Shoddy Prince

by Sheelagh Kelly

  Had the weather been kind it would have been difficult enough, but as further hindrance to their passage came driving snow and ferocious gales. Through glaring slits of hatred they forged the way ahead, blinking ice-encrusted lashes neath the incessant torment of needles; arguing, fighting and swearing, cursing the weather and each other, snapping and snarling like wolves, driven to distraction by the clanking and rattling of shovel against pan. Even after they had conquered the Chilkoot Pass their torture went unabated, for still another five hundred miles lay ahead; but they could not travel it now, since the Klondike could only be reached by water. Seething with frustration and discomfort, they had to wait with the many thousands of people at the camp at the head of Lake Bennet, breaking ice to get drinking water, chopping down trees and building boats, until the thaw came. In those frost-bitten, vitriolic months only the shimmering vision of gold kept them alive.

  * * *

  Spring came late to this vicious northern land. Too slowly for those impatient to be rich, the sun began to rise a little earlier each day. The frantic drive to produce boats that would carry them to the goldfields was over. No longer was the peaceful air assaulted by the rabid growl of the sawmill, its jaws now tamed into a calmer beast. The craft were ready, lined up along the shore like frozen fish. Itchy feet paced the edges of the lake, their owners testing for a break in the ice, listening intently for that significant groan. Nat loafed beside the boat that he himself had helped to construct: oh that Chippy could see him now! The officer would be proud of him. With nothing much else to do he dwelled for a moment on the circumstances that had brought him here and thought kindly of Chipchase for the role he had played. When he had earned his fortune and returned to York for Bright he would pay a visit to this old acquaintance. When? Frustration came in waves. Melt! Melt, he urged the arctic land, squinting through the watery sunshine, desperately seeking a change in the ice, examining each barren branch for the drip of moisture that would tell him the final part of his journey was nigh.

  Then, one morn to the echoing croak of ptarmigan, the landscape started to moult like the bird itself. Small holes began to mottle its wintry plumage, which were teased and widened by the sun, melting a little further each hour into a gown of lace revealing underskirts of brown. Leggy cranes made ponderous investigation of these grassy patches, snowgeese followed caribou on their northwards trek, and water began to ooze from the edges of the frozen river that groaned in the agony of its rebirth. How fast it happened now! Within an hour of those first cracks chunks of ice the size of wagons began to shift and jostle like huge lumps of uncut emerald, sapphire and zircon, with gulls riding on the teeming floe that roared towards the ocean. All at once the petrified water burst free of its winter prison, all at once came an excited rush to launch the boats, all at once the vast flotilla of ramshackle craft surged through the swollen torrent, down through the canyons of the Yukon river, their foolhardy crews oblivious to the danger of rapids, rocks and whirlpools, bouncing, tumbling, surging over the white water towards the goldfields of the Klondike.

  Hair plastered to his brow, eyes wide, mouth agape in terror and exhilaration, Nat gripped the edges of his boat as it hit a wall of water, soared through the air and landed again, drenching the occupants. The bones of his knuckles shone white as he clung on for life, for to lose that hold was to die. No one would save him. All around him in the white water rapids craft broke apart, bodies were dashed onto the rocks and pulverized, swamped or drowned, all in the cause of gold. Another wall of water, another jarring blow and up, up into the air! He held his breath, felt every man do the same… then down! Crashing, bouncing, splashing into the raging morass. Gold, gold, gold! He chanted the magic word over and over again, urging his aching, freezing fingers to hold on. He could not come so far and die. Yet in his fear of death not once did Bright cross his mind; the only brightness that he feared to lose was that yellow precious metal.

