by Henry, Sue
“Did not. I swear I didn’t mean to shoot Will and never saw Russell. Didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t know him if I saw him. Honest.”
“Then who did? Killing people doesn’t seem to bother you much. You left Hampton to die in the snow.”
“I thought he’d come to and get back in the truck. I don’t know who killed Russell. How would I know?” He was yelling by that time and trying to sit up in the bed.
A starched nurse stuck her head in and scowled. “Gentlemen, law enforcement or not, the patient needs rest. It doesn’t sound like that is happening here.”
“Okay. It’s okay. He’s just a little upset. Calm down, Charlie.”
She shut the door and went away.
“Mrs. Kolleran,” Delafosse muttered under his breath.
“Charlie, why did you break into our rooms at the hotel and take my copy of Addison Riser’s journal?” Jensen asked suddenly, catching the kid off-guard. He stuttered slightly.
“W-what journal?”
“Look. Don’t deny it. We found it in the jacket you left in the snow when you changed clothes up on the hill.”
“Oh, that journal. No big deal. Duck said there was some old gold hidden somewhere and wanted to know where. He heard somewhere that the guy in the canoe had found a journal and some bones. I went looking for clues and found it, but I didn’t go back to his place, so he didn’t get it, did he?”
Delafosse jumped back in, ready to take advantage of Charlie’s cooperation.
“Okay, let’s talk about the trucks and campers that have been disappearing this summer.”
A sulky, defiant look crossed Charlie’s face. “What trucks and campers?”
“Don’t get stupid now. Duck has told us all about you and Will stealing them.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’ll be worse on you if you don’t get it right, kid,” Jensen told him.
Charlie glared at them both, then, without warning, burst into tears.
“You bastards. This hurts like hell and they’re gonna cut off my toes and my fingers, maybe. Why don’t you leave me alone? How would you feel if they were going to cut off yours? All right. So we lifted a few trucks. We didn’t know that guy in the RV would croak. Will only hit him a tap and the old coot fell over and died on us. What’s it matter now? They’re going to cut on me. Don’t you get it? Look at this.” He raised the wreck of his hands off the sheet. “I want a lawyer.” He smeared his lip on the gown once more.
Delafosse rolled his eyes at Jensen in defeat.
“I think we’ve got all we need for now. The details can come later, Charlie. Like your trying to kill Hampton on the river…”
“Will shot at him. Not me.”
“…and your putting his gear back later to set him up.”
“Didn’t. Never did. His gear got left at Russell’s camp when I took the other boat. Never saw it after that.”
“Later, Charlie. We’ll see you again later. Get some rest.”
“God. If he’d only stayed in the truck,” Jensen exploded as soon as they were in the hall and out of Charlie’s ability to hear. “What a price to pay for stupidity.”
“Yeah.” Delafosse held his hands out in front of him as they walked toward the door. “I couldn’t help thinking of all the things I need my fingers for. Working on my truck or my boat…turning knobs, screws. Getting lids off jars. Turning on lamps.”
“To say nothing of shaving, buttoning buttons, zipping zippers…” Alex paused. “And Jessie,” he said, slowly.
Delafosse glanced at him and nodded. “That…would be a pretty big loss.” He shivered and hunched his shoulders. “Gives me gooseflesh. I’d rather think of losing my computer keyboarding ability.”
“You’d never be able to play the piano again,” Alex handed him the old saw, attempting to lighten the conversation.
“I’ve never…Oh. I get it. You’re right. No more concerts.”
They grinned at each other and went through the door, headed for the parking lot.
“So where did Will steal the boat, and why hasn’t someone reported it missing?” Jensen asked.
“Probably took it from one of the summer cabins and no one knows it’s gone. If it was in a boathouse, or out of the water in storage for the winter, its absence wouldn’t attract the attention of someone keeping an eye on the place for the owner, unless they went looking. I’ve got a couple of ideas, but that’s the least of our problems.”
