by Gordon Ryan
“De nada, Señor Stromberg . . . , uh, Harold. We are glad to have your presence. Miguel,” the Don said, looking toward his son, “you will see to the household, sí?”
“Sí, Father. Good-night.”
After the older man had taken his leave, and before he left to secure the house, Miguel asked, “Do you have ample riding gear, Harold, boots and all?”
“Yes, thank you, Miguel. My father described the pleasures I might enjoy here, and I came prepared.”
“Excellent. Until tomorrow then. I bid you good-night.”
“Good-night, Miguel,” Harold said, “and thank you.”
Back in his room, Harold removed his shoes and loosened his tie, then sat on the bed to open the letter from his father. Strange, Harold thought, that Father didn’t simply give me the note before I left, or advise me to open it en route on the ship. He slit the envelope and unfolded the pages.
Dear Harold,
By now you will have been warmly welcomed by Don Sebastian. No one knows how to make a guest feel more at home than the Spanish nobility. You will no doubt be curious why I didn’t instruct you as to the contents of this note before you left home. That will become apparent quickly.
Harold, this new and bold venture upon which the Strombergs and many of those who will follow us will enter is a dramatic step. After a great deal of soul searching, I have come to the conclusion that the so-called Manifesto wrongly precludes faithful followers from living the Principle that the Prophet Joseph taught and died for. Whatever the reason (I see it as political), the church has taken a wrong turn that will lead to its ruination. It is clear, the President is being counseled by fools, and I would not be true to the understanding I have been given if I failed to act. I know there are many who share this vision of things and who will look to us for an example.
As we have discussed, the establishment of our new colony will once again allow us to re-institute the true church and the principles we should follow.
You know that for several years now, my other families have been secreted throughout Utah, and that your dear mother is the only one with whom I have been allowed to openly reside. But my love for my other wives and children has not diminished. I sense that you know and understand these things.
Young Katrina will make a fine addition to our family, and we are pleased to have her in our household. However, to establish a firm and lasting relationship with the Cardenas family, Don Sebastian and I have agreed to cement the family ties by arranging for the marriage of my eldest son to his daughter, Teresa, during your visit to Mexico. If you see the wisdom in this arrangement, you, my son, will commence the colony in Mexico as the husband of Teresa Maria Cardenas. By the time you receive this note, she will have been apprised of the arrangement, and, as is customary in their society, she will have been prepared to enter into the marriage, in accordance with the wishes of her father.
While this will no doubt come as a surprise to you, so quickly arranged and all, and so soon after your marriage to Katrina, it will also establish you as the heir apparent to the Stromberg line and the person with whom Don Sebastian will be most anxious to reach agreement.
Be assured, my son, that the Lord is pleased with our actions. Because it is only our desire to follow His will, we shall be blessed.
One final note: Do not under any circumstances advise Señor Cardenas or any of his household of your recent marriage to Katrina. We must move carefully so as not to offend Mexican or Catholic sensibilities. Proceed with due caution, and may your trip and mission to establish our colony be blessed with success.
Lovingly, Your father
P.S. I offer my deepest regrets that I will not be able to attend your wedding. Follow the established Catholic tradition, Harold, as would be proper and acceptable for a guest, and we shall arrange for the ultimate proper ordinance as quickly as possible.
In the west wing of the house, a light tap on Teresa’s door brought her small voice.
“Come in.”
Don Sebastian entered his daughter’s bedroom, where she had changed into her night clothes and robe.
“Well, my daughter. It is not so bad a proposition, is it?”
Teresa smiled at her father. She had been brushing her long, dark hair in the light of the kerosene lamp on her dresser, but she laid aside her brush to address her father.
“He has not the blood of our Spanish ancestors flowing through his veins, Father, but he seems a most respectable young man.”
“Well said, my daughter. And as to your appreciation of him, personally?”
“He is not unattractive, Father. I understand our interests and will of course obey your wishes.”
Don Sebastian moved close to his daughter, kissed her lightly on the forehead, and stepped back toward the door. Turning to admire her reflection in the mirror, he said lovingly, “You look so like your beautiful mother when she was at your age. Harold Stromberg is a most fortunate young man.”
Teresa Maria Cardenas would be a major player in the amalgamation of two powerful families. She knew she had no choice but to follow her father’s wishes and had in her heart hoped this Harold Stromberg would be someone she could love. Her assessment was that she could readily marry the handsome, young Yanqui who proposed to establish a new colony in Mexico. She would demonstrate her obedience to her father’s wishes and at the same time produce heirs to two dynasties. To do otherwise would be unthinkable and unbecoming the obedient daughter of Don Sebastian Cardenas. Besides, she was confident of her ability to retain in her relationship with her American husband the same kind of independence she had always enjoyed under the hand of her father. She had no fears.
In Salt Lake, Katrina Stromberg filled her days with reading, sewing clothes for the expected baby, and watching for mail from Harold. Only one letter had come since his departure, and that had been posted in San Francisco the day his ship left for Mexico.
