The Great Alone (87 page)

As she started to turn away, he stopped her. “Take this apple, Miss St. Clair.” But he checked it for bruises before he gave it to her. “If anyone was to ask ya where ya got it, you jest point ’em to me.”

“I will.” As she walked back to Matty, she tucked the apple in a corner of her already full market basket. “Well, now what? We’ve got everything but bread.”

“I think maybe another bakery is by the picture place.” Matty nodded in the direction of some wood-framed buildings catty-corner from them on a side street.

As Glory turned to look, someone across the street waved to her. The constant coming and going of pedestrians in the street briefly blocked the man from her view. Then she saw him as he moved in and out among the people to cross the muddy trail to her side. His collar was turned up and his hat was pulled low. It was a moment before she had a clear look at his face and was able to recognize Gabe Blackwood. Lately there had been so many demands on her time that she hadn’t seen him very often.

“Glory, what luck! I was just on my way to see you.” He smiled widely, looking every inch the distinguished barrister instead of the aging, down-at-the-heels lawyer she’d first met on arriving in Nome. She was well aware that she was responsible for a large measure of his renewed self-esteem, but it had been easy to accomplish; all she’d had to do was reinforce the vainglorious image he already had of himself. All the things she’d ever heard about him were true; she’d seen enough of his pettiness and prejudice to know that. Now she no longer cared whether he even liked her.

“It’s been a while, Gabe. How have you been? Very busy, from all that I’ve heard.”

“I’ve tried,” he said, feigning modesty while swaggering slightly. “You know how keen competition is among lawyers in this town.”

“There’s almost as many lawyers as there are saloons.” But she noticed he didn’t mention the local election held only a few days ago.

It was held to form what was known as a “consent” government. Which meant the townspeople of Nome “consented” to be governed by an elected mayor, council, and chief of police; have laws and regulations imposed on them; and voluntarily pay various taxes and licensing fees. The United States Congress had yet to pass legislation that permitted the formation of municipal governments in Alaska with the power to impose laws and levy taxes on its citizens.

In the election, Gabe had allied himself with the ticket that represented the town’s business community, including its sixteen lawyers. The miners’ ticket had swept the election. The town’s few women had been allowed to vote, and Glory had taken advantage of it, but she refrained from telling Gabe that she had cast her ballot for the winning side.

“Well, this winter the city of Nome is going to be short one attorney,” he announced importantly.

“What do you mean? Are you leaving?”

“Yes. That’s what I was coming to tell you.” He reached into his inside coat pocket and withdrew an envelope and a steamer ticket. “I’ve booked passage on the next ship bound for San Francisco. From there, I’m taking the train to Washington, D.C.”

“Why are you going there?” She struggled to control a rising sense of panic. “I don’t understand. What’s this all about?”

He waved the envelope. “Remember I told you I knew some people in Washington? Well, I hadn’t corresponded with them in some time, but I wrote one of my old friends in early summer, telling him about the situation here in Nome. I just heard back from him. It seems there’s a bill coming up before the Senate this spring which would provide for the formation of civil governments in Alaska. It also may deal with some of the mining issues we’re facing here. Since I have firsthand knowledge about many of the problems here, my friend suggested that it might be beneficial for me to come to Washington and meet with some of the senators to discuss the situation.”

“I think that’s very wise of your friend.” She breathed a little easier, and laughed to cover any alarm she might have shown. “I must admit that when you first said you were leaving, I thought you meant you weren’t coming back. I’m glad that’s not the case. I would have missed you. I shall miss you while you’re gone. The winter’s going to seem even that much longer without you here.”

“And I will miss you. You’ve been good for me. But I’ll be back on the first ship that sails next summer.”

“Why must you leave so soon? If this bill doesn’t come before the Senate until next spring, surely you could wait.”

“It’s too close to the winter freeze-up and I don’t want to take the risk of being frozen in here. By ship, I’m only two weeks from San Francisco, if the weather cooperates. But if I’m forced to go overland, it’s fifteen hundred miles or more by dogsled to the nearest ice-free port. That’s much too grueling a journey for a man my age.”

