by Lisa Shea
His lids flickered. “Elizabeth, I can’t –”
I grabbed the lapels of his coat and thrust my face into his. “I survived months in the hellhole of a dark ship, with death all around me. I saw my suffering in those visions. I did that for you. Will you do no less for me?”
I could see the effort it took him to focus in on me – to steady his breathing. But he did it. His eyes came up to mine. “I will be here for you,” he vowed.
I nodded. “You’d better be.”
And then I ran.
I was as swift as an Eagle racing to defend its nest. I barely saw the huts around me or smelled the smoke of our fires. My sole focus was on the caribou-hide door-flap which would lead me to Cooper’s side.
I yanked it open and ducked within. “Cooper, I –”
She already had her fabric medicine bag in hand. “Lead the way. I knew it was to be tonight.”
I didn’t question her wisdom. She had come to us, many moons ago, when her trapper husband had been killed in a landslide. Since then her talents with herbs and medicines had been immensely valuable to our tribe. I only hoped she could do the impossible.
That she could save Robert.
I skidded through the snow, following my own footsteps in the darkness. Panic shot through me when I saw his body lying still and unmoving before us. I dropped again to his side, shaking him. “You promised! You –”
His eyes blinked open and a faint smile came to his lips. “I am here.”
Relief coursed through me. “Of course you are.”
Cooper stepped to his other side and examined the wound. Then she shook her head. “We have to bring him down to the city.”
Panic shook my core. “They will not help!”
“I cannot handle this kind of an injury here,” she countered. “The risk of death is too great. In Dawson City they will have what we need. Trust me. We will find the answers we seek there.”
It went against every instinct in my body, but I nodded. “I will get us a sled.”
I raced off to where the village’s supplies were kept. Every step I took away from him was a thread stretching in my heart, stretching …
The irrational thought filled me that if I went too far for too long it would break. It would snap, withdraw, and he would be lost to me forever.
I could not let that happen.
I reached the area where the sleds were stored and quickly selected one just the right size. I slid into the harnesses and set out at a trot back across the snow. Every footfall felt as if it took a lifetime. Robert’s blood was streaming from his body, precious, irreplaceable, and if I was too late …
Cooper was still with him when I arrived, and I came around to her side. I took his arms, she took his legs, and he groaned as we slid him up onto the back of the sled. He wrapped his arm around the front brace to hold himself in place.
Cooper serenely nodded to me. “You will know what to do when you get there.
I looked up in panic. “You aren’t coming with me?”
She shook her head. “This is a path for you alone.” Her eyes held mine. “I have faith in you, young one. You can do it. Take this new path that was meant for you.”
There was no time for me to argue. If she was not going to come along, every moment I stood here discussing it was one less moment Robert had to live.
I stepped back into the harness, set my shoulders, and began.
Darkness had arrived in earnest and only a scattering of stars lit my way. I walked a tight rope between craving haste and knowing that one wrong footfall, one stumble, could leave both of us trapped and without hope. For by the time our bodies were found the following day, we would have frozen to death.
The night seemed to drag on like the endless lazing of a summer river – but with every step the lights of Dawson City grew a little brighter. The sound of bright laughter and tinny music rose in my ears.
And at last I was at the outskirts. Here there lay a series of small wooden structures where I knew some of the single women lived.
I drew to a stop near the first and went over to rap on the door. “Hello? I am –”
A middle-aged woman with yellow teeth yanked open the door, a blanket wrapped around her middle. I could see a portly miner lying in the bed behind her. “D’ya mind?” she shrieked. “We’s busy!” She slammed the door in my face. I heard the bar slide in place.
I shook my head in panicked confusion. I couldn’t quite understand the view of these newcomers about normal relationships between a man and a woman. They were as natural as the sun rising in the morning. As a caribou gently nibbling the spring grasses which sprouted through the layer of snow. But somehow these strangers felt a man loving a woman was dirty and unnatural.
Their shame of it could cause the death of my Robert.
I set my shoulders. The next time I would push my way in, no matter what the couple was doing.
I went to the second door and knocked. No answer. I could see the glimmer of an oil lamp through the skin-shielded window so I tried again. Again, nothing. I carefully pushed open the door.
A woman lay alone on the bed, clothed in a heavy grey dress which covered her neck to ankle. Her head lay back on the pillow and her eyes were glazed. A sickly smoke rose from a pipe at her side.
I shook my head. I would find no help here.
The third hut was better kept than the first two, and my heart rose. I hammered eagerly on the door. “Please! Open up! I need help!”
The door drew open.
I blinked in surprise. I knew the faces in front of me, even though I had never before glimpsed them in the waking world. “Anna? Sofia?”
Their gazes were on mine with the same shocked awareness. I wondered if they, too, had been having visions.
I glanced back behind me at the sled. “Robert’s hurt. Someone drove a pick axe through his back. I need help.” My voice cracked at the thought that I could lose him. After all we had been through, it just didn’t seem possible.
The women burst into action, coming out with me to the sled. Robert had passed out again, but between the three of us we were able to roll him off the sled and drag him into their home without further pushing the mining pick into his back.