  * * *

  After five hundred miles of rivers and lakes the reduced and battered fleet arrived in Dawson City. It was still intensely cold here, the road was frozen, but at least there was not that bitter wind to contend with for the town was sheltered by mountains. Even as they stood here, damp and exhausted, in a street whose telegraph posts were draped with banners that proclaimed such legendary names as Eldorado and Bonanza, Nat and Rymer could not quite believe that they had reached their journey’s end, but gradually the very character of the place brought them down to earth. As Rymer, using Yorkshire parlance, had dubbed it, Dawson was a ‘rive-arsing’ city of about ten thousand inhabitants, whose dance-halls, saloons and gambling houses had sprung from nowhere out of a frozen peat-bog and now played host to people of every class, including those who were ready to divest the miners of their hard-earned gains: card sharps, prostitutes and confidence tricksters.

  After such a journey, the youths decided they deserved a night of celebration and spent their last few dollars at the gaming tables of Diamond Tooth Gertie’s saloon before going to try their luck in the creeks, not seeing it as waste, for there would be more, many more, to come.

  The next morning, fighting a hangover, they set off into the wilderness to pan for gold. The sky was blue, the sun shone. Out of the brown scrub at the foot of tree-trunks peeped young green shoots. The deathly silence of winter was broken by the drilling of woodpeckers, and the whole atmosphere was one of hope. Thus, crapulence was soon displaced by an eagerness to begin work. And work they did. Though spring had come the ground remained hard and the young men were compelled to burn holes in the frozen dirt before they could begin sifting the gravel through their pans.

  For hours they dug and sifted. No gold appeared. They moved on to another site and began the process again, and again, and again. Out of the spring sky came an unanticipated squall, dusting the land with icing sugar and so hampering their efforts. Nat was quick to sink into despondency, and Rymer tried to cheer him by saying there was always tomorrow, but tomorrow yielded nothing either, not the tiniest glimmering speck.

  Forbidding this early adversity to halt them, they searched on, positive by the evidence of what they had witnessed in Dawson that gold was to be found if one was looking in the right place. At least the weather was becoming warmer and the days longer. The sun rose at three and did not set until eight or nine at night, and every hour of daylight was put to good use. Summer reached its spectacular zenith, all but the mighty resilient glaciers swooning to its persuasive caress. Loosed from their eiderdown the meadows exploded with fireweed. Petrified lakes burgeoned with trout that shimmered and leaped amongst emerald waters. Flies buzzed around dirt-stained faces whilst the young men toiled and struggled and panned. Throughout those all too short summer months when darkness did not come at all they laboured and roamed beneath the vast blue skies under the watchful gaze of eagles, their flesh one huge burning sore inflicted by voracious hordes of mosquitoes. They toiled and searched until the bushes were decked with ribbons of velvet from the anders of caribou, a sign that fall was nigh, but despite all efforts the moosehide bags which they had hoped to fill with gold dust remained limp and empty.

  Midas fingers touched the trees, and still the only gold they had encountered was in the whispering leaves of aspen. Soon these too were gone, lost beneath a pall of snow that would remain for months, muffling the trill of bird and cricket, plunging the land into deathly hush. The nights were long. Still their determination held. In the dark and silent winter they again lit fires to burn holes in the unresponsive earth, washed pans of barren shale by firelight, hoping, praying for the elusive glitter that would make this agonizing ache in bone and muscle all worthwhile. Pain brought irritation, and in turn argument. Their faces became gaunt with both misery and hunger. Now they could not even look forward to a good meal to comfort them at the end of each arduous day, for supplies were running low and the fish were hiding deep below a crust of ice. In the summer an abundance of wild fruits had kept scurvy at bay, but now the corners of their mouths were cracked and
scabbed, making argument physically painful, and thus they relapsed into a morose silence, dreaming not just of gold but of hot flapjacks and maple syrup, and a warm bed.

  The New Year of 1899 howled across the flat open spaces of the valleys. The temperature dropped to fifty below. Driven by despair to the limits of his sanity, Nat made pacts with God and Satan… neither answered. Into each individual brain crept a maggot of suspicion, which nibbled and fed upon their unvoiced fear: what if the goldfields had been worked out by the thousands who had gone before? Neither dared to speak of this, the only certainty being that they could not proceed indefinitely. Nat, even in this pain-racked state too mulish to give up of his own accord, prayed for Rymer to voice the obvious. But his partner had been forged in the identical hardy mould and there followed several more of those long winter nights before relief was to come. Eventually, worn down by the elements and the futility of his labours, Rymer succumbed to the gnawing wind of failure and made the tentative suggestion that they return to Dawson’s ice-packed streets.

