Destiny - The Callahans #1 (30 page)

“He’s not my brother, Teresa. He’s . . . he’s
my
husband
.”

Now it was Teresa’s turn to sit stunned. She
stared in disbelief at Katrina for several long moments, then stood
up from the bed, and moved to the window. Throwing open the heavy
drapes and allowing the blinding light to diffuse the darkness of
the room, Teresa asked incredulously, “Your
husband
?”

“Yes, Teresa,” Katrina said weakly, “He’s
deceived us both.”

For long moments Teresa stood looking out the
window as Katrina lay silently on the bed, her breathing coming in
shallow drafts, her eyes closed as exhaustion took its toll.
Finally, Teresa turned and walked back toward the bed. Watching
Katrina sleep, she whispered softly, “Our husband . . .
Our
husband.”

Before Harold returned from his trip inland,
Katrina had recovered quite well physically, although the emotional
toll had yet to fully register. The two women had shared much
during the intervening days between the death of Katrina’s son and
his father’s return.

Some deep concerns were broached and the
merits and demerits of plural marriage were thoroughly explored
during their discussions. In the end, Teresa understood that
Katrina had not known of Harold’s deception until her arrival in
Mexico, and in fact, until the moment Teresa had introduced
herself, Katrina thought that Harold’s reason for presenting her as
his sister had been his concerns over the establishment of the
colony and the need for him to be gone so frequently. Teresa saw no
need to inform Katrina that most of Harold’s absences had been to
stay with her in her father’s hacienda, north of Mazatlán.

That both women were religiously opposed to
plural marriage created a bond of sorts, beyond that which had been
established as a result of the simple fact that they liked each
other. Katrina, though several years younger than Teresa, and not
of the nobility, was nevertheless a woman of growing intellect and
charming disposition. Teresa found herself constantly in awe of
Katrina’s ability to accept people and conditions with a positive
outlook. Katrina’s early acceptance and even friendship toward
Teresa had proved that no hostility existed. Teresa wasn’t certain,
had she been the first wife, that she could have accepted Katrina
in the same way.

The final decision reached by both women, was
that Harold was not to know of their knowledge, at least until
after the birth of Teresa’s baby. Teresa’s move into the guest
room, explained to Harold as having been suggested by the midwife
to assure the rest necessary during her final weeks, was supported
by the tragedy that had befallen Katrina and Harold’s first
baby.

So, as Harold arrived home toward the end of
the second week of his trip, the conditions that greeted him were
depressing. Katrina had lost her baby, Teresa had moved into
isolation to protect her final weeks of pregnancy, and Harold found
himself virtually alone in the house, as both women kept to
themselves and shared their thoughts only with each other. All in
all, it was not the situation Harold had contemplated when he
thought of the establishment of New Hope and the reinstitution of
the Principle, at least not as his father had explained it.

The winter beauty of Alaska was spectacular,
and Tom almost immediately fell in love with the country. Although
they were actually in Canada, most of the miners still referred to
the area of the Yukon River and its tributaries as part of Alaska.
The cold air provided wonderful visibility, and on a clear day,
standing on the ridge above their claim, Tom could literally see
for well over a hundred miles.

He had seen beautiful mountain country while
traveling through the Rockies the previous winter, but one evening
in Alaska, he saw a spectacular phenomenon, such as he had never
experienced. As the calendar advanced, it had grown dark earlier
each evening, and then one night in late October, long after Tom
had gone to sleep, he was awakened by a strange light shining
through the wall of their tent. Thinking someone was searching
their camp for gold, he pulled on his boots and jumper and
carefully lifted the tent flap to peer outside. The air was
bitterly cold, and the hair in his nostrils crackled, but the sight
he beheld was the most fascinating he had ever seen. The thought
even crossed his mind that perhaps the world was coming to an end;
for the sky was ablaze with a kaleidoscope of vivid, constantly
changing, colored lights. The effect was truly amazing, and
awestruck by the vision before him, Tom watched the sky for some
moments before thinking to alert John.