Katrina’s mother, Jenny Hansen, was only marginally helpful in assisting Katrina to accept Harold’s absence and to help her to deal with the discomforting early stages of her pregnancy. Her mother’s counsel, understandable in the face of her own marriage, was simple: “You’re married now, Katrina. Think to your husband and plan for your family. All will be well.”
Living alone in the house Harold had rented was lonely, but Katrina frequently invited her younger sisters to stay with her, and on those occasions, Katrina reverted to her childhood and filled all their time together with fun and laughter.
Only in the quiet of the lonely nights did Katrina pour her heart out to Nana about the yearnings in her heart and the feelings she had that sometimes bordered on misery. Afraid of putting her eternal promises in jeopardy, she resisted the temptation to reflect on what she thought of as her “passing fancy,” for that is what she had taken to calling Tom’s journey through her life. She tried instead to dwell more on her forthcoming motherhood than on either Tom or Harold.
Another thing was that Katrina never felt entirely comfortable in her in-laws’ home. Though she was treated in a kindly manner, Father Stromberg had become increasingly outspoken with regard to his feelings about what he saw as the Prophet’s “lack of vision.” Katrina frequently felt a dark spirit in her husband’s parents’ home, and although she was unaware of the full purpose of Harold’s trip to Mexico, she had a feeling of foreboding that she found impossible to shake. She knew Father Stromberg’s constant criticism of the Prophet was not right.
Chapter 15
Nearly fifteen hundred miles up the Yukon River lay the small community of Ft. Yukon. Situated at the confluence of the Yukon and the Porcupine rivers, the settlement had been in existence since early Russian control of the territory, and had been an Athapascan Indian campground before that. A one day layover allowed Tom and John the opportunity to stretch their legs and buy some prospecting gear. Gold panning, or placer mining as it was technically called, didn’t actually require much in the way of hardware, and in fact many a miner got by with nothing more t
han the traditional pan and a rock hammer. Rumors of higher equipment costs in Dawson, most likely started by the merchants in Ft. Yukon who wanted the business, convinced John that they should outfit before they arrived.
Since it was early in August, there were no immediate concerns about their ability to reach Dawson before freeze-up, and the late summer weather was pleasant enough, even though Ft. Yukon was positioned precisely on the Arctic Circle. For most of the trip, Tom had lazed about on the deck of the sternwheeler, watching spectacular scenery roll before him, mixed with endless miles of flat tundra, which was nearly as mind numbing as the prairie had been, west of Kansas City.
How long ago that all seemed. It was almost inconceivable to Tom that he had experienced so many changes in just over one year, and melancholy frequently overtook him. John’s promptings for the lad to join him in “a few pints,” nearly persuaded him on a number of occasions to abandon his determination regarding alcohol. The fact that John drank nearly as heavily as Tom’s father had caused Tom some concern, but John’s drunkenness produced a jovial, rather than a combative personality.
The trip provided Tom ample opportunity to reflect on all that had happened to him since his hasty departure from Tipperary. The walk through Ireland, the ocean voyage to America, and everything since then, seemed as though it were a dream—especially the part of his memory dominated by the innocent face of a blonde, Norwegian young woman. When he allowed himself to think about it, the fact that she should be married to another man filled Tom with a feeling of despair. Because they were so painful, when thoughts of Katrina intruded, he made an almost desperate effort to drive them out of his mind. One thing he frequently thought of was that because he had thrown a punch at some mayor’s son-in-law in Ireland, he was now caught in the wilds of Alaska. He recalled as well the stories he had heard in Ireland of Irish and English alike being hauled before the courts and banished to the penal colony in Australia, merely for stealing a loaf of bread. At least he still had his freedom.
Before leaving Anvil, John explained to Tom that since transport out was impossible during winter, they would be in Dawson, or nearby, for the remainder of the year and well into ’97. Tom’s letter to Sister Mary, posted before they left Anvil, had been nearly as hard to write as the note he’d written the night he so quickly departed Salt Lake City. He left out the part about the law being after him, rationalizing that Father Scanlan had probably covered enough of that to ease Sister Mary’s concerns. Tom’s main purpose in writing the letter was to assure her that his departure had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over his job at Holy Cross or the treatment he had received there. Indicating “General Delivery, Dawson City,” as his forwarding address through the year, Tom felt he’d honored his commitment to Father Scanlan to keep his friends advised of his location.
Several hundred miles further up the Yukon lay Dawson City and an unknown future for Tom. Spending a year with Uncle John would be tolerable, he figured, and as he’d explained in a letter to his mother, posted at the same time as the one to Sister Mary, it would be good to spend time with her brother. Tom knew the news that he had located Uncle John would please his mother and that she would feel her son was in good hands.
As the riverboat approached Dawson, Tom thought someone had made a mistake in calling it a “city.” New York was a city. Dublin was a city. And even Salt Lake was a city. But the ramshackle cluster of wooden structures off the port bow of the riverboat would by no standard Tom knew qualify the place to be called a city. Within two hours of arriving on 19 August 1896, John Ryan had located Carmack, a grizzled, nearly toothless man with an almost skeletal physique, who had just arrived from his claim. John and Tom listened in astonishment as Carmack, his words whistling through his missing front teeth, breathlessly described his amazing gold strike of two days earlier. In town to file his claim, Carmack was heading immediately back to Fortymile, an even smaller cluster of shacks up the Klondike River, and from there to his claim. Ryan was welcome to join him, Carmack said, but he’d better file for a claim first, if he wanted to participate in the “find of the century,” as he called it.
