Winter Kill

by William W. Johnstone

  Fiona seemed awfully quiet. Frank went over to her and asked, “Are you all right? Did any of those varmints hurt you?”

  “No, I’m fine, Frank,” she told him. “Thank you for saving us. It seems like you’re always saving us.”

  He shrugged. “I set out to get you where you’re going, safe and sound.”

  “Because of that promise you made to Jacob Trench.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Well, we should reach Whitehorse in, what, about two more weeks?”

  He nodded. “If we’re lucky.”

  “Then you can wash your hands of us.”

  “I wouldn’t look at it like that,” Frank said with a frown. “Anyway, I’ve got a hunch we’ll both be staying there until spring. I don’t think we’ll be able to get back through those passes to Skagway. I’m not sure I want to, right away. If there’s somewhere else you’d like to go, back to Seattle, maybe, we’ll find another way, and then I can go back by myself.”

  It was Fiona’s turn to frown in puzzlement. “Why would you go back to Skagway if you didn’t have to? It was a terrible place.”

  “Smith’s there,” Frank said flatly. “He and I have some business to take care of.”

  “In other words, you’re going back to kill him.”

  “He needs killing.”

  “With all his hired guns, the odds may be twenty to one against you,” she pointed out.

  “Bad odds never stopped me before, when a thing needed doing.”

  “No,” Fiona said with a faint smile and a shake of her head, “I don’t expect that they did.”

  They made camp in the woods, not far from the cabin, which continued to burn until it was a pile of ashes and charred logs. They had two extra sleds and dog teams now, along with the supplies Smith’s men had brought with them. That would make the rest of the journey to Whitehorse easier. Not surprisingly, Smith’s dog teams were made up of excellent animals. Salty planned to split the animals up the next morning while hitching them to the sleds, so that each team would have several strong, experienced dogs on it.

  During the night, wolves came and dragged off the bodies of the kidnappers. None of them were anywhere to be seen when the gray light began to fill the sky. The howling had disturbed the women, but there was nothing that could be done about that. Nature was taking its course.

  Frank told Salty that they would get everything ready to go as quickly as they could. The old-timer nodded and said, “Yeah, I know why, too. We’re already pushin’ it where the weather’s concerned. Winter’s gonna be right on our tail when we get to Whitehorse, if it ain’t overtook us by then.”

  Salty knew a detour around Eight Mile Creek, but it took them several miles out of their way that morning. Once they were back on the main trail, they were able to make better time.

  By late in the day, they had begun the ascent to White Pass. The snow was deeper now, and Goldy and Stormy had more trouble making their way through it. Frank wished there had been a way to leave them behind and reclaim them later, but he knew he couldn’t have abandoned them to Soapy Smith. They had been through too much together.

  The group made camp on the approach to the pass, and despite the fire and the tents, it was a cold, miserable night. When they got ready to push on the next morning, everyone was quiet, conserving their energy for keeping warm, instead of talking.

  Frank didn’t like the looks of the sky, and neither did Salty. “If it comes another storm whilst we’re still on this side o’ Chilkoot, we’re gonna be in trouble, Frank.”

  “We can’t turn back. All we can do is keep going and hope for the best.”

  “Well, there’s at least one thing to be thankful for, I reckon.” The old-timer grinned. “The cold’s done froze the need for a drink right outta me. I don’t crave it no more, not even a little nip to warm my belly.”

  Frank returned the grin and slapped Salty on the shoulder. The old man had sure lived up to his name. He was plenty salty. He had plenty of sand, too.

  They reached White Pass at midday. It seemed like the top of the world to Frank as he stood there looking around at the vast, empty, snow-covered terrain falling away on all sides in a landscape filled with bleak beauty. But he knew that Chilkoot was even higher and would be more difficult to reach.

  The glacier leading to it was like a river of ice running through the mountains. Enough snow had fallen so that they weren’t traveling on bare ice, and Salty told them to be grateful for that. The hard snow was slick enough itself. It was frozen solid enough so that the horses’ hooves didn’t break through it except occasionally, but it still made for slippery footing.

  As Salty had warned them, the slope was steep in places. The women had to get off the sleds and walk, their hobnailed boots crunching in the snow as they helped push the sleds along. Frank led the horses instead of riding. The going was slow, and while they weren’t above the timberline, they were high enough so that only a few trees grew here and there. It was an almost colorless world, filled with the white of the snow and ice, the gray of rocks matched by the color of the threatening sky.

  Frank could see Chilkoot Pass ahead of them and a little to the right, but it didn’t seem to come any closer during the day. He wasn’t the sort of man to be discouraged, but as they made camp that night under some sparse trees, he wondered if they were ever going to make it. He wondered, too, if he would ever be warm again. He wore one of the thick parkas now, like all the rest of the travelers, but all it did was blunt the force of the frigid winds that always seemed to blow up here.

  Hundreds, maybe even thousands of men had traveled through this frozen hell in search of gold. He wouldn’t have done it for that, Frank knew. He had spent a lot of years being poor, so his attitude wasn’t the result of knowing that he had more money now than he could ever spend. He remembered quite vividly being hungry and penniless and not knowing where his next meal was coming from, if it came at all. And even knowing that, he thought that the gold just wasn’t worth it. He was here because he had given his word, that was all.

