Gypsy (45 page)

She saw two people pulled out lifeless, their friends and relatives desperately trying to revive them, and finally she caught sight of Sam. Even from a distance of some hundred yards she knew it was him by his butter-coloured hair and the red neckerchief around his neck. She knew too that he was dead, for he was floating on the current, his limbs not moving.

‘He’s there!’ she shouted to Theo and Jack, pointing to where he was. ‘Get him quickly.’

The swift current flashed Sam along to them, and together they hauled him over towards the shore. Beth plunged into the shallows to help them and, taking her brother’s head in her hands, she saw it had been cracked wide open on a rock.

All three were silent as they lifted Sam on to the shore, each of them knowing that the frantic life-saving efforts others were making with their loved ones were of no use to their friend and brother.

Beth dropped to her knees beside Sam, sobbing as she dried his handsome face with her skirt. He had been far more than a brother; he was her childhood playmate, her ally, friend and confidant and they’d shared everything for their whole lives. She couldn’t believe that fate could have been cruel enough to snatch him from her.

She could hear a terrible wailing sound, and as Jack and Theo tried to take her arms to lift her away from Sam’s body, she realized that the sound was coming from herself.

‘I can’t go on without him,’ she cried angrily. ‘He’s all I had left of my family.’

‘You’ve still got us,’ Theo said, pulling her into his arms. ‘We know how you feel. Jack and I loved him too.’

It was only then that she saw they were both crying as well. There was no attempt to hide their grief in a manly way; tears streamed down their faces unchecked and their eyes mirrored the pain she felt.

How long they stood huddled together by Sam’s body weeping, Beth didn’t know. They were all soaking wet and shivering with the cold, but it was as if shock and grief had paralysed them. More craft must have been overturned coming through the rapids, for she dimly heard others screaming and shrieking. But it was only when a man spoke their names and offered to help dig a grave that they came out of their frozen state sufficiently to recognize him and his companions as men they knew from Lake Bennett, and to acknowledge that they did have to bury Sam.

‘He was a good man,’ their leader said, his eyes full of real sympathy and understanding. ‘We are so very sorry for your loss. Let us help you.’

‘It isn’t right,’ Beth sobbed as she watched the men start digging into some softer ground a few yards from the water’s edge. ‘We’ve come so far and been through so much. Why did we have to lose him now?’

‘I didn’t see him go,’ Jack said wildly, as if he believed he might have been able to change the outcome if he had.

Theo knelt down beside Sam and smoothed his blood-streaked hair back from his forehead. ‘Oh, Sam, Sam, what will we do without you?’ he asked, his voice cracking with sorrow.

It didn’t seem real to Beth as she watched Jack and Theo lower Sam into the hastily dug grave. Her mother and father had both been buried on cold, grey days; she’d said goodbye to Molly in similar weather; even the day she’d lost her baby had been cold and bleak. Funerals were meant to be on grey days, in sober places, not here in bright sunshine by a sparkling river with clumps of vivid spring flowers growing along its banks. Sam was young and strong — he had his whole life ahead of him and so many plans and dreams; it couldn’t be right that he wasn’t going to achieve any of them. Beth almost felt as if any moment she would wake and find it had been a terrible nightmare, and Sam would laugh with her about it.

But it was real, for Theo was reciting a passage from the Bible, his voice trembling as he struggled not to break down. The wooden cross Jack had nailed together and roughly chiselled Sam’s name on to was lying on the mound of soil waiting to be speared into the grave.

Their voices were thin and reedy as they sang ‘Rock of Ages’, and Beth thought bitterly that God had deserted her once again.

All along the river bank others were dealing with the aftermath of the canyon, some digging a grave, some tending those who’d been injured. She could hear weeping and the distressed cries of those who’d lost their boats and goods. And she could hear the sound of her own heart breaking.

Chapter Thirty

‘How muchee? How muchee?’ Another group of Stick Indians called out from their camp on the river bank. Beth averted her eyes for they were dirty, ragged and sick-looking, and she felt guilty at not giving them anything. But they’d already given food to other groups further back along the river, and they could spare no more. Besides, she’d been told that the Indians sold whatever they were given back to other stampeders, and with thousands of boats passing every day, they were probably making a good living.

