Authors: Lynn D'urso
Heartbroke Bay (11 page)
“I’ll be out for a while,” he says. He has the air of a conspirator and leaves without looking at Hannah. She listens, wondering, to the crunch of their boots in the snow diminishing in the direction of the waterfront.
Outside the saloon, a sign on the door disabuses Indians and Chinamen of welcome. When Harky and Hans enter, the air is thick with the smell of men smoking and drinking. The Texan holds two fingers aloft to signal a barman with the huge, tattooed arms of a blacksmith. As the bartender taps beer into two mugs Harky’s eyes roam beneath the brim of his hat. Hans, too, inspects the crowd of darkly clad customers before taking a gulp of beer. The customers, all male, are uniformly engaged in the tasks of a frontier saloon; card games are being played out on green felt tables; knots of men smoke and kibitz over billiards; others nod, stuporous with drink.
“Do you see him?” asks Hans. Harky nods toward a table in the back, where a slim, hatless man waves a hand in their direction. The stranger has wide-set eyes that goggle high atop his face, occasionally looking in separate directions, giving him the appearance of a bird constantly wary of attack from above.
Harky leads the way through the crowd, parting the throng like a ship. Hans follows close behind.
The stranger does not rise, but says to Harky, while holding out a hand to Hans, “I wasn’t sure you was coming back.” Then to Nelson, “The name’s Dutch.”
Hans shakes the proffered hand, introduces himself before sitting. There is a long silence that is more comfortable for Harky and Hans than for the Dutchman, who is voluble by nature and twitches with impatience as they both size him up.
“Harky tell you about me, did he, Mr. Nelson?” asks Dutch, leaning forward on his elbows, toying with an empty mug.
Hans takes a drink of beer and swallows before replying. “He said you’re looking for partners. That you might know something could do us all some good.”
Dutch gives a vigorous nod. “Yea. Yea, I guess we’re all in the same boat, huh? Damn Mounties won’t let a fellow into their goddamn precious country unless he’s already rich, huh? Fuck ’em, I says. Fuck ’em.”
Harky curls his hands around his mug, covering it, and says, “Tell Hans what you told me.”
Dutch tilts his head back, then wipes his nose between two fingers as if to signal a decision made. His chair chalks against the floor as he pushes it back, reaching into his coat. Each gesture is freighted with drama. Removing a spent twelve-bore shotgun shell stoppered with a whittle of wood and wrapped in a soiled handkerchief, he opens it with a flourish, spreads the rag out flat, and holds the shell above the table, tapping at the lip with a nicotine-colored finger. Not lead shot, but flakes and speckles of flat, dull sand spill out, the color of gold.
“That’s what I mean,” says the Dutchman, indicating the spoonful of gold dust with a thrust of his chin. “Don’t have to go to some damn foreign country, not when there’s good American gold to be had.” He leans back in his chair, triumphant.
Hans sits openmouthed. Harky looks over his shoulder at the crowd, then reaches out and flips the edge of the handkerchief over the gold to hide it.
Hans downs the remains of his beer and raises the empty glass, waving it at the bartender and holding up three fingers. Dutch twists the handkerchief into a knot around the gold and stuffs it into his breast pocket. His head wobbles on his neck, and he makes a snorting noise, like a pig attempting to giggle. No one says anything as the bartender rattles three fresh mugs down, scoops up the empties, and palms the silver coin Hans lays in his hand.
After they are alone again Hans says, “Well, it looks like you’ve done all right for yourself. What do you want with us?”
Dutch bobs his head, agreeing, then holds a finger up in front of his face. “That’s placer gold. Takes a lot of shoveling and digging to sort out placer. Now, I ain’t got the money just yet for an outfit and need partners to help with the work. My friend Harky here”—he gestures at the Texan—“he tells me you and him are outfitted, but the damn Mounties give you the boot anyhow, just like they done me. Well, I say Canada can go to hell. I don’t need to go all the way up and down the Yukon, scratching after everybody else’s leftovers. There’s gold right here in Alaska, too.”
“And you’ve got it found? Is that what you’re telling me?” asked Hans.
“Yep. Just need the partners and outfit to go get it. It’s way-the-hell-and-gone off up the country. I don’t want to go off alone and get killed by some Indian or something. And besides, just look at him”—he indicates Harky, who has sat quietly through it all. “Does that man look like he can work? I’ll say! We’ll run a ton of sand a day, maybe two, and us’ll have a dozen fruit jars full of color apiece by next fall. My claim, you fellows’ outfit, and we split even all around. How’s that sound?”
Hans appraises the slipshod character before him, then considers the slender condition of his own badly whittled grubstake. He has seen lynx trappers flutter a feather on a string over a trap to bring the curious, wary cats within range of the steel jaws, and he feels the golden gleam luring him in much the same fashion—unavoidably, but slowly and with great suspicion.
“I’ve a wife,” he says.
“All the better. Can she cook and keep care of a camp? That’d free men up for working, if laundering and such is done for ’em.”
Hans nods proudly. “She’s a good wife.”
The three lean closer together, heads nearly touching, and switch to whiskey to signify the advance from just talking to partnership. Dutch is cagey at first, but drink loosens his tongue, and he cannot hold secrets long. Two hundred miles to the north, the sands of Lituya Bay sparkle and flash with gold. It lies in buttery ribbons wherever there is bedrock under the beach, and all a fellow has to do is remove the overburden of sand and gravel and sluice the gold into a bucket.
When pressed for details on his discovery—how long was he there? How much gold did he recover? Has he filed a claim in his name?—Dutch grows vague, closing his eyes and waving a hand in front of his face, saying only, “That’s where it’s at, all we need do is go get it.”