  Nat was never more glad than at this moment, but pride forced him to work on for a respectable period to illustrate that he was not the one to have weakened first. But he enjoyed no triumph, and the journey back to Dawson was undertaken with heavy heart. With their inglorious return came the discovery that others had been more successful in their quest; gold still teemed into the city. At odds with the bitter jealousy there was also comfort to be had from this news, for at least now they were certain that the creeks were not worked out and they must simply choose a better location when they returned in the spring. For now they would have to drown their sorrows here on the few cents they had left, which both agreed miserably would not get them very drunk. There were, however, those more fortunate and generous souls who were willing to stand the luckless pair a drink. After their abstemious months in the wilderness it took very little to inebriate them.

  To Nat and Rymer, who had not been in the city for long, it seemed from the rumbustious atmosphere that there were few laws to be observed in Dawson. Men raced their jingling dogsleds up and down the main street at will, the brothels ran their thriving businesses unchecked, and the boys themselves were allowed to drink and cavort as much as they liked that Saturday night without being judged a menace to anyone. Their luck appeared to have changed for the better too, for the bank clerk to whom they had spoken on the ship not only bought them a drink from his swollen purse but gave them each a coin to spend at the gaining tables. Rymer won, and with a drunken grin he immediately offered half to Nat.

  Nat refused. ‘I’ll only lose it, knowing my luck. Keep betting and if you’re still winning at the end of the night I’ll take half of it then.’

  Rymer cackled. ‘That’s what I like about you, you’re not greedy!’ He placed another bet. The wheel spun and his number came up again. In fact he was to win repeatedly for the next hour, at which point he announced that he would quit whilst he still had money to spend on something better. This something better turned out to be a brothel, where he and Nat enjoyed much debauched compensation until informed of the price this would cost them. Nat’s slurred prescription that they make a run for it was not a good one. The snarling brawl that carried them onto the boardwalk in the early hours of the morning was to inflict graver injury than the cuts and bruises which distorted their cheeks. They had, it transpired, committed the one crime that Superintendent Steel, head of the North-West Mounted Police, refused to overlook: they had broken the strict observance of the Sabbath.

  Apart from being customs collectors, land agents, magistrates, gaolers and law enforcers, the North-West Mounted Police were also mail carriers. It was amongst one of those mail bags that a wanted poster had arrived from Alberta and was consequently hung on a wall of the police barracks. During the hours that Nat and Rymer were in gaol, charged with being drunk and disorderly on a Sunday, the sharp-eyed police constable in charge of them received a jog to his memory, went over to peruse the notices that were strewn across the wall and discovered to his glee that one of the pair was a wanted man. Waking the prisoners by banging a metal cup on the bars of the cell he called, ‘You there! You told us when we arrested you that your name is Nat Prince – is that true?’

  Hungover, both youths groaned at the noise. Whilst Rymer ignored it as best he could Nat winced and tried to escape under his blanket, muttering, ‘Course it’s true.’ God, his head hurt.

  His answer delighted the constable. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Christ, d’you have to make so much noise?’ grumbled Nat into his pillow.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry I’m sure! I’ve just got one more little thing I want to say then I’ll leave you in peace. Horse stealing.’ The constable waited. There was no response. He became theatrical then. ‘“A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” That’s what that old king said, didn’t he? I know you’re only a prince but I guess you must’ve thought you needed a horse yourself!’

  It took Nat a little while to come round. Even when he did so the after effects of the alcohol prevented him from digesting the accusation. ‘What the hell’re you wittering on about?’ He looked around the prison cell, trying to remember how he had got here. Rymer was lying next to him, shielding his eyes from the light that filtered through the barred window.

  The scarlet-coated constable maintained his cheerful voice. ‘I said, you’re wanted for horse stealing!’

