Destiny - The Callahans #1 (23 page)

Scanlan nodded. “I’ll extract one promise
from you, son. That you write to Sister Mary when you locate and
let her know where you are. It will be in the form of a private,
privileged communication, and I will have her advise me. We need to
have someplace to write to you, in case we can turn something up to
exonerate you. Because it was self-defense, you shouldn’t have to
run from it for the rest of your life.”

“I will, Father. You have my word.”

“That’s good enough for me. And your money,
my son. Are you able to provide for yourself?”

“I have sufficient, Father. The room and
board at the hospital has enabled me to save most of my
salary.”

“Excellent,” he said, gently tapping the
horse again and beginning the short ride remaining to the train
station. Arriving there, Scanlan halted the buggy and Tom jumped
down, retrieving his valise and standing on the footpath just below
Father Scanlan.

“Thank you, Father. I’m very sorry for my
hasty departure. I only hope it doesn’t cause Sister Mary too much
disruption. And thank you, Father, for your care and concern.”

“Tom,” he said, offering his hand, “it’s been
a true pleasure meeting one of my long lost cousins. Remember your
promise, lad. And one more thing. May I ask your permission to
discuss this with Sister Mary? Not, of course, the nature of your
transgression, but the cause of your departure and to enlist her
help in finding a way to overcome this problem.”

Tom spoke without hesitation. “Aye, Father.
I’d trust Sister Mary with my life,” he said, smiling as they both
realized how literally that was true. “Good night to you, Father,”
Tom added, doffing his cap.

“And God’s blessings go with you, my son,”
Bishop Scanlan replied.

Without either of them realizing it, Harold
and Tom departed San Francisco within hours of each other, on
successive tides, their respective ships turning in opposite
directions once out beyond the broad harbor entrance. The train
trip from Salt Lake had occurred two days earlier for Tom, and,
once Harold learned from Detective McGuire of Tom’s departure, he
obtained the bank drafts from his father, booked his own trip, and
bid Katrina farewell.

Tom had two days in San Francisco before his
ship departed, and as fortune would have it, he attended a Mormon
Tabernacle Choir performance in the city, part of a concert tour
the choir had undertaken to the West Coast. Having never heard the
choir in Salt Lake City, he sat in the audience, enjoying the music
and thinking how odd it was to hear them on his last night in
America, so far away from Salt Lake City.

In the only letter Tom had exchanged with his
mother, while he was living at Holy Cross Hospital, she had
informed him that his Uncle John had written and was still living
in Alaska, in the town of Anvil, on the Bering Sea, near St.
Michael’s. For Tom, those were just names, but they conjured up a
vision of wild animals, treacherous waters, and endless snow
fields. With no particular destination in mind, Anvil seemed as
good as any other and as far away from police problems as he was
going to get, short of sailing to the orient. Thinking about the
possibility, he even became excited to hook up with his Uncle John,
his mother’s brother, and his only known relative, aside from the
newly discovered Father Scanlan, outside of Ireland.

The steamship
Pacific Challenger
out
of San Francisco, made excellent time, stopping for three days in
Seattle, and, once clear of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, making a
straight run for Dutch Harbor, on the west end of the Aleutian
Islands. During his stopover in Seattle, Tom sent a telegraph to
Sister Mary, advising that he was bound for Alaska, but no response
was received by the time the Pacific Challenger put back out to
sea.

Balmy weather accompanied the ship during
most of her run across the northern Pacific Ocean, the ship
remaining well south of the Gulf of Alaska. Tom spent much of his
time reading the ship’s library books about Alaska. In Seattle, he
had also purchased a copy of a newly published novel
The Red
Badge of Courage
. He was fascinated by the story and intrigued
how the author, Stephen Crane, who was only two or three years
older than Tom, and who had been born long after the American Civil
War, knew so much about it.

Two-thirds of the way across the Gulf of
Alaska, their luck ran out. A violent southwester rose out of the
calm, and within four hours, the
Pacific Challenger
was
fighting for her life. Unable to make headway in the port beam sea,
the captain had no choice but to turn tail and ride with the storm
in a northeasterly direction.

