The Art of Love: Origins of Sinner's Grove

by A. B. Michaels

  Ice had broken two weeks prior on the Yukon, and transportation into and out of the Alaska and Yukon territories was now open for business. Mattie and Annabelle would travel twenty-five hundred miles downriver to the former Russian port of St. Michael’s; from there they’d switch to an oceangoing steamer for the final leg to Seattle. While Gus had gloomily counted the days until they left, Mattie’s excitement had only seemed to grow.

  Earlier that morning he’d loaded Mattie and Annabelle’s trunks onto the eighty-passenger boat, moored at the Fortymile landing. Their cabin was tiny and he’d wondered with a sense of irony how long it would take his little girl to get bored navigating those cramped quarters, and if Mattie would ever accidentally leave the door open. Now he stood waiting for the departure with Annabelle clinging to him like a monkey. He wasn’t sure if she understood what was happening; he only knew he was going to miss her like crazy. What bothered him more than anything was realizing he couldn’t say the same about his wife. When had that change occurred? As Josiah sauntered off, Mattie came up and slipped her arm around his. He took refuge in asking her yet again if she remembered everything he’d told her.

  Maggie rolled her eyes and leaned in to whisper, “Yes, I have the money you gave me in my stocking.” And louder: “I’ll send word just as soon as I get settled. Lolly Fortuna told me about a rooming house where the women look out for each other and take turns caring for the children so everyone gets a chance to work. And she says there’s work to be had there too. She says it’s as easy as plucking gold off the streets of Circle City.” Mattie giggled, inviting Gus to share the joke. Circle City, the latest boomtown to spring up downriver from Forty Mile, had lured hundreds of prospectors, deal-makers, and assorted hangers-on, very few of whom had found the elusive gold they’d come to scoop up. Gus couldn’t bring himself to smile back at her. After all, didn’t she consider him as hapless as all those other rubes? Since Annabelle’s birthday, they hadn’t mentioned her tirade again. It seemed her goal all along had been to go back to Seattle and take Annabelle with her, period. Whether he joined them, now or later, was irrelevant. Mattie was just happy to be going.

  Oblivious to his reaction, Mattie gave Gus’s arm a friendly squeeze and walked away to talk with Mary Beth, who had come to see them all off. In moments, Mattie was smiling broadly and laughing. He saw her once again as the girl he had fallen in lust with: blonde, pretty, spirited—ready for adventure. Only this time, the adventure would not be with him. He hoisted Annabelle up in his arms and held her closer, breathing in her little girl scent and fighting a recurring sense of panic that something might happen to her. He almost shouted that Mattie and Annabelle weren’t going anywhere, but stopped himself. Loneliness awaited him after they left, but the miserable aftermath of demanding they stay would be far worse. Gus had considered all of his options, and none of them were good.

  The Weare’s steam engine had been rumbling and hissing for some time, building up the power to churn the giant paddle wheel that would take his family down the river, so far away from him. All of a sudden there were three thunderous shrieks of the boat’s whistle.

  “All ashore that’s going ashore!” The officer on deck called out the ten minute warning for visitors who had come to say goodbye. Gus motioned for Mattie to come back to him.

  “Go to Mama,” he said, handing Annabelle over. She started to object and began squirming in Mattie’s arms. “None of that now,” Gus added. “Look what Daddy has for you.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two simple necklaces, each of which featured a gold nugget as the pendant. Gus handed the larger one to Mattie.

  “What? Gus, this is your largest nugget!” she said, examining the shiny chunk of metal.

  Gus gave her a lopsided grin. “Oh, there’ll be plenty more where that came from, just you wait. Besides, I wanted you and little Annie to have something to remind you of me.” He put the much smaller necklace around Annabelle’s neck, then held out his hand for the larger one. Mattie gave it back to him and he murmured, “Turn around.”

  Her back to him, Mattie lifted her blonde hair. He couldn’t help himself; he kissed her neck lightly before clasping the necklace.

  She turned back to him. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you, I guess…I…I wish you were coming with us, but it just wasn’t meant to be.”

