Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine

by Caroline Starr Rose

  “There you are.” Mel wraps his arm around my shoulder. “Please don’t run off like that again. You had me worried.”

  An hour ago I would have asked what did he care. I would have bellyached. But now I lean hard into him. “If you’re worried, why are you just standing here?”

  “I figured you’d cool off soon, that all I had to do was wait somewhere near the front of town.” Mel turns my shoulders so I face him. His cap is dirty. His hair’s all over the place. “Know what I should have told you earlier? That I’m glad to see you. I’ve missed you since I’ve been gone.”

  We got no money to speak of, no tent, no blankets. Could be the pie in my belly, but in this moment here with Melvin, things don’t seem so bad. There’s gotta be a way for us to figure out a plan that gets us both to the Klondike.

  “First thing we’ll do is find out when the next steamer leaves for Seattle,” Mel says.

  Like that, Mel’s smashed my hope to pieces. So he still wants to send me home. Or maybe he aims to go back, too. I don’t want nothing to do with it, but I ain’t gonna fight right now.

  “We’ve got no money for our fare.” I ain’t gonna show him Pa’s watch. That’s for when we’re desperate, and we ain’t there quite yet. Anyhow, Mel don’t need to know that we could get some cash to make it home, because home’s not where we’re headed.

  “It’s not our fare we need”—Mel don’t blink at all—“only yours.”

  I pull away, almost bump into some folks who cross the street. “You just said you were happy to see me.”

  “That’s right. And I’d be happier if I knew you were safe.”

  “With Pa,” I say. I don’t want him for a minute to forget that home ain’t a safe place. Sure, I’ve learned to watch my words and avoid Pa when he’s fired up, but where’s the ease in that? “I ain’t going anywhere without you, and I mean it. I’d rather risk whatever’s ahead than turn around.”

  “I don’t have money,” Mel says, “or gear.”

  I see them men who wander Dyea’s streets, carrying tents and crates of food, set with everything they’ll ever need. “I know. I ain’t pretending it won’t be hard, but the gold’s gonna make life right for us. We ain’t never gonna have another chance like this.”

  “I don’t want to put you in danger, Jasper, don’t you understand?” Mel’s forehead puckers. “You’ve had more heartache than a boy should ever see.”

  Mama left us. And then there’s Pa. There ain’t one word that speaks of all the ways he’s changed these last two years, from a man who was dependable to one who sometimes don’t even get out of bed.

  “Do you have to decide about the steamer this afternoon? Can’t it wait?” I pat Mama’s washboard strapped to my back. Mel needs to see I can earn some money. “A laundry would buy us supper, and you could use some freshening up.”

  How I wish I still had that red union suit I packed, the underdrawers that were Mel’s very own. I’d love to hand them over and see his face. What better sort of partner could Mel take to the Klondike than a brother who helps him in his time of need?

  Mel’s filthy, that’s for sure, but he ain’t the only one who could use a laundry service. Dyea’s a week out of Seattle, for those of us who came by steamer. When you’re in a new place and tired from your travels, there ain’t nothing better than a fresh pair of trousers. Ten cents for a spiffed-up pair, well, I’d say that’s a steal.

  “All right,” Mel finally agrees. “No more steamer talk until tomorrow. I’ll try to find someone who might let us bunk with him tonight.”

  Oh, that suits me fine.

  We split up at the nearest camp. Folks have spread their tents on every open piece of ground, which ain’t nothing more than sloppy mud. I ask around for a bucket I can borrow to start my work, but don’t find one. I keep at it until I see a fellow who sits outside his tent, picking his teeth with a pocketknife, an overturned bucket his stool.

  “Can I use that pail of yours?”

  “Using it myself,” he says.

  He don’t exactly say no. Could be I have a chance. I spy his mining outfit stacked against his tent and covered with a faded piece of canvas. An idea comes to me. “Those your things?”

  He nods.

  I drop my voice to a whisper. “Because I seen some fellows mighty interested in what’s under there.”

  That makes him move. As soon as he’s turned the corner, that bucket’s in my hands.