Jensen pulled his pipe from a pocket, lit it, and puffed smoke thoughtfully.
“Had a chat with Hampton this morning,” Delafosse told him, as they drove his truck toward the RCMP office. “We discussed the assault charges in Colorado.”
“What did he say about them?”
“The one back in 1983 was a bar fight all right. Evidently some guy got drunked up and hit the bartender with a pool cue. Hampton, with support, didn’t take kindly to it and jumped in with his fists. He broke the guy’s jaw, but someone else broke his arm with the very cue he used to begin with. The whole bar stood up for Jim when he got arrested, and the charges were dropped. The guy he hit was convicted of the assault on the innkeeper, but that doesn’t show up on Hampton’s record.”
“How about the pending one?”
“Just about what your informant from Denver told you. He did punch out a guy on the job. Evidently, he was pouring substandard concrete and Hampton found out about it. As foreman, he had a right to question the guy, but admits he shouldn’t have hit him. The guy’s head hit the cement-truck bumper and gave him a concussion. When the contractor initiated the suit against his company, the guy retaliated by filing charges against Hampton for assault, a week after it was all over. It will probably get tossed out, one way or another. Whatever. But your source is right. Jim shouldn’t hit people. He’s strong enough to do some real damage. Lucky he pulled his punch on Sean Russell.”
“At least—if we believe him—we know it was justified, if not totally legal, in both instances.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ve reached a point where I don’t trust anyone anymore. You’ll have to admit it’s funny the way he seems to be involved with all the aspects of this case. Somebody hit Russell pretty hard with that hatchet and it was Hampton’s. You don’t suppose he could be a sleeper in the truck and camper thing, do you?”
Jensen laughed, but wrinkled his forehead in a thoughtful frown.
“I can’t imagine it, but we’ve both seen stranger things. Right?”
“Right. And who was shooting at Will and Charlie? Was it Russell? Or was Russell already dead?”
“Now there’s an interesting idea.”
“What if Hampton was more recovered than he claims, and set out to get his gear back and get even with Will and Charlie?”
“How would he have got up the river? That canoe of his wasn’t going anywhere.”
“When we saw it it wasn’t. But it didn’t show shotgun damage then either. And there’s still the matter of that Zodiac.”
“It was stolen from a long ways downriver. How would he have got hold of it?”
“I don’t know, but he’s under every rock we turn over. Maybe there’s another dead person somewhere that we haven’t found yet—who was maybe driving the Zodiac when it was stolen.”
“Maybe, but a stretch. There’s also Sean Russell, whom we haven’t seen for a while. Where’s he in all this?”
“Hasluk was working with him at the village site and was supposed to give him an alibi, told the Eagle officer that the only time Sean left was when someone brought word his father was dead. If that’s the case, we have nothing solid to put him at the murder site or Hampton’s camp on down the river. But Eddie couldn’t find him to confirm it, and now Hasluk won’t say anything either way.”
“Pretty convenient for Sean.”
“Well, Hasluk’s still being as stubborn as Kabanak. Let’s go back to the office and see if we can get anything more out of the two of them. I promised to tell Sean to call his wife. I’ll send som
eone out to find him and send him in to talk to us again.”
“Can’t hurt,” Alex said, as Del started the drive back through Dawson. “How about confronting the two of them with each other?”
“Mean and nasty. Just like I said.”
The snow had stopped, but the flat white of the cloud cover continued to give the impression that it could start again at any minute. The whole town looked clean and older than it had before the storm began. Reproductions of gold-rush buildings, as well as the newer ones that had been built in the same false-fronted style, now seemed close to how they must have looked in the last of the nineteenth century. Though the clothes of the pedestrians on the street were brighter, more modern in color than the black, gray, and brown worn by the stampeders, they could almost have been miners, storekeepers, bartenders from the rush.