“Of course, you’re right. This will be my first winter this far north. I’m told Norton Sound is solid ice by the beginning of November. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like—cut off from the world for eight months. I shall probably besiege you with questions when you return.”

“I hope I’ll have some very good news to tell you.” His expression was smug as he tucked the envelope and ticket back inside his pocket.

“What kind of news?”

“If this bill passes, it’s quite likely they’ll be dividing Alaska into several districts. Which means they’ll be appointing more federal judges. It’s so impractical now, with only one judge in the whole of Alaska, and he’s in Sitka.” He paused and winked at her. “It could be that you’ll have to address me as ‘your honor’ when I return.”

“Judge
Blackwood,” Glory murmured. In the back of her mind she knew that the higher a man’s position, the harder his fall would be from it. It gave her something to think about.

“Mind you, it’s only a possibility,” he cautioned, then chatted a few minutes longer before taking his leave from her.

CHAPTER XLVII

Nome

Winter 1899–1900

Many of the city’s inhabitants scrambled for a place on the last ship out of Nome rather than face a winter there, with a threat of food shortages and a possible typhoid epidemic from the grossly unsanitary conditions, not to mention the blizzards and freezing temperatures with only the questionable shelter of tents and crude wooden huts to protect them. Several of the more unsavory characters in Nome were deported by the newly elected “consent” government, along with many of the destitute who hadn’t the means to support themselves through the winter or the funds to purchase a ticket.

Roughly three thousand remained behind in Nome to brave the conditions and protect their holdings. “Good” Betsy, the former schoolteacher, was the only one from the Palace who refused to stay.

Justin and his partners chose to stay. They scavenged for wood and built a shack on the beach out of pieces of scrap lumber, broken crates, and driftwood gathered from the diminishing piles along the banks of creek mouths. Many of the other prospectors who mined the “golden” sands that summer, the so-called beachcombers, elected to live in their tents.

By mid-November, ice five feet thick locked the entire coastline and extended miles into the sea. The Bering Strait, the body of water that separates Alaska from Russia, was rarely covered by a continuous sheet of ice. Open stretches of water existed beyond the ice pack, usually littered with ice floes.

In this tundra region, the entire area was underlaid with permafrost. This permanently frozen underlayer of ground created a major problem for the city of Nome. Without water wells, the inhabitants were forced to rely on the Snake River for their drinking water. And the permafrost wouldn’t absorb their sewage. Just as they had to haul in all their drinking water, they had to haul out all their excrement. During the summer it had been dumped into the Snake River, a practice that created the typhoid scare because of the potential contamination of the drinking water. As a solution to the problem that winter, the city officials hauled the refuse and sewage far out onto the ice so that when spring breakup came, it would float away and eventually be deposited in the sea.

But the scarcity of public “facilities” didn’t allow the problem of sanitation to be totally eliminated. By the time February rolled around, Glory didn’t dare venture down the alleyway next to the Palace. To do so meant skating on a thick glacier of frozen urine. Front Street was almost as bad.

Yet with all the cases of typhoid fever, bloody dysentery, and pneumonia that did occur, Nome’s population increased that winter. The absence of a government assay office in Nome made an accurate record of the amount of gold taken out of the immediate area that summer impossible to determine. Too much went out in the pockets and pokes of men who didn’t want to brag about how much they’d made for fear of being robbed. But the best guesses estimated that the total amount extracted from the beach alone ranged from a million to two million dollars, and roughly another million and a half dollars had been taken from the inland placer claims along the mountain creeks.

While rumors of the gold strike had lured many prospectors like Justin and his partners from the Klondike to Nome during the summer, the news of the “poor man’s diggings” on the beach brought the rest. Fifteen hundred or so had been lucky enough to crowd onto the last sternwheeler going down the Yukon River from Dawson, arriving in late fall. The majority waited until winter set in and the river froze solid. Then the mad exodus to Nome began down the river’s ice road. They traveled by dog team or horse-drawn sled. Some walked all the way, pulling small sleds loaded with their gear. Others strapped on ice skates and skated to Nome. An intrepid few made use of the latest craze and bicycled their way across the breadth of Alaska in the dead of winter. Many called these people “Nomers,” but a few looked at the madness of their headlong rush to Nome and called them “Nomads.”

