He found Randolph eagerly selling equipment to strangers who had no conception of the dangers they would be facing, and he was repelled by the young man’s brazen lies. For nearly half an hour he hung about the edges of the crowd that was eagerly buying Randolph’s gear, listening to the deceptions and correcting them to himself: ‘Dawson’s just to the north, three, four hundred easy miles.’ Must be twelve hundred of hellish difficulty. ‘Seven pleasant weeks before the snow falls should get you there.’ More like seven months, with snow most of the way.
What really terrified him was the information quietly passed him by an Edmonton man who said he was ashamed at what was happening: ‘You look a proper sort. England? I thought so. Believe not a word that one says. He’s never been north of this town. Only one man in history has completed the journey from here to Dawson, trained scout familiar with our climate. Powerful chap, top condition, had the help of Indians, too.’
‘How long did it take him?’
‘A year and two months. Arrived nearly dead.’
‘Then it’s criminal to send these unsuspecting people along such a trail.’
‘It’s worse. It’s murder.’
Rushing back to where Luton waited, Harry said bitterly: ‘Everything Fogarty said is true, Evelyn, except that he discovered only half. Even to attempt an overland trip from here to Dawson would be suicide. And Fogarty was also correct about Randolph. His forged reports are founded on nothing, not a single trip to anywhere, just dreams and willful delusions. Evelyn, this deception is so shocking, I do believe we must warn those gullible fools out there not to attempt such folly.’ He was so statesmanlike, never raising his voice and thinking only of others, that Luton was persuaded that an alarm must be sounded. Before this could be done a wild noise of cheering and whistling flooded their quarters, and all turned out to watch not a tragedy, nor a comedy either, but merely the latest in line of the Edmonton insanities.
A farmer named Fothergill from Kansas, who had made not a fortune but a competence raising corn and feeding it to his hogs, had arrived some days earlier on the train, bringing with him some two dozen large pieces of cargo that he had assembled into what he called ‘the Miracle Machine,’ which would carry him to the Klondike. Basically, it was an agricultural tractor, heavily modified for the gold rush, and on the flat fields of Kansas it might have been a sensation, for it consisted of a sturdy iron-strapped boiler which, when heated by wood chopped along the way, would activate four giant wheels.
‘You’ll notice,’ Fothergill told the admiring crowd, ‘that the wheels are pretty big across. That’s to help them roll over obstacles. You’d be surprised how that helps.’ But then he showed them the secret of his success: ‘Maybe you didn’t notice at first, but look at those spikes fitted into the wheels, and these three dozen extras in the box back here in case one breaks.’
‘What do they do?’ a suspicious Canadian asked, and Fothergill explained: ‘They dig into the soil. Give the contraption a footing and send it forward as neat as you please.’ As he spoke, his eyes shining with expectation of the gold he was going to find, it became obvious to the Englishmen that he had pictured the trail from Edmonton to Dawson as an American prairie, flat and easily negotiated but with a necessary tree here or there, for when one Edmonton man asked: ‘How you goin’ to get it through forests?’ the American replied: ‘We may have to avoid a tree or two, go around maybe.’
And now the time had come to start his drive of more than a thousand miles, with no map, only a few spare parts and just one ax to cut the needed wood. Lord Luton, watching this tremendous folly, whispered to his nephew: ‘Someone ought to halt this madness.’
As the fire below the boiler began to flame, the already heated water started to produce steam, and with a violent creaking of parts the huge machine, capable of carrying twenty men, inched forward, felt its power, and struck out for the modified Edmonton prairie, moving quite splendidly forward with Fothergill in the driver’s seat waving to the cheering watchers. But when, one hundred yards later, the huge spiked wheels encountered a stretch of flat earth where rains had accumulated, the contraption did not proceed onward; instead, the wheels dug themselves ever more deeply into the swampy soil, the big spikes cutting powerfully down and not ahead, so that soon the entire body of the vehicle was sinking into the mire, with all forward progress halted.
