Winter Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  Hoffman nodded. “Perhaps it would be best if I spoke to my officers and had them pass the word to the men that they should avoid the activities. That way, there’ll be no chance of anything going wrong.”

  “Do whatever you think you should, Captain,” Frank said.

  It was possible that the whole thing would have to be canceled, he thought. The sky was still overcast, and there were occasional squalls of cold rain and sleet. The Montclair had no ballroom or salon. It was a working ship, transporting people and cargo, and it didn’t make pleasure cruises or cater to wealthy passengers.

  But just before sunset, the clouds thinned and the chilly wind began to die down. It looked like the weather was going to cooperate, at least as much as it could at this time of year and at this latitude.

  Soon after dinner, Frank led Fiona and the young women up on deck. Lanterns had been placed on the hatch covers, and while the setting wasn’t exactly what anyone would call festive, it had a certain air of celebration about it.

  Conway, Neville, and the rest of the cheechakos were waiting with smiles of anticipation on their faces. They had scrubbed their faces as well, some of them had shaved, and a few had even put on suits. Conway was one of them. As the young women looked over the group of men, Jessica Harpe giggled and said under her breath to Meg Goodwin, “Look at that big blond one. Isn’t he handsome?”

  Fiona overheard the comment and said, “Don’t get too attached to any of these men, ladies. Remember you have husbands-to-be waiting for you in the Klondike.”

  Conway stepped forward and gave an awkward little bow. “Mrs. Devereaux, ma’am,” he said. “Ladies. Thank you for joining us this evening.”

  “Thank you for the invitation, Mr. Conway,” Fiona said in a cool, formal voice. “May I present Miss Goodwin, Miss Harpe, Miss Donnelly, Miss Boulieu…”

  Fiona went down the line, introducing all the women. Conway, who seemed to have taken on the leadership of the cheechakos despite his youth, responded by introducing all of the men, starting with himself and Neville. Frank stood off to the side, smiling to himself at the stiffness of it. One good thing about getting older. He had long since passed the point where he felt uncomfortable around women. He knew better than to think that they could no longer hold any surprises for him, but at least all those courtship rituals didn’t mean much to him anymore.

  “Charlie here plays the fiddle,” Conway said, gesturing toward one of the older prospectors. “He’s going to provide some music, if you ladies would care to dance.”

  “Are you asking?” Jessica said.

  “Well…I reckon I am. Would you care to dance with me, ma’am?”

  She held out a hand to him. “I’d love to, thank you.”

  The fiddler grinned and took out his bow. He lifted the instrument to his shoulder, tucked his chin over it, and began to saw on the strings. The notes were a little harsh and discordant, but they were music, the only real melody likely to be found on this rugged ship steaming northward toward Alaska.

  Conway took Jessica into his arms, being careful to leave some space between their bodies, and they launched into a rough waltz. The rest of the women paired up with the cheechakos and began to dance as well. There were more men than women, so some of the gold-hunters had to wait their turn.

  Fiona sidled over to Frank. “What about you?” she asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Are you much of a dancer, Frank?”

  “Well…not really. I can manage not to step on a gal’s feet if I try hard enough, but that’s about it.”

  Fiona took his hand. “I don’t believe you. I’ve seen how you move. You have a natural, fluid grace about you.”

  “Maybe when I’m drawing a gun…”

  “Nonsense. Come on. We can’t let these young people have all the fun.”

  She wasn’t all that much older than the other women, he thought, but he supposed that being a widow, she felt more mature. He went along with what she wanted, taking her in his arms and twirling her around the open area of the deck that served as a dance floor.

  The fiddler seemed to be tireless, going from one raucous tune to the next with scarcely a pause and stamping his foot in time to the music. The young women switched back and forth among the cheechakos so that all the men got a chance to swing them around the deck. Sometimes one of the gold-hunters would get impatient and cut in on another while a dance was going on. Frank thought a time or two that this might cause a ruckus, but the men seemed to know that if a fight broke out, the impromptu social would be over. They restrained any irritation they felt.