  But everyone was different, he reminded himself. These young women were willing to travel thousands of miles and endure all these hardships so they could marry men they had never met. Men they didn’t know and didn’t love. Maybe they would grow to love their new husbands, but they couldn’t be sure of that. Why would they do such a thing?

  There would be as many different answers to that question as there were women, he realized. And he supposed that was true of the men who came here to hunt for gold, too.

  The next day was even colder and grayer as they trudged on toward Chilkoot Pass. Salty kept a wary eye on the sky, and so did Frank. But except for a few flakes that spit down briefly, no more snow fell.

  The trail became even steeper, and their pace slowed to a crawl. The dogs were exhausted but continued to pull valiantly. As Salty put it, “Them mutts got more heart than I thought they would. A whole heap more!”

  Frank harnessed Dog to the lead team so that the big cur could add his strength to that of the others. With maddening slowness, they climbed toward Chilkoot Pass. Stormy and Goldy struggled even more than the dogs, and several times, Frank thought that the horses weren’t going to make it. The bleak prospect occurred to him that he might have to shoot them to put them out of their misery if they couldn’t go on, rather than leaving them behind to freeze to death.

  When the trail leveled off somewhat, they camped for a second night on the glacier. “Don’t think it gets any easier from here on,” Salty warned them. “The worst stretch is still up ahead, betwixt here and the pass.”

  Frank didn’t see how the going could get any tougher than it already was, but he refrained from saying that. There was no point in tempting fate.

  No one slept much anymore. It was too cold for that. They simply lay in their robes and blankets and shivered. As a result, everyone was exhausted. When they gathered around the stove for coffee in the morning, their faces were gaunt and haggard. Th
ey looked like corpses, Frank thought, and he knew he looked the same. He felt like he had aged a year in the past few days.

  When the time came to push on, Marie sank down in the snow and said, “I cannot. I simply cannot go another step. Leave me here.”

  “We’re not going to do that,” Fiona told her. “We’re not going to leave without you or anybody else.” Anger suddenly made her voice even hoarser than usual. “It’s bad enough I lost the two in the shipwreck. You’re all going to Whitehorse so I can collect my money! Get on your feet, damn it!”

  Her mittened hands clenched into fists, as if she were about to spring forward and club Marie back to her feet. Frank put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Take it easy, Fiona,” while Meg went over to Marie and bent down to take hold of her arm.

  “Let me help you, honey,” she said. “We can make it. We’ll just work together.”

  Fiona turned and pressed her face against the front of Frank’s parka as she began to sob. “It’s just so cold,” she said. “So cold. And I’m so tired.”

  Nobody could argue with that. They all felt exactly the same way.

  After a few minutes, though, Fiona calmed down and stopped crying, and Meg was able to convince Marie not to give up. They resumed their trek through the somber light.

  Salty was right, of course: The approach to Chilkoot Pass was the worst of all. Frank hung on grimly to the reins and did what he could to help the horses struggle up the slope. The dogs strained against their traces. The women clung to the sleds and pushed them along. An icy wind rushed down the glacier and pummeled them.

  Frank had faced death more times than he could remember, had heard bullets whistle past his ears probably hundreds of times, and yet he had never felt as close to the grave as he did during that long, gray morning as they climbed toward the pass. He was numb in body, mind, and soul, and his brain had slowed to the point that all he could think about was holding on to the reins and putting one foot in front of the other.

  He was in such bad shape that he didn’t even notice at first when the slope underneath him changed. He had taken several steps before he realized that he was going down, not up.

  “Salty!” he shouted over the wind as he came to a sudden stop. “Salty!”

  “Yeah, I know!” the old-timer’s voice came back to him. “I know, Frank! We’re there!”

  They had reached the top of Chilkoot Pass.

  Chapter 30

  The ordeal wasn’t over, of course. Far from it. But the pass represented a milestone to Frank and to the others. They had more reason to hope now that they could actually make it to Whitehorse and find the destinies that awaited them there.

  But first they had to get down from this frozen, windswept pass.

  Frank, Salty, and Pete Conway unhitched the dogs from the sleds and tied ropes from each sled to the next in line. Then Salty used the harnesses to attach about half the dogs to the last sled.

  “That’s just for the first part, ’cause it’s the steepest and slickest,” the old-timer explained. “When we get lower, we’ll hitch the teams back on normal-like and put chains on the runners to slow ’em down, so they won’t overrun the dogs.”

  That made sense to Frank. He said, “You’d better let me go down first with the horses. If they slip and start to fall, they won’t take anybody else with them.”

  “Nobody but you,” Meg protested.

  “I’ll be all right,” he assured her. “Salty, how far are we talking about?”

  “Worst of it’s about a quarter of a mile,” the old sourdough said. “Be mighty careful, Frank. I’d hate to think about havin’ to go the rest o’ the way to Whitehorse without ye.”