  Just wasn’t meant to be. The words, so innocent, chilled him. Gus gently embraced both her and Annabelle, putting all the passion he could muster into his farewell kiss—a passion, he noted in the back of his mind, that wasn’t returned. Despair threatened to swamp him, so he stepped away.

  “You be good now, little Annabelly. Don’t give your mama too much grief, and I’ll see you as soon as I can.” He gave Annabelle one more quick kiss and swiftly turned to head across the gang plank. He called over his shoulder, “Remember to send me word just as soon as you can.”

  “I will. I promise,” Mattie called.

  In another ten minutes they were gone. Gus watched Mattie prompt Annabelle to wave to him from the deck of the boat. He waved back from the shore until they turned away.

  Gus trudged back to his cabin, intending to get something to eat before heading back out to his claim. The little house was cold, and filled with emptiness. Mattie had put everything away; the place was tidy and there was nothing for him to do. Hoping for a little reminder of Annabelle, he lifted the lid of the chest that had stored his daughter’s belongings. It was empty except for two items: the golden-haired doll and the bag of blocks that Shorty had made. Attached to the doll was a note that read:

  Please give this back to Janie and don't let her father sell it again. Also, the blocks were too heavy to carry. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.

  Mattie

  No “See you soon,” no “Love,” nothing. It was enough to make a grown man cry. Instead, Gus picked up his shovel, grabbed his work gloves, and headed back to the river. He had given Mattie just about all the money and gold he had; it was time to find some more.

  By mid-August, summer on the stretch of the Yukon where Gus worked his claim had already peaked, and so had Gus’s enthusiasm. Sluicing the tailings from the holes he’d dug the previous winter had brought in some gold, but not nearly enough to call it “pay dirt.” If prices held, he’d probably pull enough gold to keep the three of them going over the winter, but not much longer. Six years in the Yukon and that was all he had to show for it? Pathetic.

  Shorty Calhoun hadn’t fared much better; in fact, the old prospector working the claim next to Gus had given up the week before and moved on to another crick he’d heard might pan out.

  Since Mattie and Annabelle’s departure two and a half months earlier, Gus had received only the one promised letter: both mother and daughter were fine and in fact living in the rooming house Mattie had talked about. The Empire Rooming House was run by a Mrs. Partridge, who yes indeed looked like a small, stuffed bird. Mattie herself had easily gotten a job as a seamstress in a dressmaker’s shop. Mrs. Clements was a fair employer and Mattie enjoyed her work creating dresses for some of Seattle’s high society matrons. A real nice lady who lived next door came in and watched the children a few days a week. She was just a few years older than Mattie and they had become fast friends. Little Annabelle had taken her first steps and was already playing with several toddlers her age.

  The letter relieved a number of Gus’s fears, but other concerns cropped up in their place. It seemed like Mattie and Annabelle were getting along just fine without him. Notions crossed his mind as to whether Mattie would even want him back if he came out of the gold fields with so little to show for it. And even if she did, what in Sam Hill would he do if he gave up prospecting for good?

  Since leaving his family farm at sixteen, Gus had bounced around the country taking on any number of odd jobs: mule skinner, keelboat operator, bull whacker. He’d waited on ladies in a dry good store and proven his strength felling timber. He’d built houses by hand and even run cattle on one of the last big dr
ives from Texas to Abilene. But at each job, it was just a matter of time before Gus started figuring out how it could be done better. Sooner or later he’d open his mouth, and nine times out of ten it ended badly. Only once had someone, a real estate developer, seen Gus’s potential and offered to teach him the ropes. Gus learned all he could, but quickly realized if he ever wanted to be a boss and not an employee, he’d have to come up with some capital of his own. So, for the better part of six years, with the exception of the winter he’d spent in Seattle wooing Mattie, Gus had been chasing the dream. Gold fever, they called it. Well, maybe so. He’d ridden the ups and downs of hope and disappointment more times than he cared to count, and yes, it did burn inside like a fever. But damn, he was getting tired, and he was only thirty-two.

  Gus was in that frame of mind when he stepped into Bill McPhee’s saloon in Forty Mile on his way back from working the claim. Since no one waited for him at home, he often stopped by the bar to have a drink or two and chew the fat.