  When the fiddler finally had to take a break and rest a little, the men and women stood around talking. The cheechakos seemed to enjoy that almost as much as the dancing. After a while, the fiddler was ready to go again, and as he lifted the fiddle and bow, the men claimed their partners.

  The fiddler had scraped out only a couple of notes, though, when he abruptly stopped playing. Frank turned toward him to find out what was wrong, and saw more than a dozen members of the ship’s crew striding along the deck toward them. The sailors had an air of grim determination about them.

  “Oh, no,” Fiona breathed beside Frank. “I was afraid this might happen.”

  “I was worried about it, too,” he told her. “Captain Hoffman had a talk with me and promised he’d keep his boys in line, but I reckon they didn’t really listen.”

  He wasn’t all that surprised. Having women around usually made it hard for lonesome hombres to concentrate on anything else.

  Frank stepped forward, getting between the sailors and the cheechakos. He lifted a hand to stop them and said, “Hold it right there, fellas. This is a private get-together.”

  “Why should it be?” one of the sailors demanded belligerently. “We got rights, too, you know.”

  “Yeah, and you can’t toss us all overboard, mister!” another man added.

  Frank’s jaw tightened. No one was really mourning Brewster’s death, but they hadn’t forgotten about it, either.

  “Captain Hoffman gave you orders to steer clear,” Frank said. “If you’re off duty, I reckon you’d better go back to your quarters. If you’re supposed to be on watch, you’re neglecting your jobs.”

  “Just one dance,” the first sailor insisted. “That’s all we’re askin’.” He grinned at the young women. “How about it, ladies? Wouldn’t you rather dance with some real men, instead of these gold-crazy landlubbers?”

  Neville stepped forward, clenching his fists and bristling with anger. “You can’t talk about us like that,” he snapped. “At least we’ve got some ambition. We won’t spend the rest of our lives swabbing some deck!”

  This was turning into just the sort of confrontation Frank had hoped to avoid. He held up both hands this time and said, “There’s no need for trouble here. You sailors go on about your business—”

  “The hell with that!” one of the crewmen exclaimed. “I want to dance!”

  He rushed forward, obviously intending to grab the nearest young woman. That was Jessica Harpe. Frank would have intercepted the sailor, but he didn’t get the chance. Pete Conway sprang in front of Jessica and met the sailor with a hard punch that knocked him off his feet and sent him skidding across the deck on his butt.

  With howls of outrage, the other sailors surged forward, ready to fight. The cheechakos did likewise, pushing the young women aside. Dancing and socializing were forgotten. The men on both sides were ready to brawl instead.

  “Frank!” Fiona cried. “You said you wouldn’t let this happen!”

  “I’m not,” he snapped. He palmed out his Colt, pointed it at the night sky, and squeezed off two rounds.

  The pair of shots made everyone on deck freeze in their tracks. The reports were loud, even out here on the vast, open sea.

  “Everybody hold it!” Frank shouted. “The next man who throws a punch will answer to me!”

  He didn’t actually say he would shoot the next man who tried to hit somebody,
but the sailors and the gold-hunters all seemed to take it that way, which was exactly what Frank intended. He knew they were all aware of his reputation as a gunman, so he figured he might as well take advantage of that fact.

  One of the sailors pointed at the cheechakos and yelled, “They started it!”

  “The hell we did!” Neville responded. “Pete was just protecting Miss Harpe from you lugs!”

  “I can take care of myself, thank you!” Jessica put in, clearly annoyed. But when she turned to look at Conway, a smile appeared on her face. “But you really were gallant, Mr. Conway.”

  That made the big youngster grin from ear to ear.

  Captain Hoffman came stalking up from belowdecks, followed by the first mate. The sailors started to scatter before Hoffman reached them.

  “Get to your posts!” he shouted. “Right now, by God!” He came to a stop in front of Frank and glared at him. “I assume you fired those shots, Mr. Morgan?”

