “turn the other cheek.” And if Sig was naughty or cross, she would tell him gently “turn from evil and do good.”

  The inhabitants of Nome had no church as yet, and the joke started to spread that Maria was the church. You only had to spend half an hour in her company to get a year’s worth of preaching—that was what they said. And though Einar was a God-fearing man, Anna more than once heard her father question Maria’s faith, though it was little Sig who really said something bad.

  “If God loves us so much,” he said, “why are we hungry so much?”

  It was true that they were doing better than through the dark winter when Maria was ill, but there were many days when they would go short of food. It was the way of Nome.

  Maria sat down with Sig and explained it all to him. He sat on her lap and looked at the red flowers embroidered on her blue dress while she told him a story, from the Bible about a man called Job. It was a long and confusing story, and Anna, hanging around to listen, didn’t follow it all that well.

  Job was a good man who loved God, and who, no matter what bad things happened to him, refused to curse God’s name and kept worshiping him. He lost his house and his servants and his family and all his sons and daughters, and still he kept believing in God’s love.

  Sig listened thoughtfully till his mother had finished speaking, and then said, “But why are we hungry all the time?”