Gold Rush Groom

by Jenna Kernan

  “Out!” he cried, grabbing one man after another and shoving them toward the main tunnel.

  They stumbled back into the main shaft and stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. But when the crew foreman recognized Jack, he ordered them out and the men scrambled up the shaft toward safety as he reached the operator and sent him up as well.

  “How many more?” he called to the fleeing man.

  “Nine down below,” he called back, still scrambling toward the surface.

  Jack grabbed the lantern and headed down the main shaft. He could hear the other engine farther down. He lifted the lantern and looked at the ceiling, noting that water dripped from the passage. This was bad—really bad.

  He reached the men, standing below the braced portion of the tunnel and turned off the steam.

  “You’re weakening the ceiling. Out! Everybody out!”

  The men did as he ordered, but the tunnel was wide enough for only one at a time. Jack watched the lights retreating with the men as he waited his turn to flee. There was no sound with the first collapse, just a light that was there and then gone. Three more lights winked out as the men closest to him turned and ran back. He could see the lanterns bobbing before their terrified faces as they ran hunched over. There was a horrible scream cut short as more of the ceiling broke loose.

  Only three men made it to the braced location to join him and the operator of the nozzle. Four of the nine now stood with Jack in the shelter of the timbers.

  The men dug frantically through the loose gravel. The first man they unearthed was already dead. They dug no farther.

  “They’re all gone,” cried one miner.

  “Calvin was first. He might have made it out,” said another.

  “I saw him fall,” said the last. “He’s dead.”

  The first miner began to weep.

  “Douse the fire in the boiler,” ordered Jack.

  “But it’s light,” argued the second.

  “The fire will eat up all our oxygen.”

  One of the men snatched up the cask of water. Jack grabbed his arm.

  “No. We may need that. Just scatter the coals on the ground.”

  They did. The embers glowed an eerie orange. Two lanterns remained. They doused one and turned the wick low on the other.

  “They’ll start digging us out as soon as the tunnel is safe,” assured Jack.

  But how much of the steam-soaked tunnel had come down? Would help reach them before their air ran out?

  Lily dressed, stopped at the bank and then headed for the steamer offices. She had finally earned a tidy amount, enough to carry her to Nome and allow her to set up in a new boomtown. The threatening skies gave her the push she needed and by the time she reached the docks it was snowing in earnest. She watched the flakes vanish into the river. Soon it would be ice once more, the steamers would cease and the only way out would be by dog team—and Jack had her dog.

  She picked a steamer leaving on Friday. That gave her six days to get her affairs in order and to retrieve Nala. Lily poured gold from her pouch into the scales to the correct measure and bought a one-way ticket to Nome. As soon as she lifted the ticket she felt ill at the thought of leaving Jack.

  She headed up Front Street clutching her ticket with grim determination, knowing that Nala was just the excuse she needed to see him. If she thought about the reality of never seeing Jack again she’d lose her nerve. She was just going to get her dog. She put one more foot before the other.

  “You’re a fool over that man, Lily, and he’ll be your ruination.”

  “Miss Lily?”

  Had she spoken aloud? She turned to see Amos Luritz, the tailor, standing before her.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Miss Lily, wait until you hear. Such news, I have. My business is so good, mending and sewing all day that I can’t keep up. I had to hire an assistant!” he said, beaming. “Such a blessing and who would have guessed my fortune is coming from thread instead of gold? And it’s all because of you. You gave me a business here.”

  “No, no. It’s because you work hard and you are a very good tailor.”

  “Come spring I’ll have enough to buy a ticket down the Yukon on one of these fine ferries. Sure will beat walking all the way from Dyea. And in Seattle, I’ll find a steamer to take me all the way home to New York.” His smile changed into a look of surprise when he noticed that she held a ferry ticket in her hand. “Are you leaving, too, Miss Lily?”

  “I might be.” No, she was. Why did she say might?

  “What about your singing? What about your partner, the inventor?”

  Was she really ready to sail to a new camp without him?

  Lily squeezed the ticket, indecision twisting her insides. She should go, but she longed to stay.

  “Mr. Luritz, I won this at cards and the company won’t exchange it for cash. It’s only to Nome and it leaves on Friday. Would you like it?”

  She held out the ticket.

  “No, no, Miss Lily, you’ve given me too much already.”

  She smiled. “But what about your beautiful daughters? Are you really going to spend another winter without them?”

  He hesitated, eyeing the ticket. “I can’t take it.”

  “You’ll be home by Christmas.”

  He accepted the gift.

