Jason's Gold (16 page)

Always, Jason kept his eye out for Jamie, but after a few weeks had gone by, he'd pretty well given up. The Dunavants would have been broke, he realized. They'd probably left a few days before he got to town, on the first steamboat downriver.

On the last Saturday in June, Abe and Ethan took him and Charlie to see a variety show at the Palace Grand Theater. His brothers told them it had been running all winter and was the most popular show in Dawson. The show was enjoyable enough, mostly singing and dancing, but the last act—“The one you've all been waiting for”—shook him like a leaf. When the curtain was drawn, there stood Jamie at the front of the stage in a splendid white dress, black hair shining, with her father, Homer, in the background, scribbling on a notepad in front of a mock log cabin!

“That girl's been performing all winter,” Ethan whispered. “She's the Princess of Dawson.”

As Jamie struck a pose and began to speak, a profound hush came over the audience:

When Jamie shouted the last line and raised her hands dramatically above her head, the entire theater responded with a roar and with deafening cheers. Jason looked around, dumbfounded by the power of the chord Jamie had struck. It was reverberating in every heart. He'd seen her father writing this very poem that day, on the way over to Dyea, as Homer had looked from his notepad to those snow-clad peaks!

Jamie went on to perform a dozen more of her father's poems. They were tales of the rush, rhyming narratives of the trials and tribulations and the longings that everyone in the house had experienced. Often they spoke of home and hearth and loved ones far away.

At the mere mention of home, coming from the lips of this lovely young girl, hundreds of grown men, hardened-looking men, would burst into tears, some of them weeping shamelessly. As Jason scanned the crowd, his eyes suddenly locked on a familiar face. To his astonishment, it was his friend Jack London.

Jack was staring beyond the girl to the poet, whose only role in the performance was, alternately, to reflect and scribble a few words on his notepad. Jack's eyes were blazing with an intense fire, and there was a quiet sort of joy lighting his face.

With the last standing ovation of the evening, Jamie and her father disappeared backstage. Jason was still stunned. Jamie was here! He could see her after all.

First, he'd run for his old friend Jack before he disappeared in the crowd.

London beamed with sudden recognition. “You made it!” he exclaimed, pumping Jason's hand. Jack had lost several more teeth, and his cheeks were puffy, but those blue-gray eyes still radiated his infectious good nature. “I've been wondering when I'd come across you, Jason. Did you find your brothers?”

Jason pointed. “They're right over there.”

“Good, good…. Do you see that big fellow standing next to your brothers, the one talking to the boy with the crutch? Know who that is?”

When Jason shook his head, Jack said, “That's Big Alex McDonald, one of the kings of the Klondike! Owns shares in fifty claims, they say, and many of the buildings in town. You mustn't have wintered in Dawson, I take it.”

“I wintered at Five Fingers, with that boy you pointed out. That's my friend Charlie.”

“What held you up?”

Jason smiled at the way Jack had put it. “A moose did.”

“I'd love to hear
that
story….”

“What about you? Where'd you winter?”

“At the mouth of the Stewart. I staked a claim on a creek nearby, then floated on down to Dawson right before freeze-up. I spent about six weeks just taking in the stories here, then tromped back on foot to the Stewart in early December. Was it ever cold! Fifty degrees below zero.”

“What about your claim? Strike it rich, did you?”

London pulled a small vial out of his shirt pocket. “Got it right here.”

Jason scrutinized the bottom of the vial. There was gold dust there, all right, a few flakes—not much.

“Four dollars and fifty cents,” Jack said with a laugh. “Won't exactly see me home.”

“You're leaving?”

“Tomorrow. I'll be floating out with a couple other fellows on a scow. In three weeks or so we ought to make it to St. Michael. From there I hope to find work on a ship back to California.”

Jack had been sitting all this while, and now
he attempted to stand up. “Whoa,” he groaned.

“What's the matter?”

“It's this accursed scurvy; I've been in a pitiful way all winter. But I need to go home anyway…. My father was bad sick when I left.”

They arranged to meet the next day, and then Jason bolted onto the stage. At the dressing room door he was stopped in his tracks by a man in a tailcoat who sported a waxy handlebar mustache. “I'd like to see Jamie Dunavant,” Jason said, all out of breath.

The man's thin eyebrows rose haughtily. “Wouldn't everybody?”

“You don't understand—I'm an old friend.”

“I'm sure you are.”