A deal is struck. Hans, Hannah, and Harky will contribute tools, supplies, money, and labor. Dutch will lead the way. A boat must be hired to ferry them and their gear the considerable distance to Lituya Bay, which lies north of Cape Spencer and is exposed to the full fury of the gulf. In a month, the grip of winter will begin to ease and the cycle of storms and gales that rip the cold, angry seas abate. The prospectors agree; departure is set for the Ides of March, or as soon thereafter as the weather will allow.
27 February 1898Thus far we have been unable to employ a ship to transport us north to Lituya Bay when spring arrives. The seamen are nervous about the Gulf of Alaska for its reputed terrible seas and weather, with many particularly superstitious of Lituya Bay. Those willing to make the journey at all offer prices for charter that are outlandish. Hans is beside himself, caught as we are in this cycle of rising costs, and becomes difficult when I suggest any alternative to prospecting.I must admit to “gold fever” myself, after seeing Dutch’s display of nuggets; there is an allure in that shining metal that is somehow beyond the regard for wealth. Little but gold itself would tempt anyone into a business venture with one of character so odd as that of the Dutchman.
Hans sits slumped, twirling his hat listlessly on the upraised fingers of one hand, fired from the saw job for failing to grease the bearings in the mill. Things overheated and seized tight, shutting the entire operation down. The loss of wages has alienated the other workers from Hans, with the exception of Harky, who for reasons understood by no one, laughs out loud as the crew boards the launch back to town. After landing, Harky and Hans set course for an afternoon at the saloon.
“Ma always said the boldest fighting cock was still just a chicken, Hans.”
Harky’s meaning escapes Hans, who is intent on his brooding. Harky is as intently good-hearted and for one usually so truculent, quite wordy.
“What do you really think of Dutch, anyway? That was nice of your missus to put up dinner for us all last night. I ain’t had fried chicken in a long time. Just get venison every night at the bunkhouse.”
Hans examines the muddy toe of one boot. “Gas and feathers, mostly. But the gold is real enough. Problem’s just getting up there to get it.”
Dutch had barked and chatted without ceasing all through the meal, spinning yarns of sailing the South Seas and the Sandwich Islands, talking about a wife and kids back home waiting for him to “bring home the bacon.” At various times he claimed to be from Ohio, California, and Oregon, with careers as a painter, a cowboy, and the owner of a race horse.
Harky shook his shaggy head slowly and smiled, as if considering the humor in Dutch’s folly. “Closest he ever come to the South Sea is that ugly whore from Owyhee what works at the Bucket-o’-Blood.”
“Let him rustle us up a boat. Then he can show us what a sailor he is,” says Hans.
Three nights later, Harky bangs on their door with the news that Dutch has done exactly that.
FIVE
The next morning Dutch lopes ahead of Hans and Harky as they walk along the shore searching among the masts and hulls of the crowded harbor for a particular rig, much as a man scans a crowd for a face he knows only by description. A fine breeze scatters the sun’s reflection into diamond dust across the water and there is the warm, salty smell of seaweed in the air.
Dutch walks with a peculiar bent-kneed stride, pausing often to point excitedly at one boat, then another, looking back over his shoulder at the men following behind. Harky steps carefully from stone to stone, balancing awkwardly on his scarred, odd-numbered toes.
“He said it was a white hull, cutter rigged. Maybe that’s it there, that handsome one,” says Dutch. Unclear as to the details of a cutter’s design, he knows only that the word sounds fast, and points to a well-kept sloop with the slim lines and graceful shear of an ocean dancer.
Hans shakes his head and points beyond the sloop to a plug-shaped hull with a cobbled rig. Bits of canvas tacked to the cabin top tell of humdrum efforts to stop random leaks. The only neat thing about the vessel is the lettering across the stern, which gives the name of the boat as the
Tara Keane
.
Tara Keane
.
“There’s your cutter. That’s a sloop you’re pointing at,” and under his breath mutters, “If it wasn’t for the gold . . .”
Harky shrugs, says, “Someone’s aboard,” then points at a dinghy bobbing astern of the cutter on a rope. Dutch cups his hands to his mouth and shouts a long, “Hello, the cutter!” as if he were the admiral of a fleet signaling a man-o’-war. After a moment the cutter rocks slightly and a sliding hatch is thrown back.
The face that emerges is bleary-eyed and tousled. Michael Severts had been three sheets to the wind the night before when he met Dutch in a saloon and the two had bragged and told yarns deep into a bottle of whiskey. By the time a second bottle was breached, Dutch was playing rich man with his shotshell of gold and offering Severts a full share in the partnership in exchange for the contribution of his boat, which Severts described as the “slickest kind of cutter, built of Port Orford cedar and stout live oak.” This morning, his memory of the arrangement is vague.
Severts gives a brief wave and disappears below deck for a moment, then emerges clad in wrinkled denim pants and a sweater blown out at the elbows. He looks around at the day, which is unseasonably warm and seductively bright, before climbing into the dinghy without hat, coat, or gloves. As he rows, the oars dip and shine in unison. When he comes alongshore, he pulls and backs expertly, turning the tender sideways to nudge lightly against the bank.
In spite of the hangover that throbs between his eyes, Severts balances neatly against the rocking of the dinghy, reaches for the bow line, and steps over the side. He is twenty-seven years old, athletically slender and wide across the shoulders, with curly, blue black hair that needs cutting. The sun glints on a peppering of fine gray at his temples. He is clean-shaven, but his face and chin are darkly shadowed for want of a recent razor.
Hans feels a worm of doubt as Michael steps toward the waiting trio, a slight, unnamed hostility of which he is only vaguely aware. If asked to explain the source of his distrust, Hans would claim to be a natural judge of character. But the true cause of his unease is this: Michael Severts is beautiful.
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