Mystery at Chilkoot Pass (Mysteries through History)

by Barbara Steiner

  “Overnight, I thought of a plan, Colin,” Mrs. Vasquez said. “I’d be glad for your opinion on whether it will work. I see many hungry men out here without their wives to cook for them. I’m a very good cook. I thought I could set up a tent restaurant, cook our wet food, and charge for meals until I have enough for a grubstake.”

  Colin nodded. “I think that would work. You can buy new supplies from those who are already giving up—‘icicle feet,’ we call them.”

  Mrs. Vasquez smiled. “I brought some lumber along. I don’t know what I was thinking—already I know I can’t carry lumber up the mountain. Glen and I can build tables and benches for diners.”

  “You don’t give up easily, Mrs. Vasquez. I admire that in a person. I’ll check on you again before I leave for the pass.” Colin saluted Mrs. Vasquez, bowed to Hetty and Alma, and strolled away.

  Hetty thought about the new plan while she ate breakfast. “Where’s Papa, Mrs. V?” she asked.

  “He said he was going to look for Donall. Your uncle didn’t come home last night. We figure he found some all-night card game and is still there this morning. Why don’t you girls go look for them both? I could use their help if I’m going to serve meals in a couple of days.”

  Hetty’s Uncle Donall hadn’t had the money to make the trek to the goldfields. But he’d begged Papa to let him come along anyway. Hetty hoped he wasn’t off losing his share of the cash Papa had lent him. Papa was much more tolerant of his younger brother Donall’s bad habits than Hetty was.

  Hetty and Alma walked up and down the rows of tents. Most people were packing, getting ready to leave. All through the tent city, hurry, hurry, hurry was in the air. Everyone was in a hurry to get to the goldfields.

  “Hetty, you’ve wanted to go home all along,” Alma reminded her. “Mama losing her money was your chance. Are you disappointed that we’re opening a restaurant instead of going home?”

  “Well—” Hetty tried to imagine getting back on the boat where she had been seasick every day for a week. The steamer had been so crowded, there was hardly room to lie down. No one had gotten much sleep. “Now that we’ve come this far, I want to go on. Papa says we have to look every day for stories. What’s happened so far wouldn’t make a very good story.”

  They took off toward the ocean and the buildings that made up the town of Dyea. The shortcut didn’t help them find Papa or Uncle Donall, but Hetty spotted Mr. Parker again. “I have an idea, Alma. Let’s go talk to him.”

  Mr. Parker was sitting on a wooden box staring at the ocean that had robbed him of his dream. The fragrant smell of tobacco drifted from his pipe.

  “Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker,” Hetty called to him. “We have an idea. Maybe you can go look for gold after all.”

  Amos Parker stared at them for a moment, then came back from wherever his mind had been. “My goodness, I thought you two would be packing to leave on the trail tomorrow.”

  “We can’t go yet,” Hetty said. She explained that Alma’s mother’s money was gone and that they planned to open a restaurant to earn it back. “We can cook up your wet food and sell it, too, so that you’d have money to buy supplies.”

  Mr. Parker took another pull on his pipe and blew smoke at the swarm of mosquitoes buzzing around them. “I think I want to go home, girls. I’ve lost my heart for treasure seeking.”

  After an hour of looking for Papa and Uncle Donall, Hetty and Alma got back to their camp to find Papa helping Mrs. Vasquez build some tables. Uncle Donall chose that moment to stroll up to the campfire. “Anything for me to do? Any coffee left?” he asked, testing the pot, then pouring a cup. He reached for some leftover bacon and rolled it in a tortilla for a sandwich.

  Hetty was glad Papa spoke before she did. She didn’t want to be disrespectful, but she was mad enough to forget she ever had any manners.

  “Where have you been, Donall?” Papa asked. “We’ve needed help.”

  “I couldn’t find you last night, and then I met the most fascinating couple. They’re part of a Wild West show and—”

  “You’ve been with them.” Hetty’s hands flew to her waist before she could stop them. “You’ve been off making new friends when your family needs you.”

  Uncle Donall smiled at Hetty. He had the same black, curly hair as Papa, but no beard. And his teasing eyes were the color of sweet violets in spring. “Oh, Hetty, we may need friends to help us climb the mountain. One can never have too many friends.” He swiped at Hetty’s chin. “Don’t be mad at me, or we’ll have to fight.” He raised his fists and bounced around like a boxer.