The early spring flowers had given way to bluebells and lupins, a sea of blue along the river banks. Every now and then Beth would spot a moose, sometimes with a calf, drinking from the river, or a black bear peeping from behind a tree as if astounded at so many humans going through its domain. Wild fruits — cranberries, blackcurrants and raspberries — were ripening amongst the rocks and mosses and the scent of wild roses wafted to her on the breeze.

It was spectacular scenery, and she wished she could delight in it all. But since Sam died back at the Squaw Rapids, it was as though the sun had gone in for good and she’d never rejoice in anything again.

Five men lost their lives that day, and countless more would have done if Steele of the Mounties hadn’t arrived to avert further disaster. Aside from the deaths, there were dozens of boats smashed up; all those sacks of provisions carried over the Pass were split open and ruined in the water, and many treasured possessions were lost. Some people were so distraught they were tearing at their hair, sobbing and screaming.

Steele made rules on the spot that no more boats should sail through the rapids without a competent person in charge, and that all women should bypass the rapids by walking the five-mile overland route.

Jack had hardly said a word since they buried Sam. Beth knew he was torturing himself with the thought that he could have prevented the accident. But both she and Theo knew he could not have done. He had done well to get the raft through in one piece with all their goods intact. Sam must have been careless and let go of the rail.

But rationalizing how it came about didn’t help their grief. No one would ever be able to take Sam’s place in their lives, and right now Beth couldn’t see how she could go on without him.

When she tried to stop thinking about her brother she found herself dwelling on the baby she lost and feeling desperate to see Molly again. She supposed this was natural; Molly was after all her only living relative now. She couldn’t count the times she had got out her photograph, drinking in her sweet face and curly hair, and thinking back to those early days when she’d fed and changed her.

Beth couldn’t expect Jack and Theo to understand her feelings about Molly, but it did give her some comfort that they felt just as keenly as she did about Sam. Maybe she had the lion’s share of memories and the blood tie, yet they had loved him too. The pain was still too raw for any of them to speak freely about their feelings, or to share their best memories of him. But maybe that would come in time.

They were close to Dawson City now, and the river Yukon was a seething mass of boats. Joining all those who like them had come down from the mountain lakes were many Sourdoughs. Beth understood the name came from the habit of old-timers up here keeping a small piece of bread dough in a bag inside their shirt so that it stayed warm and could be used like yeast to make the next batch of bread they cooked. These men were grizzled old prospectors who’d been holed up all winter at their claims on small creeks. Some of them had been in the region for years searching for gold.

The excitement that they were nearing their destination was palpable. People shouted out greetings; they wanted to share their stories about their journey and hopes for what lay ahead. But Beth and the boys couldn’t bring themselves to enter into conversation, for one mention of Sam might make them break down.

Beth hoped that everyone assumed their silence and grim faces were symptomatic of the fearsome heat and the tormenting mosquitoes, for that appeared to be making some people act irrationally. She and the boys had witnessed many vicious fights and slanging matches, usually between men who had soldiered amicably through so much already. Whatever it was that was causing it, it was terrible to see, for they seemed to hate one another like poison now, wanting to separate to go it alone. They watched two men on the bank, actually sawing their boat and provisions in half as they screamed abuse at each. Another couple were fighting for ownership of a frying pan, until someone else came along and solved the problem by throwing it into the river, so neither could have it.

It was a madness that Beth and the boys found impossible to understand. Sam’s death had made them realize how much they valued one another, and how little mere goods and chattels meant.

Darkness never came now, just a slight dimming of the light around midnight, but by two in the morning daylight had returned. They would make camp on the shore just long enough to light a fire and cook a hurried meal, then set sail on the raft again, Theo and Jack taking it in turns to sleep. It wasn’t that they wanted to beat others to Dawson, for their hearts had gone out of that, but because they needed to be occupied. They realized now, too late, that it was Sam’s enthusiasm, cheeriness and constant optimism that had kept conversations flowing in the past, and without him there seemed nothing to say.