“All you'll need to do is tell her my name…. Wait a minute—I'll write it down for you.” Jason pulled the stub of a thick lumber-marking pencil out of his shirt pocket and wrote his name on the back of the evening's program, along with “Hawthorn Brothers Sawmill.”

“Just show her this, and tell her I'm out here,” he said. Then he added, “I'd be much obliged. I met her back in Skagway….”

The man shrugged, nodded curtly, and disappeared inside. A minute later he was back, without Jamie. “Well?” Jason asked.

“You have to understand,” the doorman said. “A lot of people would like to see Miss Dunavant. She's a very famous person.”

“You mean…she won't see me?”

“She simply can't take the time. I'm sorry, but you'll have to run along, before I—”

Jason left without another word. He was burning with embarrassment.

In a daze, he found himself back with his brothers
and Charlie. They asked where he'd been; he mumbled something about a friend named Jack.

Still reeling, he followed his brothers and Charlie to the rooms of Big Alex McDonald. McDonald was a simple, slow-talking bear of a man with hands the size of hams. His lavish accommodations, all decorated with art and gilded mirrors and ostrich feathers, polished brass and cut-glass chandeliers, seemed so unlike the man who inhabited them. Big Alex, upon seeing Charlie at the theater with his crutch, had sought him out after the show and asked what had happened to him. “I want you to see my fishbowl,” Big Alex had said after hearing Charlie's story.

Now that everyone was in his rooms, it was apparent that the fishbowl Big Alex had been talking about was a huge bowl of etched glass displayed on a fancy marble stand. It was filled to the brim with gold nuggets.

“Now, how soon are you going to be able to get back to Chicago to meet up with your mother?” Big Alex asked Charlie.

“The Hawthorns here are going to help me, soon as they can afford it. I'm hoping by August I'll be leaving.”

“But you'd rather go sooner, I take it.”

“Yes, sir, I'm pretty ready to go home.”

“Well then, son, you just reach into that fishbowl there and help yourself.”

Charlie looked at him uncertainly.

“Help yourself!”

Charlie reached in and took a few nuggets in his palm. One was big as an acorn.

“No, no!” Big Alex said, waving his hand. “I mean fill both trouser pockets full as you can get 'em, then your shirt pockets too. Gold means nothing to me, lad. Nothing!”

 

Still numb from the way Jamie had treated him, Jason went to the docks the next day to see off his friend Jack. He spotted London aboard a crude scow that was little more than a planked-over raft of logs. Jack was busy mending the attachment of the big sweep oar at the stern, but he waved Jason aboard.

Unlike the Princess of Dawson, Jason thought bitterly.

Jack showed him around the scow. “That's a sleeping shed in the middle here, and look—our yacht's even got a mud hearth for cooking. Yessir, I'm on to the next chapter of my life.”

“I'm sorry you're not staying, I really am.”

“It's a grand country, Jason, and it'll stay in my blood. But I'm determined as ever to find a way to live on my own hook. I keep telling myself that it must be possible to make my living with my mind instead of my muscle. I never told you this, but what I'd really like to be is a writer.”

“Like Rudyard Kipling or Mark Twain?”

Jack tossed back the shock of hair that was always falling in his eye, and he laughed. “Exactly. Why not? Why not Jack London? Maybe I can mine some other kind of gold out of this whole experience.”

Here came Jack's boat mates, two fellows who looked like scarecrows. “Let's shove off,” one of them grunted.

It was time to say good-bye, shake hands, and disembark. Jason untied the heavy rope holding the scow and tossed it aboard. The ungainly craft began to drift. “Good luck with the mill,” Jack called. “In the years to come, I'll be picturing you up here.”

“I'll be here. And I'll be looking for your books!”

Jason watched his friend disappear around the bend, working that big sweep oar.

The good-byes were coming too fast. Three days later he saw Charlie off on a steamboat fixed up fancy as a wedding cake. At the last, Charlie vowed he'd come back once he'd seen his mother, and that he'd live the rest of his life in the North with the Hawthorn brothers. Whether he really would see Charlie again, Jason wasn't so sure.

Jason threw himself into the work at the mill. Business was booming, and his brothers said he was doing the work of three men. He never told them that it was helping him keep his mind off a girl named Jamie.

He didn't go back to the Palace Grand Theater to see her perform; he even avoided the streets of Dawson on Sundays, when the mill was closed. He didn't want to turn a corner and suddenly run into her.