  Hetty sighed. It was hard to stay mad at Uncle Donall for long.

  “I’m so glad to get off that ship, I could whip the best man in Alaska or California right now. I could fight off a grizzly bear with my bare hands.” Uncle Donall punched the air.

  “I’m going to be doing a lot of cooking. How about using that energy to find us firewood, Donall McKinley?” Mrs. Vasquez shook her big spoon at Uncle Donall. “If there’s any left around here, with all these campfires.”

  Uncle Donall drank his last sip of coffee, smiled, and danced away. Hetty would be surprised if he came back with a load of wood.

  “Come have lunch, girls, and then help me,” Mrs. Vasquez said. “There’s a lot to do if we’re going to open the restaurant tomorrow.” She had set up the camping stove and was stirring a big pot of beans.

  The stove was only a sheet of iron balanced over the fire on small legs. Hetty couldn’t believe they were going to cook their own meals on it, much less all the meals for a restaurant. But if the meal Mrs. Vasquez prepared that night was anything like what she’d serve in her restaurant, Hetty thought, they’d get rich in a week.

  Mrs. Vasquez fried the tortillas that Alma and Hetty had helped her pat out, filled them with beans and spices, and rolled them up. Then she fried dried apples in butter, sugar, and cinnamon for a side dish. For dessert, they crunched puffy sopaipillas, squares of bread dough fried in lard, then rolled in sugar and cinnamon. Papa and Mrs. Vasquez drank coffee while Alma and Hetty drank tinned milk, heated and flavored with cocoa powder and cinnamon.

  At dusk, just as they were finishing dinner, Uncle Donall came back with an armload of wood and a young man about his age. They gobbled up a plateful of food, then disappeared again.

  “It took him all afternoon to get wood. Now he’s off to play cards, no doubt,” Mrs. Vasquez commented, her voice scolding.

  “Hetty and I will wash dishes, Mama. You go to bed.” Alma and Hetty gathered the tin plates that were practically licked clean. “Maybe Uncle Donall and his friend will spread the news about your restaurant.”

  The news spread, all right. The next night, a line of people circled their tent. Hetty and Alma were too busy to count them, but Hetty was sure there were more than a hundred. Diners brought their own plates, cups, and silverware but paid a dollar to have the plate filled with tortillas and beans and the cup filled with coffee or tea.

  Hetty and Alma had worked all day helping Mrs. Vasquez cook. By dinnertime, they were tired, but they’d put on their best dresses to help serve. Mrs. Vasquez had tied big white aprons over them. “No time to cook and do laundry,” she’d said. Hetty had fingered her locket and made a wish that their restaurant plan would succeed.

  The scene was one big party. When the tables were filled, people sat on the ground, laughing and talking as they ate. After dinner and a dessert of dried-apple pie, some customers stayed to sing or visit. A man played a fiddle, and a few couples danced.

  Hetty was cleaning off a table when a boy walked up to her, a big grin on his face. It was the friendly boy from the beach, the one who had strolled past their campfire two nights ago. “My name is Eddie Jacobson. Is this your restaurant? Your ma sure can cook. Where are you from? We’re from Oakland, California.”

  Hetty stared at Eddie, who was so full of talk. He had sandy hair, sparkling brown eyes, and the same teasing look that Uncle Donall always wore.

  She was too tired
to visit, but she tried to be polite. “My name is Hetty McKinley. Mrs. Vasquez is not my mother. She’s my best friend Alma’s mother. We’re from San Francisco.”

  “Do you think we’ll find gold nuggets the size of potatoes in the Yukon, like everyone says? How long are you staying in Dyea? Aren’t you in a hurry to climb the mountain?” Eddie chattered on and on, not waiting for Hetty to answer his questions. She looked around, wishing Alma would come rescue her.

  “Is my boy bothering you?” A tall, thin man walked up, an accordion strapped to his chest. “I’m William Jacobson. We’re neighbors.” He pointed out his family. “That’s my wife, Sophie, talking to Mrs. Vasquez. And that’s our older son, Carl, and our baby girl, Rosie.”