  “I figured that was better than letting these fellas beat each other half to death,” Frank said as he opened the revolver’s cylinder. He reached under his sheepskin coat and took a couple of shells from the loops on his belt to replace the ones he had fired.

  “You said there wouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “I said I’d handle it if there was,” Frank corrected. He finished reloading and snapped the cylinder closed. “It’s handled. You don’t see men fighting all over the deck, do you?”

  The group of sailors had dispersed, even the man Pete Conway had knocked down. The young women and the gold-hunters were standing separately, with the fiddler in the middle looking a little forlorn as he held his fiddle and bow at his sides. From the looks of things, his services wouldn’t be needed anymore tonight.

  “I think all the passengers should return to their accommodations now,” Hoffman said tersely.

  “So do I,” Fiona added. Her eyes glittered with anger as she looked at Frank.

  He wasn’t sure why everybody was blaming him. He had warned them of the possible consequences. It had been their own decision to go along with the idea.

  Fiona started herding the brides below to their cabins. Muttering with disappointment, the cheechakos withdrew to the other end of the deck. Some of them had cabins, but many of them had paid only for deck space, so they were spending the voyage outdoors, under tarps they used as makeshift tents.

  “We’ll reach Skagway in two more days,” Hoffman said to Frank. “I hope you can keep a lid on this trouble until then.”

  “I intend to,” Frank said. “But again, it was your men who disobeyed orders and bulled in where they weren’t supposed to be.”

  The captain sniffed and turned away, refusing to acknowledge that his crewmen were the ones who had caused the trouble.

  Conway came up and said, “I’m sorry, Frank. I suppose I shouldn’t have punched that fellow. I couldn’t just stand by and let him grab Miss Harpe like that, though.”

  “He didn’t actually grab her,” Frank pointed out. “You didn’t give him the chance.”

  “Yes, but he was going to. You could tell that.”

  The young man was right. And if Conway hadn’t walloped the sailor, Frank thought, he probably would have. That really would have set off a fracas.

  “Do you think we’ll get a chance to spend any more time with the ladies before we get to Skagway?” Conway went on in a plaintive voice.

  Frank clapped a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know, son. Probably not, if Mrs. Devereaux has anything to say about it, and she’s in charge of them. But you got those good memories you were talking about, the ones you can hang on to when you’re wondering why the hell you came to Alaska in the first place.”

  “I suppose so,” Conway said with a smile. “I just hope that’s enough.”

  Frank did, too, but mostly he hoped that the rest of the voyage to Skagway would pass peacefully.

  Chapter 12

  He should have known better.

  Even before he climbed out of his bunk the next morning, Frank knew something was wrong. The ship was pitching around more than it had been earlier in the voyage, and he could hear the wind howling. He got up, swallowing the queasiness that tried to take hold in his stomach, and pulled on his clothes, including the sheepskin coat. Then he headed for the deck to look for Captain Hoffman and find out what was going on.

  His boots slipped as soon as he stepped outside, and he had to grab hold of the side of the door to keep from falling. A thin, almost invisible layer of ice coated the deck. More sleet pelted down, making little thudding sounds against his hat as he started cautiously across the desk toward the stairs leading up to the bridge.

  He went up them carefully, and when he reached the top he saw Hoffman at the wheel, huddled there in a slicker and rain hat. “Captain!” Frank called.

  Hoffman looked back over his shoulder in surprise. “Mr. Morgan!” he exclaimed. “You’d better get back to your cabin! This isn’t fit weather for you to be out!”

  “It doesn’t look like fit weather to be sailing in!”

  “Don’t worry about the Montclair! She can handle a little blow like this!”

  If Hoffman thought this was a little blow, Frank would have hated to see what the captain considered a major storm. The wind lashed viciously at the ship, and the angry waves seemed to be trying to toss it straight up into the sky. The sails were lowered, so the Montclair was running on its engines alone. Frank thought the wind would probably rip the sails to shreds if they were raised.