For seventy-two hours the storm raged,
finally giving way to fair weather as the sun broke over the
horizon on the third day. Damage to the ship was not extensive, but
after taking a sighting to determine position, the captain decided
to continue northeast and lay over at Kodiak, Alaska, for
repairs.

Tom weathered the storm well enough, and in
fact earned praise from the first mate for showing up in the
galley, well into the second day of the storm, looking for
something to eat. Most of the other passengers did not set foot
outside their berths until the ship had entered the calm waters of
Kodiak harbor.

On the other vessel, Harold Stromberg enjoyed
a relatively easy journey down the coast of California and past the
Baja Peninsula, turning into the mouth of that cavernous inlet, and
making land on the mainland of Mexico at Mazatlán, a community of
fishermen and, to the interior, cattle ranchers.

Left behind in Salt Lake City, was Katrina
Hansen Stromberg, who became aware within two weeks of Harold’s
departure that she was pregnant. She also learned from Anders that
Tom had gone to Alaska. Neither piece of news was entirely welcome,
though she felt guilty for feeling so. With Harold gone for several
weeks, Katrina turned increasingly to her letters to Nana for
solace and was grateful for Anders, who could almost read her mind
and was always there to understand and comfort her.

By 1896, Alaska had been a United States
territory for nearly thirty years. In 1867, when Secretary of State
Henry Seward agreed to pay the Russians some twenty-three million
dollars for Alaska, he was subjected to one of the more vitriolic
treatments the press had ever afforded a United States public
servant. Dubbed, “Seward’s Folly,” the purchase of Alaska was
thought to be a monumental mistake, one that benefited the United
States only by providing an increased population of polar bears and
Eskimos. The nation wondered what use they would ever make of a
perpetual “ice box.”

Evidence of the long-time Russian occupation
abounded on Kodiak Island, and the original government house was
still standing when Tom arrived in 1896. In the Russian cemetery in
Kodiak, the decaying wooden tombstones, filled with Russian names
Tom could not pronounce, painted a bleak picture of early
settlement life in this far flung colony of Mother Russia.

In one plot, the tombstones told a specially
poignant story of the hardships endured by the people who dared to
settle there. Reading the inscriptions on the markers filled Tom
with both sorrow and a feeling of awe. He was able to imagine how
those courageous people had suffered in that isolated place and
harsh climate.

In one set of graves, Alexander Potemkin lay
side by side with his wife and three children. The inscriptions
gave ample information for Tom to piece the story together. Anna
was born 22 April 1768, and died the next day. Nicholi was born 30
May 1769, but lived only six days. The third child, a daughter
named Katrina, was born 17 December 1770 and lived only eight days,
dying on Christmas. Tom stood for many minutes looking at Katrina’s
grave marker, marveling at her name, and trying to imagine the pain
the parents must have felt as they buried their infant
children.

Alexander Potemkin’s wife, Sophie, died in
1771, a young woman, just twenty-six years old. Potemkin followed
her eight months later. He was only thirty-four.

Looking at those old grave markers and trying
to imagine how it had been for these people, Tom found it easy to
believe that after burying her three babies, and dying herself
within a week of the last child, that Sophie Potemkin likely
succumbed to a broken heart, rather than some illness.

Such stories were also told by the grave
markers Tom had seen in the cemetery in Salt Lake. The cost of
pioneering new lands was always high, and thinking of such things
always put Tom in a mind of home and Ireland, where the terrain had
been claimed and the land settled for generations and where, in
spite of poverty, relative safety and civilized comforts were
readily available.

For ten days the
Pacific Challenger
remained in Kodiak, giving Tom the opportunity to travel inland
with a small hunting party from the ship and to observe firsthand,
the taking of a giant Kodiak bear. Never in his life had Tom seen a
creature so big. When spotted, the majestic animal had simply tried
to make its way peacefully to safety, but once shot in the hind
quarters, it had turned and raised to its full height, nearly eight
feet, as measured following the fusillade of shots from the
inexperienced and frightened hunters who finally brought it
down.

Out to sea, the
Pacific Challenger
once again made good time on the run down the Alaska Peninsula,
cutting through the chain of islands at Dutch Harbor and running
north by northeast for St. Michael’s. Tom arrived the last week of
July and immediately took local transport by water to Anvil, across
a large inlet. Miraculously, within four hours of arriving in
Anvil, Tom had located his uncle who had just returned from a trip
inland.