  Hetty saw a woman with curly blond hair holding a chubby baby, whose red hair fell into ringlets all around her smiling face. Hetty recognized Carl as the sneering boy who had walked past their tent with Eddie that first evening in Dyea. Carl looked like his father—tall, slim, with dark hair and dark eyes—but he was the only one of the Jacobsons not smiling or laughing.

  “Carl didn’t want to come on this trip,” Eddie said. “Play a jig, Pa. People want to dance.”

  Mr. Jacobson walked back to where the fiddler was tuning his violin. Soon the two played a lively duet that made Hetty want to dance, but her feet ached and there was still cleaning to do.

  After the last customers had drifted away, and Mrs. Vasquez and Papa had gone to their tents, Hetty and Alma sat outside looking at the sky full of stars. Most of the camp was quiet, but here and there Hetty could hear laughter, a baby crying, and somewhere behind her, a flute playing a haunting melody. The air was crisp and clean and seemed lightweight compared to the air in San Francisco. Sounds carried from a distance. Hetty could even hear waves washing back and forth on the beach.

  She decided to keep a list in her journal of all the ways Alaska and Canada were different from California, what she missed most from home, and what she liked best about this new place. Mama had taught her to see both sides of a picture, the good and the bad in a situation. It was good that they had gotten this far. It was bad that Mrs. Vasquez had lost her money—but look how many new people they were meeting by having a restaurant.

  “What are you thinking, Alma?” Hetty asked.

  “That this evening we may have waited on the man who took Mama’s money.”

  “There are probably lots of thieves going to the goldfields.” Hetty shivered. “Let’s not think about that tonight.”

  They sat silently, almost too tired to talk but not wanting to go to bed. Hetty took off her locket and looked at the photo of her mother by the flickering light of the fire. Mama’s face was so delicate, her eyes smiling and, even in the photo, mischievous. Hetty looked like Papa with her curly black hair and green eyes, her nearly square, no-nonsense face. Hetty sighed, closed the locket and put it back on, then slipped the heart under the collar of her dress.

  She thought of Mrs. Vasquez, laughing and talking to people while she heaped their plates with food. She was just as efficient tonight in the restaurant as she had been running her store after her husband died. No anger or resentment was left about the reason she was working so hard. Mrs. Vasquez once said that the secret to being happy was to be like a rubber ball. When life throws you down, bounce back up.

  “Your mother is wonderful, Alma. She truly bounces back when bad things happen.”

  “You miss your mother, don’t you, Hetty?” Alma pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders. The two sat close together by the dying embers of the campfire.

  “I will always miss her. She loved sitting on the porch at night, looking at the stars. But she could never have come on this trip. She was too frail. Papa and I would still be in California if she were alive. Mama was the one who taught me to write down my thoughts in my journal every night. Sometimes we read Miss Dickinson’s poetry and I tried to make my thoughts into my own poem. Mama said my poems were wonderful, but I guess mothers always say that.”

  “You are a wonderful writer, Hetty.” Alma stood up. “We’d better go to bed. We have to cook and feed people again tomorrow.”

  Both girls groaned loudly and then stifled their giggles as they slipped into the tent. Hetty would have liked to write in her journal, describe the restaurant and the new people they’d met, but it was all she could do to take off her dress, pull on her nightgown, and crawl under her blankets.

  The next night, Hetty again had no time to think about poetry and no energy to write in her journal. She barely had time to think. It seemed that double the number of people showed up for dinner. Only when food ran out did she and Alma have time to sit at a table and eat their own meal.

  “Look at that man over there, Hetty,” Alma whispered as she took a bite of beans. “His face is all mashed in.”

  Hetty saw who Alma was talking about. She remembered serving him earlier. His face was crooked, his chin off to one side. But he was laughing and talking, and she had noticed his sparkling blue eyes.

  “He must have been in some terrible accident,” Hetty whispered back. She hadn’t spoken softly enough, though.

  “That’s Andy Nickerson,” a deep voice behind her said. “But everyone calls him Moosejaw. Want to hear how his face got smashed?”

  Hetty was surprised when a stocky young man eased onto the bench across from her. Papa sat down next to him.

  “Here’s someone I’m sure you’ll enjoy meeting, Hetty,” Papa said, sipping his coffee. “He’s a writer. His name is Jack London. Jack, meet my daughter, Hetty, who wants to be a writer, and her friend Alma. Alma’s mother runs this excellent restaurant.”