  “Chanukah,” he corrected. “Would you like to see their pictures now?”

  Lily nodded. “Yes, I would.”

  He took a creased studio portrait from his pocket and extended it. Lily looked at the bright-eyed daughters surrounding a smiling woman and knew that she wanted to be as happy as this tailor’s wife. She wanted it with Jack.

  “You need to get home to them,” she whispered, her throat now constricted.

  He nodded, taking the picture and looking down, brushing a finger over his wife’s face. “I do.” When he looked up his eyes were swimming in tears. “How can I thank you?”

  “By getting back to your children, of course.”

  The shouting in the street brought both Lily and the tailor about.

  A red-faced man with a sunken stomach and a full mustache shouted again.

  “Cave-in!”

  Lily’s heart stopped. Where was Jack? Her knees went to water and the tailor caught her before she hit the boardwalk. Terrible possibilities arrested her, making it hard to breathe.

  “Miss Lily?”

  “Where?” she whispered.

  “Anderson’s claim,” shouted the stampeder. “All men to the site for digging.”

  She found she could breathe again, until she remembered that Anderson was using Jack’s invention.

  She headed out with the others.

  She was nearly to the claim when Nala greeted her. Jack was here.

  Lily sank to her knees, hugged her dog and prayed.

  “Please, heavenly Father, let him be aboveground.”

  But he wasn’t. The information was confusing and she had to speak to many men to learn that fifteen had been down in the mine on two steam engines. Jack had cleared six from the first machine and was heading to the next when the shaft gave way.

  Lily found one of the survivors, a pale Welshman named Bobby Durham. A dirty, lopsided black hat sat low over his eyes that darted about in a frantic sort of way. He was smeared with mud and still shaking.

  “Where’s Jack Snow?” she asked.

  “Dunno.”

  “You were with the second crew?”

  He nodded, wiping the sweat from his face and smearing the mud onto his cheek. “I’d be dead if not for him. Brian was right behind me. Then the others.”

  “Where’s Brian, then?” she asked.

  He put his head in his hands and wept.

  Lily clasped his shoulder.

  Durham began a steady rocking to accompany his sobs.

  “The others?” she demanded.

  His voice was muffled by his hands pressed over his mouth,
but she made it out.

  “Behind me when the ceiling fell.” He looked at her, his eyes crazed with grief. “The whole thing slipped loose and fell.”

  “Wasn’t the tunnel braced?”

  “Over the engine.”

  Lily’s stomach churned as she realized what might have happened. She swept the area for Anderson. She found him, ordering men about.

  “Mr. Anderson.”

  He turned to her, his face registering surprise at finding her here. “Miss Lily!”

  “Was the tunnel braced?”

  “I got no time for this now.”

  “Jack told me that the entire tunnel had to be braced so the steam wouldn’t weaken the earth.”

  Anderson looked around at the men who had gone still and silent.

  “He never said so.”

  Now she understood. Wood was expensive and Anderson had not done as he was told. Jack had come to check on operations, found the oversight and ordered the miners out. Her eyes narrowed on him, but she reined in her fury. This was not the time.

  “How many men are trapped in there?”

  Anderson cleared his throat. “Nine unaccounted for.”

  “And Jack?”

  Anderson motioned with his head. “Among them.”

  Durham was on his feet now and facing Anderson. “He came to warn us. Told us to get out. Saved my life.” Durham stepped up to Anderson. “You knew?”

  Obviously, the miner had figured out who was responsible, and much as Lily would have liked to let Durham strike Anderson, she needed information.

  “Was any of it braced?”

  Anderson nodded. “Yes, over the engines, where the ceiling is wettest. I never knew that this could happen. I swear to God.”

  Lily knew it was a lie. Soon the others would know as well, for though she had not spoken to Jack, she’d heard from her regular customers who worked for grubstakes that Jack came to the mines to teach them how to use the engine. But she’d gain nothing by arguing.

  Four or more hours had passed and they had achieved nothing. How much air would there be in the small chamber in the frozen earth? Had any of them even reached the braced portion?

  Lily went to the mine entrance, now buzzing with men hauling out dirt in a bucket brigade. The buckets traveled hand to hand like a centipede moving its legs. Lily stared at the pile of earth they had moved and tried not to let the tiny flame of hope within her die.

  She sat helpless beside Nala as the pile of earth grew. Shouts came from inside the tunnel.

  “They found a body,” came the call repeated from one to the next.