On the morning of 12 June, Beth was half dozing at the stern when she heard Jack shout, ‘It’s Dawson City! At last we’re there.’

They hadn’t known exactly where it was, and they’d been hugging the river bank for the last two days for fear of coming upon it suddenly and being swept past by the strong current. But as they rounded a rocky bluff, there it was in front of them. The fabled city of gold.

Beth didn’t know what she had expected it to look like, but the reality, a sprawl of tents, log cabins, false-fronted emporiums and teetering piles of lumber, wasn’t that different to Skagway. There was even the same black oozing mud.

Yet this mud stretched from the shoreline right into the little town, and she could see no planks put down to walk on, no boardwalks or even stones as there had been in Skagway. Horses and carts were floundering in it, and people were trying in vain to pull heavily laden sledges through it.

Later, they were to discover that the town had been flooded when the ice melted a couple of weeks earlier, and the people who had built cabins right down on the shoreline saw them swept away. But it seemed such things were just a minor setback in Dawson City, for as soon as boats began arriving with provisions, especially longed-for luxuries like eggs, whisky and newspapers, the muddy streets were a mere inconvenience.

They managed to find a spot along the boat-crowded shoreline to moor the raft, and hauled their kit right up to the back of the town, the only place they could find free to pitch their tent. They heard that to rent one room cost a hundred dollars a month, and every commodity changed hands for extortionate prices.

‘Good job I brought those nails,’ Jack said, spotting a sign advertising them for eight dollars a pound. ‘Not that I want to sell them — we’ll need them to build a place of our own.’

‘Maybe I’ll get a good price for that silk and satin I brought along,’ Beth said thoughtfully. The boys had argued with her back in Skagway and said she should take something more useful, but she had stuck to her guns, insisting that she knew there would be women desperate for dress material once they got to Dawson. Judging by the stained and dreary clothes most of the women here were wearing, she was right.

After they’d pitched their tent, they went back down to Front Street to take a look around. This street overlooking the river was clearly where everything happened and where everyone gathered. It was lined with saloons, hotels, restaurants and dance halls, though all of them had clearly been thrown up in a hurry. Every minute or so another boat moored and the owners hauled their belongings on to the shore, adding to the utter chaos. Thousands of new arrivals were wandering around aimlessly, while the veterans, who had by all accounts suffered all winter from a scarcity of almost everything, harassed the newcomers for everything from brooms to books.

As at Lake Bennett, there were huge piles of lumber everywhere, and the buzz of saws and the hammering of nails made it difficult to hear what anyone was saying. Building work was going on everywhere — shops, saloons, banks and even a church — yet disconcertingly there appeared to be no overall plan.

Down by the shoreline people had set up stalls selling everything from boots to boxes of tomatoes, all at sky-high prices. Many of these goods had been brought in by a steamer just a few days earlier, but they saw an elderly woman they’d met in Lake Bennett, who’d managed to get her chickens up the Chilkoot Trail, selling them for twenty-five dollars each.

There were countless signs proclaiming ‘Gold Dust Bought and Sold’. Outside some of these cabins, grizzled-looking men with shaggy beards, and small leather bags hanging from their belts, stood in line smoking their pipes. A man in a loud checked suit and a black stetson hat informed Beth and the boys that these were Sourdoughs, who’d struck it rich on their claims at Forty Mile and Eldorado Creek. He said he thought the gold they were selling today was worth a king’s ransom, yet they looked like tramps, without a cent to their names.

However strange everything was, it was colourful and vibrant. Men in smart suits and homburg hats mingled with others in ragged, mud-splattered trail clothes. They saw a pretty blonde in a pink satin dress being carried over the mud by a bare-chested man who looked like a prize fighter. There were dogs everywhere, mostly malamutes and other sledge dogs, but there were also women carrying toy dogs under their arms, and greyhounds and spaniels picked their way daintily through the mud.