Stepping back into the tent to wake John, he
urged him to get out of bed and view the magnificent display. But
taking one glimpse through the open flap, John simply rolled over
and pulled his bedroll up around his ears, mumbling, “It’s just the
northern lights, lad—‘God’s paint board,’ they call it. Go back to
sleep.”

Seeing no concern on the part of his uncle,
Tom went back outside, no longer frightened that some catastrophic
event was in progress. He spent the next several hours enjoying his
first encounter with the aurora borealis, or “northern lights,” the
luminescent nighttime display that can be observed north of the
Arctic Circle in the winter months. For centuries, mankind had been
startled and amazed by the natural phenomena and enthralled by its
beauty. Many times throughout the winter, Tom found the show
exciting enough to brave the cold and lose a few hours sleep to
watch its cascading shadows.

Tom learned that at that northern position,
ice and snow were almost permanent fixtures. Even in late April,
winter retained a fast grip on the land, and, according to the
sourdoughs, most of whom still took pleasure in ribbing the young
Irishman about his cheechako status, “old man winter kin throw a
blanket ‘round you quicker’n a grizzly kin get mad and rip your
heart out.”

Through the fall and winter months, it was
apparent that the tributaries on which Tom and his uncle had
established their claims, were producing exceptionally fine gold
and in quantities in excess of those being panned by Carmack and
his brothers-in-law down on Bonanza Creek. Over a hundred miners
had finally found their life’s dream, and through the winter of
1896–1897, they sat around the campfire at night, figuring how they
were going to spend it. Many of the old-timers had been digging and
scratching in the dirt and stream beds for nearly thirty years,
ever since the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, eking
out a sparse living off the land while they searched for gold. Ever
gold.

The previous October, in a celebration quite
rare, since most miners worked through all daylight hours, and as
much also as they could by lamplight in the dark, the small cluster
of men around Emerald One and Emerald Two had gathered to usher Tom
through his twenty-first birthday.

“Rich before he’s dry behind the ears,” said
one of the old-timers. “Reckon we oughta be sure he stays wet
behind them ears, don’tcha reckon?” he threatened. Whether or not
they actually would have thrown Tom in the creek in the middle of a
Canadian winter, he didn’t know, but Tom was grateful for the
intervention of his uncle.

The surprising thing to Tom, apart from the
difficulty he had in accepting their good fortune, was the fact
that the miners seemed unconcerned about theft by their
neighbors.

“Oh, the thieves’ll come, all right,” John
had said. “But it won’t be ’til next spring, after word gets out.
Then we’ll see ’em, all kinds, whooping it up, snatching claims and
the like. Then we’ll all have to guard our gold like it was,” he
laughed, “like’n it was gold.”

The first hint of spring came as the runoff
from the watershed caused their small tributary to swell
considerably, disrupting the placer operations they had constructed
on the banks of the stream. Working knee-deep in water so cold it
threatened to freeze their legs, the men continually dredged up
gravel and sand, working it in their pans, ever alert for the
“color” that was gold.

On one particularly bright day, their gold
dust stashed all around the campsite in leather packets, tin cans,
and any other container that could be used to hold the precious
grains, John announced he was heading in to Fortymile.

“It’s time for a wallop, I reckon,” he
declared.

“A what?” Tom asked.

“A long drunk, my young nephew. And since you
don’t imbibe anymore, you can keep pulling that there yellow stuff
out of the river, so’s I can pay for the drink I intend to
consume.”

“Aye, I’ll stay,” Tom responded, no argument
forthcoming.