  McPhee liked to hunt and it showed. Along one long, rough-hewn wall hung several sets of antlers—a few blacktails, some ten point caribou, and a couple of bull moose, one of whose racks spread nearly six-foot wide. On another wall, the saloon keeper had nailed up several beaver pelts along with his prize trophy: a big male grizzly hide.

  It was not a place with a woman’s touch…unless you counted the life-sized, gilt-framed portrait of a French cancan dancer named CoCo that McPhee swore had fallen in love with him during the last opera season.

  Several miners sat around scarred wooden tables, drinking and playing cards. Clarence J. Berry, known to all as C.J., was working the counter. The young miner was down on his luck, so McPhee had given him a job tending bar. C.J., it turned out, was damn good at it. He was a good-natured soul with a spunky little wife named Ethel, and he had a talent for making customers feel right at home. As soon as Gus stepped up to the bar, C.J. slapped a whiskey in front of him. “You look like you could use about a dozen of these,” he said.

  “At least,” Gus replied, removing his dusty hat and running his fingers through his dark, stiff hair. “I think the claim’s a bust.”

  “Yep, that’s what old Shorty said last week. He’s headed off to Butte Crick. Heard there’s some color floatin’ down thataway.”

  “I figured as much. I haven’t seen him the past few days.” Gus thought about what Mattie had said about the old prospector. “How long’s Shorty been at this, anyway?” he asked.

  “Nigh on forty years, I think he told me.” C.J. wiped the bar as he spoke. “Since before the war, so he said.”

  Gus downed his shot and tapped the glass for another. “Hell of a long time to be playin’ with mud,” he remarked.

  “Damn straight,” his friend agreed. “No way that’s going to happen with you and me, though, not with the little women a cacklin’ in our ears, eh?”

  Gus nodded. C.J. was joking, of course. He was a newlywed and God knew he’d found a keeper in Ethel. Gus had met Mrs. Berry a few times and wished once or twice that Mattie would follow that sweet lady’s example. Ethel could shoot a rabbit or ride the rapids with the best of them, and she never seemed to complain, at least not that anyone ever gossiped about. Hell, she’d spent her honeymoon driving a team of sled dogs and hiking the Chilkoot Pass! But Ethel didn’t yet have kids, which is what Mattie would have said if he’d ever brought up the comparison, so he hadn’t bothered. He looked up at the jovial barkeep. “So, how long you going to stick it out, C.J.?”

  “Don’t rightly know. As long as my missus is willin’ to stick by me, I guess. You?”

  “No tellin’. My better half already packed our baby up and moved back to Seattle. Can’t say as I blame her. I’m supposed to follow her out at the end of the season.”

  “Well, that don’t leave you too much—” C.J. was cut off by the arrival of a local named George Carmack. “Here comes Lyin’ George,” he murmured.

  Carmack was a few years older than Gus, but he’d been traipsing around the Yukon Territory for a lot more years. Known as a “squaw man” because he’d taken a Native American wife, George eked out a living trading, trapping, fishing and, once in a while, prospecting. He had a reputation for telling tall tales, and wasn’t taken too seriously. But what he did next had Gus and everyone else in the saloon sitting up and paying attention.

  “Drinks on the house, my good man,” George announced with a sweep of his hand. He stepped up to the bar next to Gus. “Good day to you, sir,” he said, bowing with mock formality. He was obviously in a good mood.

  “Uh, George, you sure you got the coin to be doin’ that?” C.J. asked. “Get a good price on your pelts over at the trading post, did you?”

  George shook his head and sighed. “Ah, ye of little faith. I ain’t got coin, but I assure you I got something much, much better.” With that he pulled a rifle shell out of his pocket, opened it and dumped the contents onto the bar. A dozen large, bright gold nuggets spilled out.

  “Where’d you get those?” Gus and C.J. asked in unison.