  “I don’t see no one,” he says when he comes back, “and furthermore—hey, what are you doing?”

  I’ve got both arms wrapped around his bucket. “Can’t I use it for some laundry?”

  “Give it over.” His eyes say he ain’t kidding, so does the pocketknife he’s tucked in the waistband of his trousers.

  I swallow hard. “If you let me borrow it, I’ll wash up your shirt.”

  “My shirt?” he says. “If you don’t want trouble, you’ll wash all my clothes.”

  I can work with that. Since I lost my piece of soap on the Queen, I tell the fellow I’ll wash his blanket, too, if he lets me borrow some. I do a right fine job of it. The trousers lose their caked-on mud, the shirt is almost white again, and the blanket, well, at least it smells better than before. Though I talk up my laundry to every fellow who walks past, the rain comes and goes in waves. I guess no one wants to hang clean laundry out to dry just to have it soaked again. There ain’t no one besides the man with the bucket who’s gonna use my services today.

  Before I give the fellow his clothes, I snap off a piece of soap and stash it in my pocket. Not a lot, just the bit I would have used if I’d had other customers. I ain’t one cent richer, but at least there’s that.

  I got nothing else to do but wait for Mel at the camp where we split.

  By the time he finds me, it’s almost nine o’clock. Only a trail of sunlight lingers in the sky. Mel’s slicked his hair and dressed in the clothes he brought from home. Oh, it makes me itch in my wet and dirty things. “Did you make some money?” he asks.

  “Nope. Did you find a place for us to stay the night?”

  I hate how Mel shakes his head, like my future’s certain, and it’s in Kirkland.

  Then I remember Mr. Shaw. “I met a man at the meal tent earlier. Maybe he’d let us bunk with him.” Mr. Shaw told me this town’s best to leave from. Maybe he can talk to Mel, help him understand that going on from Dyea’s a good thing.

  It ain’t too easy to see on account of twilight and the rain that’s started up again, but I can just make out a lantern that hangs from the meal tent’s entryway. Mr. Shaw ain’t at the table where I left him, but when I say his name and describe them pork chop sideburns, the cook knows exactly who I mean.

  “Shaw stops in when he comes to town to gather more of his gear,” the cook tells me. “You’ll find him a few tents down.”

  Me and Mel go from tent to tent. We call out his name. At last a tent flap opens. “I see you found your brother,” he says.

  I nod. “It’s wet out here. Could we come in?”

  Mr. Shaw spits a wad of chewing tobacco near my feet. “Don’t you got your own tent?”

  Me and Mel look at each other. How exactly do we explain all that’s happened today?

  Mr. Shaw sighs. “Get on in here.” Oh, are we relieved. Apart from a single candle set on a leather trunk, it’s real dark inside. The whole tent’s almost filled up when we stand together. “So where’s your gear?”

  “It went missing in Skagway,” Mel says.

  “What’s that?”

  Mel ain’t making himself clear. “It was stolen.”

  “Stolen?” Mr. Shaw strokes his naked chin. “You boys are in a heap of trouble, then. A ton of gear per person. A year’s supply of food. That’s the standard. Best turn around while you still got the chance.”

  Mr. Shaw don’t tell Mel directly, bu
t I hear it all the same. Only a fool would continue. It’s the word most folks use for Pa and is near about the worst name you could call my brother.

  This ain’t what I wanted him to say. Mr. Shaw was supposed to persuade Mel to keep on going, not turn around.

  The rain patters on the canvas above, and I can’t help but shiver.

  “I’ve heard rumors that the North West Mounted Police will set up camp at the border between here and Canada, that once they do, they won’t let anyone in unless they’ve got the proper gear. Know why?” Mr. Shaw grins, his teeth brown and slimy. “Because they don’t want to have to mess with your dead body a few months from now.”

  My ears burn, though my rain-damp clothes have chilled me pretty good. If Melvin goes on alone, I won’t know if he’s safe.

