Winter Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  But right now he was sort of glad he had come to Seattle.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning dawned cold and blustery, with gray clouds scudding through the sky and occasional bursts of light rain spitting down on Puget Sound. Frank wore a sheepskin coat as he left the hotel and headed toward the livery stable to collect Stormy, Goldy, and Dog.

  The horses and the big cur were glad to see him. Frank settled up with the liveryman, then saddled Stormy himself and rode out of the barn, leading Goldy. Dog trotted along beside them. His ears were up and tilted forward a little as he took in all the sights and, more importantly where he was concerned, the smells of the port settlement.

  Frank rode along the waterfront until he came to the wharf where the Montclair was anchored. A couple of wagons were drawn up on the dock and crates were being unloaded from them and carried aboard. Frank spotted the storekeeper he had dealt with the day before. Obviously, the man had come along to supervise the loading of the supplies himself.

  He raised a hand in greeting when he saw Frank. “Mornin’, Mr. Morgan. Got everything you wanted.” He waved toward the crates. “It’ll all be on board in a little while.”

  One of the boxes seemed to be pretty heavy. Frank watched two men pick it up and lug it up the gangplank.

  “Rifles, pistols, and ammunition,” the storekeeper told him. “Just like you said.”

  “Much obliged. I’m sure the ladies will appreciate it, too.”

  The man looked around. “Are they, uh, here yet?”

  Frank suppressed the urge to grin. The storekeeper hoped to catch a glimpse of those mail-order brides he had heard about, Frank figured. That was another reason he had come along with the wagons.

  “I think they’re still at the hotel,” Frank said. “They’ll be along directly.”

  “Oh.” The storekeeper tried not to look or sound too disappointed. All the supplies had been unloaded now, so he no longer had an excuse for hanging around the dock. “I wish you good luck, then, Mr. Morgan.”

  Frank leaned over in the saddle and reached out to shake hands with the man, who was sitting on one of the wagon seats. “Thanks. I’m hoping we won’t need luck…but I’ll bet a hat that we will before we get where we’re going.”

  The wagons rattled off a minute later. Frank swung down from the saddle and tied the horses’ reins to one of the pilings that stuck up at the edge of the dock. Then he went up the gangplank with Dog following him.

  Captain Hoffman himself was at the head of the gangplank today. He looked past Frank and said, “My God. I thought you said you were bringing a dog with you, Mr. Morgan, not a wolf.”

  Frank grinned. “Don’t worry about him. He’s all dog. Well, mostly, anyway. I can’t be sure about all his ancestors, though.” He gestured toward Stormy and Goldy. “There are my horses.”

  “I suppose we can rig some sort of sling and boom to lift them onto the deck and lower them into the hold,” Hoffman said with a frown.

  “No need. I’ll just lead them aboard, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Up the gangplank?” Hoffman sounded like he thought that wouldn’t be possible.

  “They’re pretty sure-footed,” Frank said. “I’ve trusted my life to them on ledges that are even narrower than that plank, with a sheer cliff going up on one side and a drop of several hundred feet on the other.”

  A shiver went through Hoffman. “I don’t see how anyone does such a thing,” he said. “Give me the sea any day.”

  Frank looked out at the cold, gray waters of the sound, which were pretty choppy this morning, and felt the same way about it that Hoffman did about those high mountain trails.

  “The weather’s taken a turn for the worse,” he commented.

  “This?” Hoffman made a casual gesture toward the leaden sky. “This is nothing to worry about. I’d be more concerned if it was clear and warm. Now, if you’re sure about bringing those horses of yours aboard, we can lower some boards through the hatch into the cargo hold to make a ramp.”

  Frank nodded. “I’ll go get ’em.”

  One at a time, he led Stormy and Goldy up the gangplank, onto the deck, and then down the makeshift ramp into the hold. As he expected, neither of them had any trouble. They were both almost as nimble as mountain goats. The sailors had put up some partitions to form stalls in one corner of the hold, and buckets of fresh water and grain were already in place. Hoffman had done a good job of preparing for the unexpected four-legged passengers, and Frank intended to thank him and compliment him for his efforts. He left Dog belowdecks as well, telling the big cur to stay with Stormy and Goldy. Dog didn’t seem to like it much, but he would do whatever Frank told him.

  When Frank started topside again, he heard women’s voices before he even emerged from the hold. As he came out on deck, he saw that Fiona and the young women had arrived at the wharf in several carriages, followed by a wagon piled high with baggage.

  Captain Hoffman stood at the railing, a frown on his face. He glanced at Frank and said, “I hope we have room for all those bags. Women don’t travel lightly, do they, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Don’t ask me a question like that when there are ladies in earshot, Captain,” Frank responded with a grin. Fiona had reached the top of the gangplank.

  “Good morning, Frank,” she said. “Captain Hoffman, do we have your permission to come aboard?”

  “Indeed you and your charges do, Mrs. Devereaux, ma’am,” Hoffman said. “Welcome to the Montclair, all of you.”