“You know,” Alex said, his mind shifting back to the problems at hand, “Hasluk said last night that we wouldn’t believe him. I wonder if he’d tell us about that hatchet if he thought we would. What do you think about telling him we don’t think he had anything to do with Will’s death? Since he’s most likely the one who knows something, we might also mention that he’s forcing us to hold Kabanak junior.”
“Hm-m,” Del agreed. “Could give it a try. I also want to look at that jacket of Charlie’s.”
Chapter Twenty-five
AS DELAFOSSE AND JENSEN SPECULATED on the case before them, in a café in the middle of Dawson, Jessie listened, fascinated, as Jim Hampton told her about the journey of Addison Riser from Tacoma, Washington, to Dawson, as his journal related it. He introduced her to Frank Warner, Ozzy Wilson, and Ned McNeal as they built their boat after scaling the Chilkoot, ran the rapids outside of Whitehorse, and made their way down the river. He told her of Riser’s doubts about Wilson and the incident of the Swede’s watch.
“Was Ozzy really the great-grandfather of this guy, Will, who was killed on the riverbank?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that almost too much?”
“And you found the journal with some of Riser’s bones between here and Eagle?”
“Right. Literally stumbled over them while I was getting wood for a campfire.”
“How’d he get there?”
“I don’t know yet—haven’t quite finished the journal, but I hope it will have some clue. You want to hear some of it?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’d love to hear it. Where is it?”
“Right here.” Hampton pulled the much-handled copy from his coat pocket and rolled it against the curl that had developed from carrying it around. Spreading it out on the table, he turned pages, looking for the place he had stopped reading. “I got them down past Five Finger Rapids before I took an unintentional nap the other day. Here. Here it is.”
“Wait,” Jessie told him, picking up their coffee cups. “Let me get us a refill before you start.”
She reappeared almost instantly and set down the full mugs.
“Now. Read on, please.”
Her enthusiasm was encouraging, and Hampton found he really enjoyed sharing the story with someone who obviously was an interested as he was.
Riser’s account described the trip on down the river, and he soon found a time to speak to McNeal, who…thinks I did well to keep silent and pretend the incident of the watch was forgotten. Reminding me that there is absolutely nothing to be done, he suggested that we wait until we arrive in Dawson. The Swede will catch us up there, he says, and it may be possible to have a word with him about the lost timepiece. I agreed. There is nothing to be gained by confronting Ozzy now. Neither of us, however, wants to work with him in Dawson. We will make sure that he is not included in any partnership we make. In Ned’s mind this also includes Frank Warner, for he and Wilson seem to be an obvious twosome. So we wait and watch, but I feel better for his knowing what I witnessed.
“I’m glad they decided not to go on working with Wilson and Warner,” Hampton commented, as he paused for a swallow of coffee. “I don’t like those guys any more than I liked Wilson’s great-grandson.”
“Sounds like they really did a number on you when you met them on the river,” Jessie said. “What a rotten thing to do. You might have died.”
“Jensen told you?”
“Yes, some of it. He doesn’t tell me everything, obviously, but he was pretty put out over what they did to you, and about Charlie leaving you out cold in the snow on the pass.”
“Well, it wasn’t a lot of fun, but it seems that Charlie’s sort of taking his punishment for that.”
“Right. Go on. What happens next?”
As Hampton read, the party of four stampeders passed Fort Selkirk, and finally, midweek, arrived at their destination, Dawson City, completing the long, hazardous journey. Riser did not immediately write in his journal, letting a week go by before he put pen to paper to describe his impressions of the settlement and his reactions to it. Hampton could imagine his bitter disappointment at finding it crowded and extremely different from what he had expected.
The once mud streets of this so-called city are now frozen into ruts and ridges. Hundreds of men walk up and down them, most with nothing to do and nowhere to go. They simply cannot stay still in one place after so many miles of moving ahead as fast as possible to reach this place. All of us feel an incredible anticlimax.