Of course, Carmack added, within the first few hours, most of the claims on Rabbit Creek, where he’d made his find, had been taken and miners were already en route to join in the bonanza. There were, Carmack suggested, small tributaries of Rabbit Creek, itself only a slightly larger tributary of the Klondike, and even though the various other feeder streams probably wouldn’t be as rich as his claim on Rabbit, Carmack told John Ryan and his nephew that they most likely could scratch thousands of dollars from the sand and gravel laying in the stream beds.
And so it was that Tom Callahan, approaching his twenty-first birthday, and his uncle, John Ryan, these nine years out of Ireland, filed two claims on a small creek in the upper reaches of Yukon Territory, Canada. Each claim entitled them to five hundred feet on either side of the creek. Their two adjacent claims gave the Irish kinsmen one thousand feet of creek frontage to prospect. Not much was expected by either man, although John, having prospected for several years along tributaries of the Yukon, was aware that the color and concentration of Carmack’s gold was of extremely high quality. Tom, totally ignorant of anything having to do with prospecting, simply followed along with what John said and got caught up in the gold fever rampaging through Dawson and Fortymile, both of which had been emptied of miners racing for their share of the golden dream.
Arriving at the site, Tom and John quickly staked their claims, which they named Emerald One and Emerald Two. From Tom’s point of view, the location seemed fine, but John’s assessment left him dour. The claims immediately above and below Carmack’s had, indeed, been taken by early arrivals. The small creek which held Carmack’s Discovery claim, was surrounded by One Above, One Below, and Two Below, traditional names attached to the claims surrounding significant gold finds. Discovery and One Below belonged to Carmack as the original filer, who, by tradition, was entitled to two personal claims. One Above and Two Below went to his two Indian brothers-in-law.
As miners arrived in growing numbers during the closing days of August and early in September, the traditional names of the creeks were quickly changed. Rabbit Creek became Bonanza Creek, in honor of the find, and an adjacent creek, Thron-diuck, was tagged Klondike, a name by which the entire region would come to be called. Within a year, the Klondike gold strike would make the world’s headlines, and tens of thousands would scurry and scramble for their piece of Nirvana.
However, the most surprising development to the local miners, who raced to stake claims close to Discovery and One Below, would not be known to any of the parties involved until much later that year. It was the small, previously unnamed tributary, which flowed into Rabbit Creek, that eventually came to be called El Dorado. And the richest and most profitable claims, from which came wealth that exceeded even the wildest dreams of the most optimistic miners, were those in the side stream claims, the ones taken up by those who originally thought they were too late. It was in the sands and gravels of the El Dorado—the secondary stream to which Carmack directed John and Tom—that the gods of fortune had distributed their greatest concentrations of wealth.
Tom Callahan and John Ryan, uncle and nephew, by stroke of fate or fortune—or as Tom had told Katrina Hansen nearly a year earlier on the deck of the Antioch, intervention of the Lord—were sitting smack dab in the middle of the richest gold strike in history and would amass their fortunes before the rest of the world even knew of the find. But a backbreaking fall, winter, and spring would ensue before that occurred and they would be able to achieve their manifold destiny.
Katrina sat patiently in the foyer inside the main entrance to Holy Cross Hospital, watching as people bustled up and down the corridor. Finally, a woman dressed in nun’s habit approached and smiled at her.
“I’m Sister Mary Theophane. May I be of some assistance?”
Katrina stood, nervous and hesitant about how to proceed. “Sister, I would like to talk w
ith you privately, if possible.”
Escorting Katrina to a small room, off the main women’s wing, Sister Mary offered Katrina a seat and then sat down facing her, “Now, how may I help, dear?”
“Sister, I don’t really know how to begin . . . I . . .”
“Sister Mary reached for her hand, smiling at her, and studying her fresh, young face. “Are you with child, my dear?” she asked, gently.
Katrina began to blush, surprised by the inquiry. “Why, yes, yes, I am, Sister.”
Still holding Katrina’s hand, Sister Mary sought to reassure her. “You needn’t be afraid,” she said. “We’ll do all we can to see you through your pregnancy, and we’ll help you find a suitable home for your child, if that is your wish.”
Confused for a moment by Sister Mary’s offer, Katrina suddenly understood and had to stifle a laugh.
“Sister, I think I’ve misled you. I’m married and carrying my husband’s child. I don’t need, uh, I mean, I’m not . . . ,”
It was Sister Mary’s turn to blush. With an embarrassed look on her face, and holding her hand over her mouth, she at first didn’t know what to say. But after a moment she began to laugh and shake her head. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ve put my foot in it. I do hope you can forgive me. How may I help you?”
The misunderstanding served to lessen Katrina’s nervousness. She was surprised to find this tall woman in a nun’s habit could laugh at herself, and she relaxed somewhat.