  Chattering excitedly, the young women came up the gangplank and onto the ship. Hoffman had one of his officers show them to their cabins. It wasn’t Brewster who got the job, Frank noted. In fact, Frank hadn’t even seen Brewster this morning. He wondered if Captain Hoffman had assigned him to duties belowdecks to keep him out of the way. If so, that was fine for now, but Frank doubted if Hoffman would be able to keep the two of them apart all the way to Skagway.

  The rain began to fall harder, which drove everyone inside except the sailors who had to be on deck. Frank lingered for a moment with moisture dripping off the brim of his hat as he said, “We’re putting ourselves in your hands, Captain.”

  “Don’t worry,” Hoffman said as he buttoned up the slicker he had put on. “In less than a week, you’ll be in Skagway. And once you’ve seen that hellhole, you may wish you were back on my boat, Mr. Morgan!”

  The captain’s prediction stayed with Frank as the ship weighed anchor a short time later and used its steam engine to push itself away from the dock, out into Elliott Bay and then Puget Sound itself. Just how much of a hellhole was Skagway?

  Frank had seen many boomtowns in his time, most recently the silver mining town of Buckskin in Nevada. He had served as the marshal there for a while, and he had to admit that it had been an exciting, violent time. It was entirely possible that Skagway was worse, since it was more isolated. Frank didn’t know if there was any law up there beyond what the settlers themselves made.

  He wondered if Whitehorse would be better or worse. At least across the border in Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had jurisdiction. Frank had run into a few Mounties in the past and knew them to be tough, capable hombres.

  But he was getting ahead of himself. They still had several days worth of sailing to go before they arrived in Alaska. He went to the tiny porthole of the cabin he had been assigned and looked out at the rain-lashed waters of the sound. He felt the faint vibration of the deck under his feet from the engines and heard their deep-throated rumble. That was reassuring. The engines were powerful enough so that they sent the vessel through the water at a steady pace. The ship pitched some—enough to make Frank a little queasy, in fact—but he thought he would get used to it without much trouble. He hoped so, anyway.

  But even if he did, he would still be mighty glad to have dry land under his feet again.

  He remembered looking at one of the maps in Captain Hoffman’s cabin. From Puget Sound, the ship turned west and headed through th
e Strait of Juan de Fuca, which led to the Pacific Ocean. Frank had seen the Pacific on numerous occasions, most recently during a dustup in the redwood country of northern California, but it was always an impressive sight, stretching out endlessly to the horizon. Frank looked out at the mountains that wore a gray shroud of clouds and rain and knew that he was bidding farewell to land for a few days.

  A knock sounded on his door, taking him a little by surprise. He turned away from the porthole and went to answer the summons. When he swung the door open, he found Fiona standing there. She had shed her coat and hat and wore an elegant traveling gown of some dark gray fabric that clung to her body.

  “Well, we’re on our way, Frank,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. I was just watching the shoreline fall behind us.”

  She lifted a bottle that had been partially concealed behind the folds of her dress. “I thought we might have a drink to commemorate our departure and the start of our new venture.”

  “It’s your venture, not mine,” Frank pointed out. “I’m just a hired hand.”

  “I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case. I could use a partner, Frank. I was considering making that offer to Mr. Trench, once I got to know him better, but since he’s gone…I’m making it to you.”

  “Me? In the mail-order bride business?” Frank managed not to laugh at such a loco notion. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea. I don’t have much of a head for business.”

  That was why he had firms of high-priced lawyers in San Francisco and Denver looking out for his interests, he thought…but he didn’t say that to Fiona.

  “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I’d handle all the business end of the operation. What I need is a man to make the details run smoothly, and I must say, I’ve been very impressed with the way you’ve handled everything. I’m sure that if we run into trouble, you’ll handle that, too.”

  “That’s what I figure, but you don’t need a partner for things like that, Fiona. You just need somebody to work for you, like Jacob was going to. Like I am.”

  “A man does a better job if he has a personal stake in something,” Fiona said as she moved closer to him and shut the cabin door behind her. “That’s why I thought we could have a drink and talk about extending your involvement.”

  He was slow as molasses sometimes, Frank thought as he suddenly realized why she had really come to his cabin. He said, “I’m still not sure that would be a good idea…”

  She was right in front of him now, only inches away. She laid her free hand on his chest and murmured in that intriguingly hoarse voice of hers, “I think it would be an excellent idea.”

  Frank was as human as the next hombre, and Fiona Devereaux was a beautiful woman with what appeared to be an excellent bottle of whiskey in her hand. He slid his left arm around her waist and pulled her closer.

  “Sailors have a saying,” she said as she tipped her head back to look up into his eyes. “Somewhere in the world, the sun is over the yardarm.”

  “I reckon I’ll drink to that,” Frank said. “Later.”

  Chapter 9

  Despite the rough seas, the Montclair handled the waves easily that first day. Frank went up on deck when the rain stopped that afternoon and saw that Captain Hoffman had ordered the crew to raise the sails. They were full and billowing as the ship tacked back and forth, running before the wind. The engines still chugged along, but they didn’t have to work as hard with the sails raised.

  Frank quickly discovered that being on deck where he could see the horizon rising and falling with each wave made his stomach feel worse. He was about to turn around and go below when Captain Hoffman hailed him from the bridge.