There were two low cots in the room and we managed to lift him onto one of them. He lay facing the wall, the pick angled out toward us.
Sofia nodded in determination. “We need hot water and strips of fabric. Anna, rip up the sheet on that bed.”
Anna went without question to the other bed and began creating long, even strips from the bedding.
I looked between them. “You are medicine women?”
Sofia gave a low chuckle as she put a pot of water onto their small stove. “Something like that,” she agreed. “We came up with the gold rush hoping to make our fortune caring for the men. But it turns out they barely worry about broken bones or gouged arms. They will work through any pain in order to make their fortune.” A sharpness came to her gaze. “But other needs, those they will pay for.”
“But why don’t you go home, if you are unhappy?”
Anna glanced back at me. “Back to Iowa? Women there were required to wear five layers of tight garments. A person could barely breathe. On top of that, every sentence you uttered was judged and found wanting.”
She went back to ripping. “Here we are free. Some women wear pants. Some are even miners. What we earn, we keep. It ain’t perfect – but it’s a form of freedom.”
I shook my head.
Was this how other people lived?
To me freedom was the ability to follow along with a herd of caribou, each day set only by the drifting of the clouds and the humming of the bees. Every woman in our tribe was just as valued as each man. We each had our roles to fulfill. We each treasured our responsibilities and our pride in what we brought to the whole.
Robert groaned.
I ran to his side, twining my fingers into his. “Robert, I am here.”
His brow was beaded wi
th sweat, and I drew a hand across it. I added, “Anna and Sofia are here as well. They will help us.”
He didn’t seem surprised by their names. He nodded. “It was … it was …”
“Shhhh,” I soothed him. “We will deal with that later. Right now, you need to focus on breathing. Stay with my voice.”
He eased back at that, nodding.
Sofia came over with the water, and Anna was at her side with the mound of fabric strips. Sofia glanced with concern at Robert. “This is going to hurt.”
I reached into my pouch and drew out a strip of caribou jerky. “Here. Bite on this.”
I gently eased it into his mouth.
He nodded, his gaze holding mine.
My hands twined into his.
I looked up at Sofia. I was now trusting her and Anna with my life.
With both of our lives.
Sofia’s eyes were a steady rock in a vast wilderness. “We will get him through this.”
Then they began.
I don’t know how Robert endured the pain. There were times I prayed he would pass out rather than strain against the motions of the two women. But somehow, against all odds, the flow of blood was staunched. Neat stitches closed up the gaping wound. Clean bandages wound around him, keeping the area safe so it could heal and mend.
Finally the task was done. His body was drenched in sweat, and the cot was soaked in blood, but my heart rose. There was a new light to him. One that gave me hope that he could make it through the night.
His voice was hoarse. “Ramsey. Ramsey took my papers.”
I glanced at the other two women. “What papers?”
Sofia’s gaze shadowed. “You had a mining claim?”
Robert nodded, his jaw tight with pain.
My brow creased in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
Anna gave me a gentle smile. “You wouldn’t, honey. You think of the land as open to all. But these miners, they want to grab a hold of the land. Make it theirs and drag every last bit of worth out of it.”
I shook my head. “But then how would it sustain life for all going forward?”
She chuckled. “Miners aren’t worried about the future. All they care about is getting every last flake of gold up so they can spend it on Champagne, diamonds, and girls.”
None of this made any sense to me.
Sofia looked over. “The shiny metal in the ground is quite valuable. So any man – or woman – who arrives here and feels they might find gold in an area of land can drive wooden stakes at the corners of the area. Up to five hundred feet along a stream. That land becomes theirs – and theirs alone – once they register it. They pay about fifteen the first year and then a hundred each subsequent year to keep it.”
The numbers meant nothing to me.
Anna chimed in, “A hundred is about a month’s worth of work.”
The concept was still elusive. “So this person … this miner … owns that creek?”
Anna nodded. “And everything within it. Everything they can drag out and use.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “The salmon? The minnows?”
Anna chuckled. “Certainly, that, but the gold. All the gold they can dig up.”
“But if they take everything from the earth and the stream, what will be left?”
Robert’s voice was hoarse. “Nothing. Your people will starve.”
I dropped to his side, twining my fingers into his. “Do not worry. We will figure this out.”
He shook his head. “They took my mining license. Now I have no way to prove who I am. That I have rights to that claim.”
My brow creased. “You wish to own a creek?”
He shook his head, his eyes holding mine. “The land rights are to your village.”
I sat back in shock. “But my village is not in a creek.”
Anna was pale. “Gold is being found in other places around Dawson City now. There might have been a stream there long, long ago.”
I looked between them. “Even if that were true, it is winter. The ground is frozen anyway. In the spring we will leave, to follow the caribou.”
Robert’s face was grey. “The miners won’t wait. They’ll drive you off and begin their rape of the land. They light fires on the frozen ground. Soften it. Dig it away, and light a new fire. They burn their way in.”
I could barely breathe. They would burn away the landscape? Burn down the grass the caribou needed to eat? Dig away the creeks the salmons needed for spawning?
I turned back to Robert. “But if this is true, where will we live?”