“By all the saints ’tis good to see ya, Tom.
You’re a strapping, lad, that ye are. Tell me, lad, how’s that
passel o’ young’uns?”

“All were well when I left, Uncle John. Of
course, that’s been over a year now. Ma’s letter back in May said
they were still doing fine.”

“And how’s your father treating
m’sister?”

Tom lowered his head. “About the same, I’d be
guessin’, Uncle John.”

“Aye. ’Tis sad. But knock off the ‘uncle’
bit,” he said, taking the edge off the conversation. “We’re in the
wilds of Alaska now, lad. Partners we be, not kin. Least not so we
need to show the world.”

“Aye,” Tom replied.

“So, what brings ye two-thirds of the way
around the world, Tom? Surely not a visit with yer uncle.”

“Just a series of events, Uncle . . . I mean,
John. Your letter said it was a bright place, full of promise, and
I thought I’d see for myself.”

“It’s a bright place now, Tom, but come
winter, well, you came at the right time, lad. We’re off in a few
days. If you’d been much later, I’d have been gone.”

“Off? To where?”

“Up the mighty Yukon river, lad. Inland,
hundreds of miles. I was up there a few years ago and met a man
named Carmack. George Washington Carmack. Rough sort of fellow,
with a Scotsman named Henderson for a partner. He had a couple of
Indian or Eskimo relatives, and they were mining.”

“You’re going into the mines?” Tom asked,
incredulous.

John laughed and slapped his knee. “Not ‘into
the mines,’ lad, but mining, sure enough. Panning, to be more
exact. We’re after gold, Tom. The gold of a man’s dreams.”

“In Alaska?”

“In Canada, actually. Well inland, past the
Alaska territory. In a place called Dawson. Just a wee campsite,
actually. Carmack’s found some color, and he wrote me last month to
come on over and have a go at it. So, what do ye say, Tom? Ready
for a bit more travel?”

“On the river?”

“Aye, lad, and we’ve got to get moving. The
river will freeze up late September or October and then nobody
travels in Alaska, ’cept by the dogs.”

“The dogs?”

“Sled dogs, Tom. Aye,” John laughed again, a
full throated uproarious laughter that reverberated through the
small cabin where Tom had located his uncle. “I’ve got a right
’nuff cheechako on me hands.”

“A chee . . . what?”

“A greenhorn, lad. Somebody who don’t know
nothin’ about Alaska. Somebody who’d die in thirty minutes outside
during the winter without someone what’s gonna protect him.”

“Well, I’ve been traveling for the better
part of six weeks, John,” Tom said with a grin. “I suppose another
couple of weeks won’t kill me.”

“Just might, Tom. ’Tis a hard land you choose
to visit to see your old uncle,” John laughed. “Just might kill
ya.”

“This chee . . . cheechak . . . , or
whatever, intends to stay alive, Uncle John, unless you’d rather
write Ma and tell her what you did with her son.”

John’s face grew serious for a moment, and
then he smiled at Tom. “Good to have ya, lad. A man needs a partner
in this here land, and kin’s the best kind of partner a man can
have. Put your hand on it, lad. Partners we be, and partners we
stay. Fifty-fifty, come gold or come mud. What say ye?”

“I say I’m hungry, John. Any food in this
land you’re boasting about?”

“Down to the saloon, lad,” John said,
standing up and grabbing his mackinaw. “Where all good Irishmen
should be to celebrate their good fortune, or maybe the thought of
it.”

“John, what’s ‘color’?”

“What?”

“You said Carmack found some ‘color.’”

John laughed again. “C’mon, lad. A few pints
of the brew, and you’ll know all about the color of gold.”

Harold Stromberg’s trip south took him to a
much more hospitable climate. In 1519, leading an expedition of
several ships from Spain, Hernan Cortez made landfall on the
western shore of the Gulf of Mexico. His arrival marked the
beginning of the conquest of the New World. Directed by King
Ferdinand II to find gold, Cortez was determined to obey his
sovereign. Finding a harsh, inhospitable land, difficult to
traverse, he broke his company into several parties with
instructions to seek out and conquer the natives, plundering
whatever they might find that would be of worth to His Majesty.