  “Mr. Morgan! How are you doing?”

  Frank raised a hand in a gesture that was more casual than he felt. “All right, I reckon,” he replied. “I’m just not that fond of the water.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Hoffman called down reassuringly. “We’ll make an old salt out of you!”

  Frank doubted that. He didn’t figure he’d be on board long enough to get too accustomed to the sea’s motion.

  He was on his way back down to the belowdecks corridor when he encountered Fiona coming up. She wore a grim look on her face, and Frank thought he knew why. He heard sounds of retching coming from behind many of the closed cabin doors.

  “Nearly all of the girls are sick as dogs,” Fiona said. “I don’t know what to do. I was on my way to ask the captain.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything that can be done,” Frank said. “You’ll just have to let them get over it.”

  “What if they don’t?”

  Frank shrugged. “Some will. The ones who don’t will just have to be sick all the way to Alaska. It won’t kill them…although they’re liable to wish they could go ahead and die before it’s over.”

  “Did you know it would be like this?”

  “I figured as much,” Frank admitted. “But I knew there was no way around it. Shoot, I don’t feel too good myself.”

  Fiona pressed a hand to her stomach. “Neither do I. In fact…oh, my God, Frank…”

  “There’s a bucket in your cabin,” he told her, “or you can hurry on topside and maybe make it to the railing.”

  “Ohhh…let’s try that.”

  Frank took hold of her arm, hustled her up onto the deck, and over to the railing. They reached it in time, and he looked away discreetly while she was sick. When she was finished, she straightened and pushed back several strands of dark hair that had fallen over her washed-out face. Frank patted her lightly on the back, for whatever good that did.

  “I’m not sure it’s worth it,” Fiona muttered.

  “You’ll feel differently once we get to Skagway and start out for Whitehorse.”

  “That may be even worse, just in different ways.”

  Frank couldn’t argue with that, so he just shrugged again.

  He helped her below to her cabin and told her, “If any of the girls want to come topside, let me know and I’ll come with them to make sure they’re all right.”

  “You think some of the sailors might try to bother them?”

  “I doubt it. Captain Hoffman runs a pretty tight ship.” Frank smiled wryly. “I was more worried about one of ’em falling overboard while they’re feeding the fishes.”

  Fiona looked like she wanted to punch him. “Don’t even talk about it,” she said.

  Frank skipped the midday meal, but by nightfall his stomach had settled down enough so that he was hungry again. When he checked with Fiona and the rest of the women, none of them wanted to eat. He was planning to rustle something for himself from their supplies when he ran into one of the other passengers in the corridor outside the cabins, a man outfitted in the rough but new clothes of a gold-hunter, a sure sign that he was making his first trip to Alaska.

  “You’re Mr. Morgan, aren’t you?” the young man said as he held out his hand. “I’m Peter Conway.”

  The youngster was trying to grow a beard, no doubt to make him look more like a sourdough, but he wasn’t having much luck with it. The blond whiskers were coming in sort of wispylike. He was tall and broad-shouldered, though, and his grip was strong as Frank shook with him.

  “Yeah, I’m Morgan. Call me Frank, though.”

  Conway grinned. “All right. I’m pleased to meet you, Frank. Everyone’s talking about you.”

  Frank raised an eyebrow. “Everyone?”

  “All the other prospectors, I mean. We heard about the things that happened in Seattle, before the boat sailed, how you were in those gunfights and that brawl with one of the ship’s officers.” Conway’s grin grew even wider. “And of course, we’ve all heard about those women traveling with you. We’ve been waiting to get a look at them, but they’re still shut up in their cabins.”

  “They’re pretty sick,” Frank said, “and they may stay that way the whole voyage.”

  “I hope not.”

  “You know they’re already spoken f
or, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, of course. They’re mail-order brides, right? But we’d still enjoy talking to them. Where we’re going, we may not see any respectable women for a long time.”

  “That’s true enough, I reckon,” Frank said. “Some of ’em might not mind socializing a little on the way, but that’s up to them. It’s my job to keep them from being bothered.”

  Conway nodded, his expression solemn now. “I understand, and I’ll pass the word along. Better yet, why don’t you come have supper with us? That is, if you don’t mind eating with a bunch of cheechakos.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s what they call us newcomers up there in the Klondike, or so I’ve heard. It’s some sort of Indian word.”

  Frank nodded in understanding. “Like a tenderfoot or a greenhorn back where I come from in Texas.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Anyway, we have plenty of food if you’d like to join us.”

  “Sure. I’m much obliged.” Frank would be glad for the company, and he didn’t think it would hurt anything to get to know some of his fellow passengers.

  He followed Conway up on deck. The wind was cold, but the rain had stopped and a group of gold-hunters had gathered around a Primus stove where they were cooking a pot of stew. Conway introduced Frank to the men. One of them said, “You’re the gunfighter they call The Drifter, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve read books about you, mister. Never thought I’d meet you, though.”

  “Those books are mostly made up,” Frank advised him. “And the hombres who write them have pretty wild imaginations.” He took a cup of the stew that Peter Conway handed to him. It smelled delicious.