  “Some folks think travel from here to the Klondike will be easy,” he says. “I even seen a man who thinks he’ll bicycle there. It’s almost six hundred miles from Dyea to Dawson City, where the Klondike and Yukon Rivers meet. You seen those mountains behind us?” He points to the tent’s darkened wall, but I can picture them on the other side. Big and mighty. Reaching for the clouds, like Mount Rainier back home. “It’s straight over you’ll go and down the other side until you reach Lake Lindeman. Then you’ll sail across a couple lakes and down the Yukon River through dangerous rapids and on to Dawson in a boat you build by yourself. Ever built a boat before?”

  Mel shakes his head. His cheeks are chapped and sunburned. Grit fans out like bird’s wings from the corners of each eye. That’s exactly what he’s like, his head tilted to one side. A bird, studying his situation.

  “Mel.” I got to talk before Mr. Shaw convinces him it’s best to leave, and oh, I hope he’ll listen. “Home ain’t a real home anymore, not for either of us. We don’t got a future there. This journey’s been our dream since you started saving, and sure it’s gonna be harder than anything we’ve ever done, but that ain’t no reason to quit, not when we’re finally on our own.” I scoot a little closer. “There’s gold in the Klondike just waiting for us. Can’t you feel it?”

  From my pocket I take Pa’s watch and let it swing from its chain. The gold winks in the candlelight. My heart’s thumping in my chest. I ain’t sure what Mel’s gonna say or do. “Here’s the other reason I came. You left this behind.”

  Mel blinks in surprise. He reaches for the watch, rubs his thumb over its shiny lid. “I left this for you.”

  “I’d never sell Pa’s watch on my own. Mama said it was for the two of us.”

  “That watch is nice,” Mr. Shaw says. “But it won’t buy you much of anything.”

  “Jasper, you came all this way to bring me this?”

  I nod because it’s true, but also to spur Mel on. So maybe Pa’s watch won’t bring us loads of money, like Mr. Shaw says, but it’s shown Mel I’m devoted, that I’ll stay by him no matter what. Something’s changing in my brother, I can feel it. He’s letting himself see I belong with him, which I most surely do.

  “If we go, it will be dangerous.”

  If we go, Mel says, like he’s considering it. All those lonely nights on the Queen, I waited for this moment.

  Mr. Shaw shakes his head. “More dangerous than you know.”

  “So we’ll have to travel those six hundred miles quick as we can.”

  “That’s for sure,” Mr. Shaw says. “Winter can hit Canada in September.”

  “And we’d have to partner up, find someone who would let us share his tent and eat his food until we could pay him back.”

  “In gold,” I say.

  Mel nods.

  Mr. Shaw lifts his face to the dripping canvas. “Ain’t no one who will go for that.”

  “We have to promise to stick together,” Melvin says.

  I can’t help but break into a grin. “I promise.”

  Mel reaches for my hand and gives it a firm shake, the watch pressed between our palms.

  “You think you can do it?” he asks.

  “I know I can.” I think over everything Mr. Shaw’s told us. He ain’t painted a pretty picture with his words. “Not because it won’t be hard, but because you’ll be with me.”

  Mel turns to Mr. Shaw. “Guess my brother and I will have to make it into Canada before those Mounties settle in.”

  Mr. Shaw opens the tent flap and spits tobacco onto the rain-soaked road. “You boys are dern fools.”

  He thinks we’re crazy. We got nothing to our names but Mel’s bag and sled and Mama’s washboard. What Mr. Shaw don’t know is that this decision is the smartest the two of us have ever made, trusting in ourselves rather than relying on Pa. But even so, what Mr. Shaw said about them Mounties not wanting to mess with them who don’t got proper gear, it weighs heavy on me.

  “I’m set to turn in.” Mr. Shaw still holds the tent flap open. “You two better go now.”

  “But . . .” I can’t get out them other words, the ones that ask to let us stay. Because it’s right clear Mr. Shaw wants none of that.

  The rain comes down in waves. It’s too dark to see.

  Mel pulls the canvas from his knapsack and drapes it across our shoulders. I wrap it in one hand and hold on to him with the other as we race through the darkness. Mud and water fill my shoes. My shirt soaks through fast. I ain’t sure where we’re headed, but I know Mel’s looking out for us. Ahead, the lantern at the meal tent shines. We run until we reach it, then slip past to the tables around back. Mel crawls under the first table we come to, pulling me with him. “This is the driest place we’re going to find.”