Before the confused farmer could halt the supply of power to the four huge wheels, they had dug themselves into a muddy grave from which six mules would not have been able to dislodge them. Dismayed, Fothergill climbed down from his perch, looked at the laughing crowd, and asked: ‘How am I ever going to get this to Dawson?’ By chance, he directed this question to Lord Luton, who drew back as if the man and his stupidity were distasteful, and said: ‘Yes, how indeed?’
Back in quarters, Luton resumed the point that Carpenter had been making when the launching of the miracle machine had interrupted: ‘We must alert these fools to the perils they face if they attempt such nonsense … or even attempt to leave on foot … or with horses.’
For an entire day the four moved among the gold-crazy hordes, warning them that the Halverson and Desbordays documents were fraudulent, but they found themselves powerless to dissuade the starry-eyed travelers. They met two men and a woman who had bought a pony that was expected to carry their entire pack to Dawson. ‘Please, please! Don’t try it!’ Carpenter urged, but even as he spoke the trio set off for a journey that would take them at least a year, if the pony lived, but since Harry was certain it would die before the week was out, he supposed its three owners would also perish.
When he encountered a fine-looking woman in her late thirties who proposed making the entire overland trip on foot, by herself, with a small packet of dried fruits, he lost all patience, and scolded her: ‘Madam, you will be close to death at the end of the first week, and surely dead by the second.’ When she explained, tearfully, that she must have the gold because she had two children in Iowa to support, he made a move which astonished both her and him: He took her in his arms, pushed his heavy mustaches against her face, and kissed her soundly on the cheek: ‘Madam, you’re a handsome woman. And a wonderful mother, I’m sure. But for God’s sake, go back to Iowa. Now!’ And before she could protest, he had given her fifteen Canadian dollars and taken her by the arm to the depot from which she could start her journey home.
Philip Henslow was having an experience that was somewhat similar, but one which would have a surprisingly different outcome. He was strolling idly, asking questions of any strangers who looked as if they might be informed concerning the various routes to Dawson, when he came up behind a woman, probably a good deal older than himself, he thought, who was conspicuous for her outstanding mode of dress. It looked like a modified military uniform made from some sturdy, tightly woven dark cloth: ample skirt but not long, soldier-type jacket but puffy at the shoulders, visored kepilike cap worn at a jaunty angle, heavy, durable shoes and, even though the weather was warm, stout gloves.
He was so taken by this unusual garb that he did something he would never have dared back in England, but the free and almost wild spirit of Edmonton that summer emboldened him. Hurrying ahead to pass her, he turned to ask politely: ‘Ma’am, are you headed north?’
When she looked up to see him, he almost gasped at the total charm of her appearance. She was, as he had guessed, in either her late twenties or earliest thirties, but she had the lithe figure of a teen. Her face was not beautiful in an ordinary sense of flawless complexion, prominent cheekbones and perfectly harmonized features; it was more like that of an eighteenth-century Italian statue of some distinguished matron: gracious, appealing, yet carved from timeless marble and somehow as hard.
She seemed in that first enchanted glance to come from some foreign country, neither Canada nor America and certainly not England, for her hair, which showed handsomely beneath the odd tilt of her kepi, was so light a straw color that it could almost have been called beaten silver. But her sali
ent characteristic was a slow-forming smile which seemed to deliver contradictory messages: ‘Come closer so we can talk,’ but also ‘Stand back so I can calculate who you are.’
From that first brief question of Philip’s she had made the same deduction as he: this one is a foreigner; and in a voice remarkably low and soft she asked in an accent he could not identify: ‘From where do you come?’
‘London.’
‘Heading for the gold fields, yes?’
‘Like everyone else.’
She said: ‘You look like a boy. Too young to be making such a trip,’ but when she saw him wince she quickly added, like a mother wanting to reassure a child: ‘Maybe you have more courage when you’re young.’
‘Have you heard any reports about the overland route to Dawson?’