  Nat winced and took his hands away from his creased and battered face to display incredulity. ‘Horse stealing! Don’t be daft.’

  ‘You just confirmed your name is Nat Prince.’ The man brandished the poster bearing a likeness of Nat, who gave a dumb nod. ‘Well, this here poster informs me that you stole a horse and certain artefacts belonging to a Mr John Anderson.’

  Nat began to sober up, dealing Rymer a thump and telling him to wake up. ‘The horse was mine, he gave me it! Tell him, Rymer!’

  The constable showed scepticism. ‘Can you prove it?’

  Rymer, at last come to consciousness, leaned on his elbow, made a face at the taste of his own tongue and offered in Nat’s defence, ‘How’re you gonna prove he had a horse in the first place? I don’t see it anywhere round here.’ He indicated the gaolhouse. ‘Unless you’ve got it hidden up your jacket.’ The shiny buttons were rather strained across a portly gut.

  ‘Don’t get smart, boy! At the moment you’re only here for being drunk and disorderly, but if you talk too much you might just talk yourself into being accessory to a major felony.’

  Rymer shut up.

  ‘Look!’ pleaded Nat, hanging onto the bars of the cell. ‘I didn’t steal the bloody horse!’

  ‘Mr Anderson says you did, and this here kinda proves we got the right man.’ Reaching into a corner the man produced a shovel. ‘We found this in your pack.’ On its shaft he pointed out the initials JA. ‘I don’t reckon that stands for Nat Prince.’

  ‘How d’you know it’s my pack?’ demanded Nat.

  ‘Because a kindly gentleman saw you being arrested and thought he’d better bring it here for safe-keeping until you sobered up. When are you gonna admit you’re licked?’

  ‘All right, I borrowed Mr Anderson’s tools!’ admitted Nat. ‘But he knew about it. I told him I’d bring them back when I’d made a strike – but I didn’t steal the horse! It was mine.’

  ‘Well,’ the Mountie laid aside the shovel. ‘We’ll find that out when you stand trial.’ He turned his attention to Rymer. ‘You gonna behave yourself now, boy? Good, cause I don’t want to see no more drinking on a Sunday or it’ll be more than a day in gaol, you’ll be heading home with this fella.’

  Nat almost vomited with the panic that rose to his throat. ‘You can’t send me back, I haven’t made a strike yet!’

  The constable merely raised an eyebrow before turning away.

  ‘Please!’ Nat gripped the bars and made frantic entreaties to the man’s back. ‘You’ve got to believe me! I didn’t steal anything! I’m sorry about being drunk! Listen to me! It’s
not fair, I haven’t done anything!’ The door closed.

  Heart thumping with panic, Nat continued to shout and bang and protest, but it did him no good. Whilst Rymer, after a bout of chopping firewood for the police log-pile, was allowed to return to the goldfields, he himself was taken in handcuffs on the long and painful route back to Edmonton to stand trial.

  Anderson had been informed and had travelled north to attend. There was no sign of Mrs Anderson, to whom Nat could have appealed for mercy. Judging by his previous parting words there would be none from her spouse. Faced with Nat at the gaolhouse the rancher gave him a cool glare and then turned away. How easily he had shrugged off the affectionate mantle of Uncle John.

  ‘This the boy that stole your horse, sir?’ asked the police sergeant.

  ‘It is,’ replied Anderson without looking.

  ‘Fraid we didn’t get the animal back,’ apologized the Mountie. ‘He’d already sold it. Said you gave it to him.’

  ‘He did give it to me!’ Nat ranted at Anderson. ‘Why’re you lying?’

  ‘Don’t you call me a liar!’ Anderson made a lunge at him. ‘You think I’d let you keep that horse after what you did to my wife?’

  ‘Just hold on there!’ The policeman restrained Anderson. ‘Are you saying that you did give him that horse?’

  ‘I did, but what I give I can just as easy take back!’

  The sergeant adopted a different tone. ‘You mean you haul this officer all the way back from his duties in Dawson, then tell us you really did give his prisoner that horse?’