  The slanting rain pounds and splatters. It’s awful hard to rest. My mind spins dreams about the Klondike though I’m still awake, dreams a whole lot better than sleep. We can make it. I know we can. Haven’t we already come this far?

  • • •

  Darkness starts to fade not too long after five, Pa’s watch says, but we’re up even earlier, shivering in the awful muck and wet that’s soaked through the canvas cover. Once the cook sees we’ve spent the night on his lot, he shoos us off, and we ask some fellows along the road if they could point us to the Chilkoot Trail. Their faces don’t hide what they think of two boys with a whole bunch of nothing, but even so they tell us to follow the Taiya River.

  The trail begins at the riverside, cuts through waving grasses and patches of flowering weeds. It crosses the ice-cold Taiya over and over again and slowly winds higher up the base of a mountain. Mr. Shaw said the Chilkoot Trail leads into Canada and ends twenty-some miles on the other side of these sharp and jagged mountains, at a lake called Lindeman.

  My wet clothes chafe against my skin, but at least them raw spots distract me from my hollow belly. Me and Mel are the only ones not bent double with extra-heavy packs. Guess that’s one thing going for us, without any gear. We’re traveling faster than them other fellows.

  We climb through groves of spruce and cottonwood. The sun sometimes drifts from behind them storm clouds, but mostly the rain keeps on steady. Mel insists I wrap the canvas around me like a slicker, but I hand it back when my clothes turn hot and clammy.

  We move ahead of them others with outfits loaded on their shoulders. It don’t take long to see folks dump stuff they don’t want no more. A sewing machine. A pile of cook pots. Even a piano. How a body carried something that big, I don’t know. They ain’t in tidy bundles like the ones stashed here and there, the gear a body means to store for now and move later down the trail. These things are tossed aside. They ain’t worth holding on to anymore.

  I dodge a stove that’s been left right in the middle of the path. “First thing I’m gonna do up in the Klondike is pick gold from them bushes.”

  Mel laughs. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is not. I heard about it on the Queen. There’s so many nuggets scattered on the ground, you have to make sure you don’t trip.”

  “If all that’s true,
why haven’t I read about it in that mining book I picked up in Seattle?”

  “Bet the fellow who wrote it ain’t seen them bushes yet.”

  “Then why didn’t those miners on the Portland bring back shrubs to plant?”

  “Maybe they don’t grow so well outside the Klondike,” I say. What’s Mel know, anyhow? Farthest he’s ever been from home before now is Seattle. “Have you thought about what you’re gonna do when you get some gold?”

  Mel shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. Buy an umbrella, maybe.”

  On a day like this, an umbrella would be right nice to have.

  “You know what I really want?” he says. “I’d like a whole shelf full of books. Ones I haven’t read before.”

  When Mel left school to work the mill, it weren’t his choice. He had his mind set on college someday. Miss Stapleton sent him home with two books of her very own, for him to keep his learning.

  “Well, I’m gonna build us a house,” I tell him. “It’ll have four windows and yellow shutters, like Mama always wanted before”—there’s a funny feeling in my belly—“before she left.”

  Mel slows. “Hey, Jasper,” he says, his voice kind of strange. “You know Mama didn’t leave us. You remember what really happened, don’t you?”

  Mel’s broken the rule, the one that comes straight after lay low and stay out of the way. Except this one ain’t about Pa. It’s a rule we ain’t ever mentioned, but it’s as true and certain as the other.

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” Before Mel can say any more, I push past until I’m the one in the lead.

  I reach the gorge ahead with Mel a few steps behind. Here giant cedars stand tall enough to hold off the rain, their roots thick around as a man’s leg. Boulders litter the trail, stones bigger than a barn. We struggle to climb over them, but if we want to keep on, it’s what we gotta do, and I’m happy I can’t think on what Mel said.

  This whole world’s existed long before we ever came here, will keep on long after we pass. “It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?” Mel says.