  Frank looked around at everyone, nodded, and then tightly grasped the reins, Stormy’s in his left hand, Goldy’s in his right. He stepped out onto the slope again. The horses hesitated, clearly uncertain whether they wanted to try it, but they had gone into danger and battle so many times with Frank, their gallant hearts wouldn’t let them quit now. They stepped onto the hard-packed snow.

  It took Frank close to an hour to lead the two horses down the worst of the slope, one careful step at a time. But at the end of that time, they moved onto relatively level ground and he felt relief flood through him. Looking up at the pass, he pushed back the hood of his parka, took off his hat, and waved it over his head to let the others know that he had made it all right. A few minutes later, he saw the sleds begin to make the descent, followed by the dogs and the other members of the party.

  Getting everybody down took awhile, but by late in the afternoon, they were all together again. Salty suggested that they make camp and wait for morning to continue on toward Whitehorse.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” he said, “and we still got some tricky slopes in front of us. We’ll need to be able to see where we’re goin’.”

  No one complained, and while they were all still exhausted, the air of gloom and despair that had hung over the previous camp seemed to have evaporated. Frank thought that Fiona was still a little out of sorts, but everyone else seemed to have at least a trace of optimism about them again. Some of the young women chattered amongst themselves, Conway and Jessica sat near the fire with her head resting on his shoulder, Salty tossed dried fish to the dogs, and Meg came over to Frank to ask, “Are we going to start standing guard at night again?”

  He smiled. “Salty and I never stopped. We’ve been switching off. We just didn’t tell anybody. We figured y’all could use all the rest you could get.”

  “That’s not fair! I would have taken my turn.”

  “We’ll probably start doing it again like we were on the other side of the pass, even though I don’t think we have to worry about Smith anymore. We’re too far from Skagway now. It wouldn’t be worth his time and trouble to come after us.”

  “You can’t be sure of that, though,” Meg said.

  “Nope. That’s why we’ll keep on standing guard until we get to Whitehorse and get you ladies matched up with your husbands.”

  “Oh. Yeah, there’s still that to do, isn’t there?”

  Frank said, “You don’t sound very happy about the prospect.”

  A forlorn note crept into Meg’s voice as she said, “I guess I never really thought about what it would mean. I agreed to spend the rest of my life with a man I don’t even know. What if he’s awful, Frank?”

  “That’s a chance you take with any marriage, I reckon. Spending time with somebody when you’re courting isn’t like spending the rest of your life with ’em. You may think you know what’s in another person’s heart and mind, but chances are, you don’t. Not all of it, anyway.”

  “I know you,” she said softly.

  “You know I’m good with a gun and I can fight. I don’t spook easy. That’s about it.”

  “Not really. I know you love Dog and those horses of yours. You were kind to Mr. Jennings, you respect Salty, and you’ve tried to help Pete. You’ve risked your life to save ours over and over again. You’re brave, and you’re a man of your word.”

  He laughed. “You’d have me blushing, I reckon, if I was that sort of fella.”

  “But you’re not. And I knew that, too.”

  “There’s something else about me you didn’t mention…I’m more than twice your age.”

  “Some people are born old,” she said with a smile. “I think I’m one of them.”

  Frank recalled Diana Woodford, back in Buckskin, Nevada. She had shown some romantic interest in him, too, not long after he had pinned on the badge as Buckskin’s marshal, and she was about Meg’s age. Frank had nipped that in the bud and had never even thought about doing otherwise.

  There was something about Meg Goodwin, though…some quality of maturity that Diana had never possessed. Maybe she was right. Maybe some people were older than their actual years.

  But it didn’t matter, because Meg was promised to somebody else. And like she had said, Frank was a man of his word and believed that other people should honor their pro
mises, too.

  “I’m sure everything will be fine once you get to Whitehorse and get to know the fella who sent for you,” he said. “You’re just a mite nervous because it’s all going to be strange to you.”

  She looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Yes, I’m sure that’s all it is. Just nerves.”

  She didn’t sound like she believed it, though.

  For the next few days, Meg seemed to be avoiding him, and Frank found himself regretting that. He enjoyed her company and admired her. She was better on the trail than most women he had known. She handled her sled and team better than Conway did his, in fact, and she was a lot more confident than Lucy or Ginnie, who had been drafted to steer the other two sleds.

  Fiona warmed up to Frank again now that Meg wasn’t spending so much time with him. Fiona had been jealous of Meg, Frank realized, even though she hadn’t had any real reason to feel that way. Frank knew he wasn’t ever going to settle down with either of them. But Fiona found some excuse to talk to him nearly every time they stopped to rest the dogs.

  As Salty had said, once they made several more rather steep descents, the terrain got much easier. There were still hills to either climb or avoid, depending on how big they were, but the dogs could handle them and seemed to have a new lease on life, running effortlessly for hours at a time with the sleds gliding over the snow behind them. It would still take days to reach Whitehorse simply because of the distances involved, but now Frank felt that they had a good chance to make it…if only the weather cooperated.

  But then, when Salty said they were only two more days from the Canadian settlement, the wind began to pick up during the night and by morning was blowing fiercely out of the north. It brought snow with it, a thick, blinding white cloud. The wind was blowing so hard that it seemed to be snowing sideways, Frank thought as he struggled to help the women take the tents down before they blew away.