  He leaned closer to Hoffman and asked, “We’re not that far from the coastline, are we? Maybe you should make a run for shore so we can ride out the storm there!”

  “And risk being battered to pieces on some rocks?” Hoffman shook his head. “I know what I’m doing, Morgan! We’ll be all right! This squall will blow itself out before the day’s over!”

  Frank didn’t believe that. It looked to him like the first of the winter storms had arrived a few weeks earlier than Hoffman expected it.

  But he had to admit that he was no sailor, and certainly no expert where the sea was concerned. Hoffman had made this Seattle-to-Skagway run before. He ought to know what he was doing.

  “All right!” Frank said. “But if there’s anything I can do to help…”

  “Just go below, dry off, and don’t worry! We’ll be fine!”

  As the day went on, though, it began to look like they would be anything but fine. The storm continued unabated. If anything, its ferocity seemed to grow stronger. Fiona and all the young women were sick again, as were some of the cheechakos. The ones who had purchased deck space were allowed belowdecks to huddle miserably in the corridors, because they would have frozen to death and wound up ice-covered corpses if they had remained topside.

  Frank weathered the storm better than most of the landlubbers. His stomach was a little unsettled, but he never completely lost his appetite. He wound up taking his meals in the officers’ mess, at Captain Hoffman’s invitation. The officers expressed confidence in the captain and in the Montclair’s ability to handle this rough weather, but Frank thought he saw worry lurking in their eyes.

  It was the same sort of concern he had seen more than twenty years earlier at Fort Lincoln, in the eyes of some of the junior officers of the Seventh Cavalry as they were about to follow Colonel George Armstrong Custer into Indian country. Frank had been passing through, headed in the opposite direction, and he remembered thinking that he wouldn’t have gone with those soldier boys for all the money in the world.

  Now he had no choice but to put his trust in Captain Rudolph Hoffman. Hoffman was the only man who could get them where they were going.

  The seas were still extremely rough that evening, but the wind had died down slightly. Sleet showers still lashed the vessel and added to the layer of ice that had formed on the deck. Frank slept only fitfully, and during the night he heard groans coming from some of the other cabins. The women were suffering a lot more than he was, but there was noth
ing he could do for them.

  The next morning, he sought out Hoffman again and found the captain in his cabin, pouring over the charts. “Do you still think we’ll reach Skagway today?” Frank asked bluntly. He knew from looking at the maps that they would have to sail through Glacier Bay and then up a long inlet to reach the port city, and he hoped that once they made it to the bay, the water would be calmer.

  “I…I don’t know,” Hoffman replied, and Frank didn’t like what he heard in the captain’s voice. The confidence and decisiveness that had been there earlier were gone now. “I’ve never seen a gale quite this bad. So early, I mean.”

  Frank had a feeling Hoffman meant he had never encountered a storm this bad before, period. That wasn’t good.

  “You do know where we are, don’t you?”

  Hoffman got to his feet and glared angrily at Frank. “Of course I know where we are. Taking readings has been difficult because of the weather, but I’ve sailed these waters more than a dozen times. We’ll be fine, Mr. Morgan, and the best thing you can do is go back to your cabin and wait. If there’s anything you need to know, I’ll make sure you do.”

  “All right,” Frank said, his face and voice grim. “I don’t mean any offense, Captain, but I promised an old friend that I’d get Mrs. Devereaux and those young ladies safely to their destination. I intend to do that.”

  “So do I, Mr. Morgan. So do I.”

  Frank went back to his cabin, and paused in front of the door to shake off some of the ice pellets that clung to his hat and coat before he went in. While he was standing there, the door to Fiona’s cabin opened. She peered out at him, her face haggard with strain.

  “We’re not going to make it, are we, Frank?” she asked.

  “I reckon we will,” he replied, trying not to sound as worried as he felt. “I just talked to the captain, and he says this is nothing to worry about.”

  “Of course he says that! He’s not going to admit that we never should have left Seattle this late in the season!”