  “As fine a place to eat as any in California or Alaska.” Jack stuck out his hand to Hetty and then to Alma. His grip was firm, and his hand, which swallowed Hetty’s, was rough with calluses. Hetty thought that perhaps he had done harder work in his life than writing.

  “Jack won a contest at the San Francisco Call four years ago,” Papa said. “We paid him twenty-five dollars, if I remember right.”

  Jack laughed. “Yes, money I needed badly. I had just returned from working on a seal-hunting expedition in Siberia with more stories than cash.”

  “I will never forget your descriptions of slaughtering the seals onboard your ship,” Papa said.

  “I can never forget those awful scenes. I found myself trapped in a sea of blood for a hundred days in order to provide women with fur coats.”

  Hetty shivered and vowed never to wear a sealskin coat. “Are you truly a writer? I’ve never met a writer before, except, of course, for Papa, who’s a journalist.” Hetty knew she sounded like a silly schoolgirl, but how exciting this was! “Papa said I must come on this trip so I’d have an adventure. Have you published stories in magazines?”

  “Young lady, I have the tallest stack of rejection slips in California.” Jack threw back his head and laughed.

  Jack’s hair was as yellow as a hay field and his eyes as blue as the sea on a summer day. He was short, not a lot taller than Hetty, but his shoulders were broad, his body strong. His eyes studied her, but he looked as though he waited for her to say something fascinating.

  She could only stare. Papa saved her. “I told Hetty she had to come on this trip so she’d have new things to write about.”

  “Your father is right. I plan to write no fewer than a thousand words a day while in Alaska.” Jack stared at the last sopaipilla on Alma’s plate. Alma giggled and offered it to him. He smiled and popped it into his mouth.

  “A thousand words?” Hetty asked. “Goodness, I’m way behind already. What do you write about?”

  “The characters I meet. The scenery. The frightened horses being unloaded from the ship onto the beach. The thousands of people hoping to strike it rich.” Jack licked sugar from his short, stubby fingers.

  “You were going to tell us how that poor man got his face mashed,” Alma reminded Jack.

  “Ah, yes, Moosejaw. The winters are long and cold in the Yukon. Moosejaw h
as been prospecting near Dawson for several years. Men, living in one-room cabins, get lonely. They do strange things. Mr. Nickerson brought a young moose into his cabin for company.”

  “Right into his house?” Alma giggled again. “Like a puppy?”

  “That’s right. But one day, when they went outside together, Mother Moose found her baby and repaid Nickerson for baby-sitting by kicking him in the face.”

  “You’re teasing us.” Hetty thought Jack was telling tall tales.

  “Ask him. He tells the story to anyone who’ll listen. You’ll find many men with strange nicknames living in the goldfields.”

  “Are you seeking gold, Jack?” Papa asked.

  “I am seeking adventure. If gold appears under my fingers, however, I will certainly pick it up.” Jack London stood. “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

  “We can’t leave until we earn a little more money.” Papa didn’t bother Jack with the details of being robbed.

  “Well, good luck. We’ll meet again, I hope. And when we do, Hetty, we will share stories. You read me yours. I’ll read you mine.”

  Hetty watched Jack London walk away. Jack wasn’t very old, but look at the experiences he’d had, the places he’d been! She had never traveled anywhere until now. How could she share what she wrote with him? The idea was much too frightening. But she vowed to write in her journal every night as he advised. Papa was right. She needed this adventure.

  CHAPTER 3

  SARAH LANCASTER

  After a week of hard work, Hetty woke up sore and tired. She stretched and snuggled under her blankets, thinking that she’d rather climb the world’s tallest mountain than keep on dishing up food for hungry people and cleaning up afterward. But today was their last day in Dyea. Their restaurant had been so successful that they had raised enough money to pay for Mrs. Vasquez’s share of the trip and to replace Papa’s soaked food.

  Meeting new people every night had been fun. Mrs. Vasquez had gotten three marriage proposals, but each time she had only laughed and said, “No thanks.” There was always music and dancing. Papa had brought a copy of Great Expectations by Mr. Charles Dickens. Some nights he read a chapter aloud, and many diners stayed to listen.