When she heard these words she actually sucked in her breath and drew back: ‘You’re not thinking of trying that route, are you?’ and when he replied: ‘That’s why our team is out asking questions,’ she actually grabbed his right hand with her two gloved hands and said with a voice of deep concern: ‘Oh, young man! Don’t let them drag you along that path!’
She was so agitated that when Philip asked: ‘Did something terrible happen to you?’ she did an unexpected thing. Turning away from him, she raised her right arm and signaled a group of three men clustered some distance away. Catching the wave of her gloved hand, they hurried to her.
‘He do something to you?’ one of the men, chunky, swarthy-looking fellows in their thirties, asked menacingly, and she held them back with a disarming laugh: ‘No, no! A nice young man from London. He’s asking about going north.’ She introduced the three men: ‘Steno Kozlok, my husband; his brother Marcus, my brother Stanislaus. All farmers from North Dakota, and that includes me.’
‘Why did you call us?’ Steno asked, and from his heavy accent and dark, squarish face Philip deduced that he and the two other men must be immigrants from one of the Slavic countries or perhaps from Russia. The three looked as if they had been hewn foursquare out of some Middle European oak tree, and Philip thought: I’m certainly glad that I didn’t offend her, because if these three came at me …
‘My name is Irina Kozlok,’ she said in softly accented words that seemed to sing.
‘Where are you people from? I mean, before North Dakota?’
‘Ah,’ she laughed, ‘you’d never guess.’ And she said that her husband Steno and his brother Marcus had come from a distant corner of the Austrian Empire. ‘His proper name, Kozlowkowicz, but when we marry I find that no one can spell it or say it, so I made him change it to Kozlok. Now everybody can spell my name.’
‘But you … and your brother?’ Philip asked, and she replied almost teasingly: ‘You would never guess,’ and he said: ‘Well, you do have light hair. His is even lighter. Swedes?’ Again she laughed: ‘Everyone says that. No, we come from a place you never heard of. Estonia.’
‘Ah! But I have heard of it,’ he cried like a child who has solved a puzzle. ‘It’s part of Russia.’
Her smile vanished. ‘It’s Estonia, a part of nothing else. Just Estonia.’ Then, afraid that she had seemed harsh, she said brightly: ‘Men, I want you to tell this nice young Englishman who’s thinking about risking the land route what it would be like.’
As soon as she said this, her three companions stepped close to Philip, all speaking at once, and from the jumble of their words, he knew he was receiving just the kind of information Lord Luton sought: ‘Murderous … they should shoot the son-of-a-bitch sent us that way … no marked trail … you wouldn’t believe how many dead horses rotting in the sun … and you got to ford a dozen streams … snow comes, everyone on that trail freeze to death.’
The young woman stemmed the flood of complaints: ‘They’re telling only half.’
‘You people actually tried the trail?’
‘We did,’ Steno said, and his brother added: ‘But we smart enough to turn back.’ Irina broke in: ‘If your team even thinks about going that way, stop them now.’
‘If we’d’a tried to push on,’ Steno said, ‘we’d’a been snowed in, proper, all winter.’
‘And without heavy clothes or food,’ his wife added.
‘What now?’ Philip asked. ‘Back to North Dakota?’
‘Hell no!’ the three men said almost together. ‘We came for gold. We gonna get it.’
‘How?’
‘Only sensible way. Right down the Mackenzie, haul our boat over the Divide, and into Dawson.’
At this firm point, Irina grasped Philip’s hands again and stared deep into his eyes as she said softly: ‘I’m so glad you stopped me … asked me those questions. Please, please, listen to them. Don’t take that route. If you do, you’ll die.’
This was said with such gravity that Philip was momentarily struck silent. Then he said, with a slight bow to each of his informants: ‘I hope you reach the gold fields, you kind and helpful people from North Dakota,’ and Irina spoke for all when she replied: ‘We intend to.’ Then in a gesture of the brotherhood that linked all gold-seekers that summer in Edmonton, she astonished him by gripping his hand tightly, smiling at him briefly, and repeating in a voice as cold as steel exposed in winter: ‘Do not go the overland route. You’re much too young to die,’ whereupon she reached up and kissed him.