  Lily’s heart stopped as she waited. Another hour passed before the earth released the man. Durham’s partner, Brian, just two yards back of him, was carried out on a plank. Dirt clung to his clothing. Someone had covered his face with a red handkerchief. But the bruising on his hands and the unnatural concavity of his chest deformed the corpse. Lily held her breath at the horror while the procession passed before her.

  Durham howled like a frightened child as his friend was laid on the cold ground. Lily knelt beside him and prayed for the Lord to save the man she loved.

  She sat back on her heels as the realization settled over her like a shroud. She loved Jack and she might never get the chance to tell him. What if she had lost him for good?

  Grief, black as poison, welled within her. Inside, she screamed out her pain and horror. Outwardly, she could not even lift her hand to wipe her face.

  Durham had recovered himself somewhat and swept an arm about her.

  She turned to him. “Jack’s gone, isn’t he?”

  He blinked at her, his eyes red-rimmed and watery.

  “He was shouting and pushing us. Last I saw him he was headed deeper to the second team.”

  Lily pressed her hands to her face and sobbed.

  The miner continued. “But that means he was well back and closest to the section they braced. He might have made it under the timbers before all hell broke loose.”

  Lily lifted her head. Jack would have placed himself behind the others as he ushered them out and that act of heroism might just have saved him from the falling rock. They needed to get to him quickly.

  She clasped Durham’s forearm. “How long would the air last?”

  The weary miner pushed his dirty fingers beneath the crown of his hat and scratched his head. “I don’t rightly know.”

  Dark came early now and the icy snowfall added to the misery. The men in the bucket brigade stood, cold and wet, passing the gravel from one to the next as twilight closed in and lanterns were set every few feet along the line.

  It was full dark when they dragged out the mangled body of Calvin Toddy. Hope flagged as the men acknowledged that the chances of saving anyone was dropping with the temperature. Anderson’s men stayed, but some of the volunteers abandoned the line. Men who had come to the aid of the victims were not going to waste precious days and hours digging dead men from the earth, not when the breath of winter was already on them and the smallest streams showing thin coatings of ice at night.

  The pace slowed as a skeleton crew continued grimly through the night, sure that their rescue mission had changed to one of recovery.

  Lily stood in grim silence as a pall settled over them all. The black shroud of grief threatened to take her again. Even if the men had survived the collapse, she recognized now that they wouldn’t reach them in time.

  That meant she had seen Jack for the last time, heard the final utterance from his lips and received her last kiss.

  What had she said to him on the street yesterday? She could not recall, but realized that she should have followed her heart and thrown herself into his arms, instead of cloaking herself in her foolish dignity. Now it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lily’s ears rang as she stumbled along the path that led back toward Dawson. Someone clasped her elbow, supporting her, keeping her moving.

  “No!” She dropped to her knees in the dirt.

  Jack was back there. Alive or dead, he was there and she would stay until he was found.

  Against the blackness that threatened to consume her, she fixed on the pinprick of light. Jack had been last in line to leave. He might be under a small section of the tunnel that had been braced…waiting in the darkness. At this second, he might still live.

  Lily found her feet and retraced her steps.

  She found Anderson sitting at the mine entrance, directing men to send the dirt from the bucket brigade through the Long Tom to extract any gold.

  Lily fumed. He had the manpower to search for gold but not to dig out his men. It took a moment to realize that the men on the line were no longer passing the buckets from hand to hand, but carrying them several yards each.

  “Where are all the others?”

  Anderson shifted the cigar to the opposite side of his mouth. “Gone, like you should be.”

  “But they may be alive.”

  Anderson said nothing to this. Instead he brushed off the snow that clung to his coat and shifted the soggy cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Lily. Men aren’t going to leave their own diggings to muck about after men that’s clearly passed. Winter’s coming. They got to get the gold out while the water’s flowing.”

  Lily felt the darkness creeping stealthily forward, threatening to take her to that place where she could not fight again. She pushed against it. Jack needed her.

  “We could hire more men.”

  “What about if you do the singing and I do the mining?”

  It was all she could do not to point out his shortcomings to date.

  “What if I paid for a team of miners to dig?”

  He blew a frustrated breath past the cigar which had long ago gone out. “I’m already digging. Tunnel’s only wide enough for one man. And I’ll have them run twenty-four hours.”

  “I could tunnel alongside you or…”
Lily paused as the idea sprang at her all at once. Could it work? “How deep is the tunnel?”

  “Hit bedrock at eighteen feet and been tunneling along it for some time.”

  “Why don’t we tunnel straight down from the top?”