His eyes held mine. “They want to set up a reservation for you. A … a square of land that you inhabit. You live within that square for the rest of your lives.”
I looked amongst them in shock. “But the salmon swim down their stream. The caribou follow the warm air and the blossoming of clover. How are we to live within one square of dirt?”
“That’s why I had protected your winter village,” he ground out. “And in the spring hopefully this madness would have passed. Hopefully their greedy grasp would not grow to encompass all the lands that you travel on.”
Anna looked at him in concern. “But now Ramsey has your miner papers? And therefore access to your claim?”
He nodded. His eyes again came to me. “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. I have failed you. I have failed your family.”
My heart steadied in determination. “You have lived through the attack. And now we will handle the rest. You stay here and heal. We will be back soon.”
He moved as if he would push up – but he fell back, exhausted. “Please don’t –”
I drew a hand across his soaked brow. “Do you trust in me?”
His eyes held mine.
He nodded.
I smiled. “Then it shall be done.”
We waited until his breath had eased into the smooth rhythm of sleep – one his body desperately needed. Then Anna and Sofia found me some odd-looking clothes that fit strangely in places I did not understand.
And we set out.
I had only ventured into Dawson City a few times and each time I felt like a salmon flopping in a fox’s hole. But now the dusty streets were laid out beneath starry skies, shadows coiled around every building, and I was barely glanced at in my blood-red dress. Apparently I was female, and that was enough for the rum-soaked miners who staggered down the streets.
Anna’s head swung from left to right as we walked down the dark streets, her eyes gazing through the shimmering plate-glass windows on gambling men and laughing women. It was so different from the quiet warmth of our village. It seemed false and painted, somehow. As if the women smiled too brightly, and the man laughed too loudly –
Anna stilled. “There.”
I saw him.
I knew him, even though I had never seen him before. The large frame, the small, piggish eyes, all sent a shudder of fear through me.
Sofia took my arm. “All right. We do this for Robert.”
The thought coursed fresh strength through my bones and I nodded.
Each woman took a place by my side and we stepped through the door.
The stench was nearly overwhelming. Sharp alcohol, the stink of vomit, and that edge of fear and despair that I had come to associate with so many of the miners. The room was pressed to the walls with people, music, and bright light.
Ramsey was at the very center of it, standing before a table coated in green fabric. This was the place of honor – like a medicine man – but his medicine was all of hurt and pain. I could see it in the coldness of his eyes. In the pressure of his grip on arm of the slim blonde at his side.
He looked up as we approached and his gaze fixed on me. “You – have I met you before?”
Sofia gave me a gentle nudge.
I knew from my visions that the quiet, subtle courtship that we enjoyed in our Hankutchin festivals would be all but lost in this raucous noise. So I drew my smile unnaturally wide and pressed myself closer than a proud warrior wo
uld have found proper. “My name is … Elizabeth. And I’ve dreamt about you for a long time.”
His eyes lit in heated delight, and he drew me in against him. “Of course you have,” he agreed with a toothy smile.
Anna and Sofia came up alongside me. Anna murmured, “All three of us have. And we have this daydream that the three of us …” She gave a soft giggle. “I mean, the four of us …”
His face was beaming now. “Yes, yes, I can see how you would. It’s only natural, girls. There aren’t many like me, after all.”
Anna gave him a wink. “Then come along. We have something special to show you.”
Ramsey eagerly gathered up a number of items from the green-topped table and followed us as we walked back out into the night. My heart thundered against my chest.
What did the women have in mind?
Sofia glanced sideways at Ramsey as we walked. “I hear you like it sort of … rough. Cynthia had two black eyes after her night with you.”
Ramsey shrugged his shoulders. “Sometimes a woman won’t listen. She needs to be taught a lesson.”
Sofia nodded. “So I’ve heard.”
She steered us toward a large warehouse. “Plenty of space in here,” she told him. “Plus, the sleds leave for Whitehorse soon, meaning we’ll have the whole place to ourselves for the night.”
His eyes shone.
Sofia pushed open the door. She looked over at Anna. “Anna, my dear. Why don’t you run and get us those bottles of gin you had stashed away.”
Ramsey’s eyes lit up. “You have gin? My kind of women!”
Anna winked at him. “I’ll be right back.”
Sofia tucked her arm into Ramsey’s, and I went along the other side. I didn’t know what the women had planned, but if it would help out Robert, I would do everything I could to assist.
Sofia settled Ramsey down into the hay across from the line of stalls. The horses nickered in contentment, most of them sound asleep. Sofia looked to Ramsey. “We’ll be plenty warm in here,” she murmured. “Body heat and all.”
She slid her arms to Ramsey’s jacket. “Let’s just take this off of you.”
He leaned back so she could unzip the front. She slid it off his shoulders and laid it to the side. She glanced at the bulge of the inside pocket. “Oooooh, a man with a mining license. I like that kind of man. One with resources.” She dropped her voice down lower. “But what really impressed me was this man I met once, down in Whitehorse. He had somehow been able to acquire two licenses. Can you imagine it?” A smile drew on her face. “Now that was a real man.”