Half expecting her husband to come flying at him, Philip instead heard Steno saying: ‘Listen to her, young fellow. We do,’ and the four trailed off to start their journey to the Mackenzie. As they disappeared in the lingering twilight, Philip, still dazed by that farewell kiss, thought: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a wife like that, so daring, so quick to laugh, so generous toward other people? I wonder if all women in America are like that?
When Lord Luton’s four investigators reassembled to report their findings, he listened firm-lipped to their distressing news and interrogated each: ‘Did you reach the conclusion by yourself?’ and each told him of the shocking facts that had become so apparent under questioning. Satisfied that they had been honest in their seeking and in their decision that any version of overland travel was insane, he rose abruptly, nodded, and stalked from the room: ‘I’ve got to hear this for myself,’ and into the warm night air he disappeared.
Tall, thin, carefully dressed, with his aquiline nose slightly lifted as if he wished to avoid the smell of the rabble, he poked his way about, remaining aloof from the gold-seekers who had been unable to find quarters and were sleeping on the ground, their belongings piled about them. With brief and restrained questioning he satisfied himself that in all this rabble, no one knew anything, and a profound sadness overtook him: They’re fools who have been deluded by fools, and they’re doomed. When he came upon two men from a small Canadian village who were going to attempt the overland route on bicycles, dragging behind them little wheeled carts holding their gear, he stopped to ask them: ‘What will you use for greatcoats when the blizzards hit?’ and they replied smartly: ‘Oh, we’ll be in Dawson by then.’ He did not try to enlighten them, but his depression increased.
Still moving slowly among them like a recording angel, wise, just and impartial, he muttered again and again: ‘Doomed! That trio won’t survive even into November,’ and he formed a sound resolve that his expedition was not going to plunge blindfolded into such folly: We are men of sound sense, dammit, and we’ll not comport ourselves like idiots.
Just then he saw an older man who seemed to be moving with some purpose, as if he had serious business to attend, even though it was now close to eleven at night, and Luton accosted him: ‘My good fellow, can you help me bring some reason into this madness?’
‘Madness it is,’ the man replied in a heavy Scottish brogue as he surveyed the people sleeping on the ground. ‘What is it you seek?’
‘Answers, answers. How can I and my party get from here to the gold fields and escape the certain devastation that faces these blundering idiots?’
‘You’ve come to the right man,’ the Scot said. ‘I work for the Huds
on’s Bay Company and I’m the only one around here who’s made the trip, and because I could rely upon my company’s various caches of supplies, I traveled extremely light. Almost no gear. And I had Dogrib Indians to help part of the way.’
‘How was it?’
‘Wretched. It’s a crime to send untested men north at this time of year. Many will die.’
‘What would you advise?’
‘You look strong and sensible. What of the others in your party?’
‘Young, able.’
‘If I were you, I’d stay here in Edmonton till next June when the ice melts. Then sail down the Mackenzie, a majestic river if ever I saw one, and stay with it almost till it empties into the Arctic Ocean. But stay out of the delta! It’s a wilderness of interwoven streams and small islands. As the delta begins, you’ll find the Peel River entering via the left bank of the Mackenzie. Paddle up it ten or fifteen miles, and you’ll come to the Rat River, feeding in from the west. Go clear to its headwaters, portage over the mountains, not easy but it can be done. There you’ll find the Bell. Drift down it, easy paddling, and in due course you’ll hit the Porcupine, a grand river. Turn right. Keep going downstream, and with no trouble, little paddling, you’ll reach Fort Yukon. And, as the French say, “Voilà!” you’re on the Yukon River where you catch an upriver steamboat which carries you direct to Dawson.’
This good man was so eager to correct the errors perpetrated by other Canadians that with his forefinger he drew in sand a map of the many twists and turns he recommended: ‘It’ll be demanding, but relatively easy doing it this way. Portages, yes, and some paddling upstream, but not excessive.’
Journey: A Novel Page 5