  George leaned over the bar and beckoned them closer. “I like you boys, so I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. No, not a little secret, a big, big secret. These here nuggets came from up on Rabbit Crick. Me and the missus and Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie got a tip to go a huntin’ over there, and ol’ Jim, he found a bit of bedrock with gold ‘shinin’ like cheese in a sandwich,’ was how he put it.” George chuckled. “And sure enough, that’s what he found.” George swallowed the drink C.J. had put in front of him and held up the empty glass. “Like I said, boys, ‘Drinks on the house.’”

  It happened so fast, Gus had to hustle to keep up. Early the next morning he and C.J. and a host of other hopefuls poled their boats up the Yukon to where the Klondike River flowed into it. And up the Klondike they traveled until they reached the tributary known as Rabbit Creek where Carmack and his cohorts had staked their claims. Each man found a five-hundred-foot section of the river and staked it off, the claim stretching across the creek from rimrock to rimrock. Within a few days the entire creek was mapped out, the claims registered, and the trading began.

  “I’ll take ten percent of your number Seventeen Above, for fifty percent of my number Fourteen Below.” “I’ll grubstake you to work number Forty-Five Above for a take of twenty-five percent.” “For five thousand dollars I’ll give you a lay of one hundred feet of Seven Below at fifty percent. I’ll throw in thirty-five percent of thirty-five feet of Twenty-Seven Eldorado Above, and a mortgage on Sixteen Eldorado for security.” And so it went, each miner weighing the chances of striking it rich against the need for what looked like easy, no-risk money. Fortunes were bought and sold without the miners even knowing what they had. Gus didn’t know if he’d lucked out either, but he aimed to be on the winning side whether he found gold or not.

  Shorty Calhoun hurried back to Forty Mile, but was too late to claim any ground on what had quickly been renamed “Bonanza” Creek. Gus offered the old man a deal over a whiskey at McPhee’s.

  “I think I’ve got a good spot on Bonanza,” he told Shorty. “Work it with me, hold it down, and I’ll cut you in. But that’s just the first part. You remember that claim I bought from Porter Wilson awhile back? That creek’s just above Bonanza and my gut tells me there’s gold there too. You and me both can add to it. We use our leverage to run the crews. I’ll look for deals. And I swear to you—” Gus raised his glass to tap to Shorty’s “—I’ll make you rich.”

  Shorty scratched his perpetually scruffy beard. “I ain’t never worked with no partner before.”

  Gus grinned. “Yeah, I can see that’s worked out real well for you.”

  “Smart aleck.” Shorty grinned back, displaying his sparsely populated smile. “Still, I know you’s an honest sort, and I seen the way you treat your woman. Says a lot about a man. So I says ‘Why not?’ Let’s go get us some gold.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the third week of September, Gus had reached a cros
sroads. He’d promised Mattie he’d come out of the Yukon and back to Seattle by the end of the season. Now the short-lived Indian summer was drawing to a close and he could already feel the bite in the air. The Alice was moored at Fortymile Landing, about to make its last trip down the Yukon for the year. The river was already starting to freeze in places; even now the Alice ran the risk of getting iced in. When that happened, nobody went anywhere until the spring thaw.

  Problem was, Gus and Shorty were sittin’ on what could potentially be a goddamn fortune. There was no way to know for sure until they got down to bedrock, and that could only be done in the winter when the frozen ground kept the shafts from caving in. But right now the most important thing was staking the claims, protecting them, and settin’ up the crews. No way could he leave Shorty to handle all that by himself.

  Shorty understood the problem. “I heared Ed Barlow’s headin’ back down Seattle way,” he said. “He’s a good man. Not a real hard worker, but mebbe that’s why he’s headin’ down. Cain’t take it no more.”

  “What’s Ed got to do with me going to Seattle?” Gus asked.

  “Nuthin’, only I been told he’s lookin’ to make a few bucks by actin’ as courier. Says he’ll take letters and small packs and stuff…for a fee, of course,”

  “Of course.” Still, it was a good option as long as the man could be trusted. “I don’t know him. You sure he’s a good man?”

  Shorty shrugged. “Cain’t look into his heart, but as far as I know he is. We been acquainted awhile. I ain’t heard nothin’ shifty about him, anyways, and you know how word gets around.”