All winter long, they arrived—exhausted, hungry, frostbitten, or half frozen. It wasn’t only the prospectors who came from the Klondike. Many were, as the Canadian Mounties described them, the dregs of Dawson—gamblers, prostitutes, pickpockets, swindlers, confidence men, thieves, and outright felons.

At the end of March, a west wind brought mild weather and a breathtaking display of northern lights, and it blew the snow on the ground into new drifts. The total amount of snowfall in Nome was never great compared to what fell in the interior, but what fell stayed to be blown around.

There were few customers in the Palace that night as Glory wandered over to the table next to the coal stove and sat down in a chair across from the one Deacon occupied. “It’s quiet tonight,” she remarked.

“Mmmm.” He didn’t glance up from his solitaire game. “I think the whole town’s at the dance hall down the street. It’s a damned shame we didn’t see that ‘Nomad’ arrive in town. Everyone could have been here.”

The recent arrival had brought several copies of newspapers from the “outside” with him. In this isolated community, it didn’t matter that the papers were more than three months old. It was still “news” to them. At the moment, every column on every page of the newspapers was being read aloud at another establishment down the street.

“I heard the Seattle newspaper carried a story that said there were thousands of people massing in their city to come to Nome as soon as the ice breaks up. They’re predicting that the Nome gold rush will attract more people than the Klondike strike did.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Deacon placed a red nine on a black ten. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to reach. A ten-day ocean cruise from Seattle gets them here, versus a sea voyage followed by a brutal trek over a mountain pass, then a float trip down a river shot with rapids. It’s nearly like taking a holiday.”

As she watched Deacon play, Glory suddenly realized that cards were being turned up from the deck out of order. “Why in the world are you playing solitaire with a marked deck?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled with a smile. “You don’t think I’m going to let the devil win.”

She sighed. “You’re incorrigible.”

The heavy mahogany door to the Palace swung open. A man bundled to his eyes in layers of clothes walked in amidst the swirl of cold air and snowflakes. Glory recognized him from his walk even before Justin started peeling off his scarf. She pushed out of her chair and crossed the room to greet him.

“I didn’t expect you tonight.”

As she reached him, he shoved his fur-lined gloves into his coat pockets, then spanned her tiny corseted waist with his hands and lifted her high into the air, spinning around and laughing as he did so. She braced her hands on his shoulders for balance, conscious of the cold air that surrounded him as they whirled around. Finally he let her feet touch the ground. Before she had time to catch her breath, he kissed her soundly.

“I have come to celebrate,” he proclaimed as he released her.

“Celebrate what?”

“We dug up a whole seam of ruby-red sand today. It’s the richest stuff we’ve panned yet.” Winter’s snow and freezing temperatures hadn’t halted the beach mining. The sands were dug and bucketed inside the tents and shacks. In the relative warmth of the habitations, the gold was sluiced, rocked, or panned from the sands by the miners. “Tonight I don’t much care how the gold got on the beach. I’m just glad it’s there.”

Countless theories had been suggested to explain how the gold came to be in the sand. Some claimed that during the Ice Age a glacier must have swept a ledge of gold-bearing quartz from the mountains and deposited it on the shore. Others were certain an underwater volcano had belched the gold from the bowels of the earth and the tides had washed it ashore. A few believed that meteor showers had rained gold onto the beach. Most people subscribed to the theory that the entire floor of the Bering Sea was covered with gold that was constantly carried ashore by the waves, creating a virtually inexhaustible supply. Only a few sane men discarded such fanciful thoughts for the more mundane probability that the beach gold had been washed there from the placer deposits in the mountains by rains and spring melts.