There is no gold to be had for the taking in or around Dawson and little even to share work for. All the claims were filed long before any of us left on the long, difficult passage that brought us here. Indeed, Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks were completely staked, by men already in the territory, six months before the steamer Portland tied up at the Schwabacher dock last summer.
Thank God we brought our winter supplies with us, for there is almost nothing to purchase. We have had dozens of offers for what little we have and two days ago caught a blackguard attempting to steal from our cache, so we now keep a firearm handy at all times and watch through the nights.
Ned and I stick together in town, for Frank and Ozzy have hiked off to search for some opportunity in the goldfields, but the venture seems all but hopeless.
“Wow,” Jessie commented. “Just think what it must have been like, knowing there wasn’t going to be enough food for everyone for the rest of the winter. There must have been some pretty desperate people.”
“And some with all the money they could imagine and nothing to spend it on.”
“Think of all the people who didn’t make it to Dawson that fall and had to wait out the winter along the river, at Lake Bennett, in Skagway, wherever. Those already in Dawson knew the great horde would descend on them in the spring, having eaten most of their own food.”
“Well, there would be some supplies on the steamboats when the ice melted and they could get through.”
Riser’s journal entries became more infrequent as he and Ned settled into an uneasy winter in Dawson. Moving into the rough cabin of a Scots miner that McNeal met, who was going “outside” for the winter, they began to burn a shaft for him in the frozen ground. The journal described this method of opening a passage to the gold-bearing ore far below the surface of the ground they stood on. It was difficult and backbreaking labor and, as Riser put it, Its one redeeming feature is that it will require finger-warming fires to melt the frozen ground as we must first heat, then dig out as much as we can, making a deeper space to build another fire. Between times, we walk miles to cut timber for those fires, since every close tree was long ago reduced to ashes in the shafts of other claims.
All the rubble we dig out is piled around outside the cabin to await sluicing when the spring melts enough water to allow it. The melted earth immediately refreezes into a solid mass.
The cabin, he said,…was minimal shelter at best…the frigid wind whistles through like a sieve, whipping heat away from my stove, which we have set up in one corner, as fast as it is produced.
But Warner and Wilson had found a place of their own somewhere near Dawson and were not a part of the effort. Riser, however, belie
ved that Wilson had stolen…portions of my beans, sugar, and rice, as we separated our outfits. Damn his eyes.
Jessie found herself watching Jim as he read and thinking that he did not fit her idea of the type who would be involved in a murder. His disgust with the behavior of Oswald in the journal was apparent and seemed completely natural. It was also clear that he had immersed himself in the hundred-year-old account of the rush for gold. He really seemed to empathize with the people Riser described and to care about them. She watched his expressions change as he responded to the things they did and places they passed, almost as if he were a part of the effort.
Then she remembered Alex saying that before heading for the Forty-Mile, Hampton had canoed the waterway between Whitehorse and Dawson. No wonder he was empathetic. He had just followed the route the four in the journal were taking—seen it all and understood exactly what Addison was talking about. She refocused her attention on the narrative he was reading aloud, unaware that he had been conscious of her scrutiny.
Jensen had good taste, Jim thought. This was a confident, interesting, and very attractive woman. An Iditarod musher. Amazing. He had never met one, and didn’t know exactly what the qualifications were, but he had somehow expected large, burly outdoors men, or women in enormous parkas and boots. Could she possibly be strong enough to drive a team more than a thousand miles to Nome? Must be. She had come in second in the last race. Unmistakably intelligent, too. Would have survived the trip to Dawson with no trouble at all.
The situation in the Dawson of 1897 was growing desperate and could only become more so. The Yukon had frozen earlier than expected, trapping thousands, with boats frozen in at mining camps for miles downriver. No supplies would arrive until spring opened the passageways to the coast, and many who had not carried in their own, expecting to be able to buy what they needed, would soon be in serious trouble. To make things worse, the cold intensified, dropping far below zero. Riser and McNeal huddled inside their small, inadequate shelter and worked on the shaft to keep themselves warm by moving.