In the fourth week of July, Dawson was electrified by the news that Soapy Smith had been shot dead in Skagway. A throng assembled in front of the theater to hear the particulars read. The man who'd killed him, in a one-on-one gun battle on July 8, was a surveyor named Frank Reid. In the exchange, Reid was hit; he underwent an operation but died from his wounds. Eleven of Smith's gang, including Slim Jim Foster, Charles Bowers, Old Man Tripp, and Kid Barker, were being shipped to Sitka for trial.

Cheers went up, including Jason's. Many around him, he guessed, had also been victims of the gang. He remembered how they had swindled Jamie's father.

He wondered if she was here, at this moment. He found himself scanning the crowds for her, not knowing how he'd feel if he saw her face. But he didn't see her.

Finally it happened. Two weeks later he was stack
ing lumber at the mill when he saw the flash of a billowy white dress from the corner of his eye. He straightened his aching back and turned, to see her right there in front of him in the lumberyard.

“Jason!” she cried. “It's so good to see you!”

He didn't know what to say. What was she doing here?

“Hello,” he said awkwardly.

Her face wilted. “What's the matter?” she said, looking all around, as if she'd find an explanation in the lumberyard.

A dozen men, including his brothers, were standing still as statues, looking at them. Not only was it a girl; they all knew who it was. “Let's go where we can talk,” Jason said, and he led her around a mountain of logs and down to the riverbank.

All the confusion had his heart going like thunder. “I don't know if you ought to sit down,” he said without looking at her. “You'll get your dress dirty.”

“Oh, that doesn't matter,” she said. And then, as if to prove the point, she plopped down on dirt rather than rock.

Now he felt even more confused, struck by lightning and dumb as wood. He glanced at her hazel eyes, the few freckles on the bridge of her nose. She was prettier than ever. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to tell her how bad she'd made him feel.

“So how long have you been here, Jason?”

“Since practically the first of June.”

“And you never came to see me?”

“Oh, but I did,” he said quickly. “I saw your show, and it's fantastic. I thought I was going to die, you were so good.”

“It's all Father's words,” she said, blushing. “But I
don't understand—why didn't you come talk to me after the show?”

“I did,” Jason said, “but they told me you didn't want to see me.”

“That's crazy! Who told you that?”

“A man standing outside your door. I gave him my name, even wrote it down for him.”

“Oh my gosh! No wonder you're acting so strange.” Her face lit up. “Well, that explains everything. Nobody ever told me you came to see me. Jason, I didn't even know you were here in Dawson until just a few hours ago. I found your name written on the back of an old program, on the floor behind some props backstage. Why, just imagine if I hadn't found it. I might never have known you were here!”

A crushing weight had been lifted from his heart. He threw his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. He just couldn't help himself. “Nothing's like I thought it was,” he said, beaming. “You really
are
the same—only your hair's longer now.”

“So is yours! What did you mean about not getting here until June? When we left you off at Dyea, you started out ahead of us. I thought all you had to do was get over to the other side, to catch your brothers where they were building a boat.”

“It's a long story….”

“And I want to hear every word of it.”

With a grin, he said, “I saw you and your father run the One Mile River in your canoe.”

“Really, you did?”

He gestured as if he were stroking with a canoe paddle. “You were phenomenal—the girl from Swift Water! Did you paddle straight to Dawson, like you planned, and beat freeze-up? What about Miles Canyon and the
White Horse Rapids? Did you portage at Five Fingers?”

She laughed. “We beat freeze-up, but we took our time along the way gathering berries and rose hips, and Father got a moose, which we dried in strips just like the Indians do. We made a smokehouse to dry all the salmon we'd caught. We portaged Miles Canyon, but we ran Squaw Rapids and the White Horse. What a ride! And when we got to Five Fingers, we ran it, down the channel closest to the right shore.”

“Five Fingers…I know that area well.”

She reached out and took his hand. “It's so wonderful to see you, Jason. It's been a rare day I haven't wondered how you were doing. And then to find out you and your brothers own one of the new sawmills!”

“Dawson has a future, Jamie…. We're going to stick. I've got a new home in the North. I didn't even know what I was looking for until I found it.”

A bittersweet smile crossed her face. “I love it every bit as much as you do, Jason. But we're leaving.”

“Leaving—but why? Your show is so successful. I don't understand.”

“That's just it. The show is so successful, we're going to do a North American tour: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, then all across the continent, ending in New York City.”

“That's wonderful,” he said blankly.

She'd heard his disappointment. “I'm so proud of my father, Jason. To see the effect that his words have on these audiences…”

“How soon are you going?”

“The next steamboat. It should be here within a week.”