Two days after John and two of the other
miners left for Fortymile, a great northwester blew in, leaving
eighteen inches of freshly fallen snow on the campsite. It only
took about a day and a half to walk to Fortymile, so Tom had no
concerns that John had not reached his destination, but he knew his
uncle would be unable to return quickly. That much snow around
their claim site, at a low elevation, was certain to mean that the
pass through which the miners traveled to Fortymile would be
heavily snowed in. Tom didn’t expect John to return for several
more days, until after the snow had melted enough to let him walk
the trail.

Five days later, the two miners who had gone
with John made their way into Tom and John’s claim. No horses were
available to the miners for lack of feed through the winter, and
the two men were on foot, lugging a blanket rigged between two
poles. Each miner was struggling to lift one side of the
contraption. Instantly, Tom knew something was wrong. He waded out
of the stream and walked toward the approaching pair.

Setting their burden down on the ground, one
of the men said, “Tom, we got bad news for ya, lad.”

Tom could see it was a body wrapped in the
blanket, completely covered except for the boots sticking out at
one end—boots Tom recognized as belonging to John.

“John got into a fight the first night in
town, with that German fellow from down on Bonanza Creek. He didn’t
pick the fight, Tom, it just kind of got started. Anyways, John
said he didn’t reckon he’d stick around to waste a good drunk, so’s
he took about a dozen bottles in his pack, and started back for
here, thinking, I s’pose, he’d get liquored up here at camp.”

“What happened?” Tom asked.

“Reckon the storm caught him, Tom. He were
near drunk when he left Fortymile, and we found him yesti’day
afternoon when we was comin’ back, froze solid ’longside the
trail.”

Tom knelt down by the body and unwrapped the
blanket from around the head. Bits and pieces of ice dropped away
from the covering. John’s mustache was coated with frost and his
hair was frozen in place. But his face was peaceful as he lay on
the jerry-rigged stretcher.

“Reckon we could get that preacher fella, up
to Six Above, to come down and say a few words, Tom, if’n you’d
like.”

Tom just nodded. Then, without waiting, he
got a shovel from the tent and moved to a spot up the hill from the
stream. There, he attempted to dig, but was unable to make much of
a dent in the frozen ground. One of the other miners brought a pick
to help Tom dig his uncle’s grave, while his partner started up the
creek for Six Above to bring the preacher down.

For the next three days, Tom moped around the
camp, going about the ritual of daily work, missing John more than
he would have thought, and glancing frequently up the hill at the
pile of rocks he’d arranged on the mound of Uncle John’s grave.

On the third day after John’s burial, one of
the old-timers, who’d known John in Anvil, stopped by the camp.
He’d heard about his friend’s death, and he told Tom about some of
the adventures the two had shared. After a bit, the old fellow fell
silent. Then he said, “What do ya plan to do, young fella?”

Without waiting for an answer, he went on,
“This summer, son, hordes and hordes of folk are gonna come
plunderin’ down this valley, searchin’ for their dreams. I seen it
in Californy when I were but fifteen. It won’t be a pretty sight,
that it won’t,” he said. “I’ve started takin’ my stash out, bit by
bit, into Fortymile. And after breakup, I’ll hit for Dawson. Reckon
at my age, I got enough to last the rest o’ my life.”

Tom sat quietly, listening to the older man
ramble. After some moments, he gestured to the jumble of containers
stacked around the inside of the tent, and asked, “How much do you
think we got here?”

The grizzled old man glanced around at the
stash. Then, shaking his head, he squinted at Tom and said, “Dunno,
lad. Cept’n you take it into Dawson and get it assayed, you ain’t
sure. But from what I done took down already, I’d say you got into
the millions.”

Tom stared at the old man. “
Millions
?”
he asked.

There were two topics Tom and his uncle had
never discussed—one was the dollar value of their pannings, and the
other was the tattered picture of a young woman Tom kept pinned to
the sloping wall of his tent, above his bedroll. For some reason,
Tom had never attached a monetary value to the gold they were
accumulating. The dust had become so commonplace, and there was so
much of it, it had lost its ability to excite him. There was
nothing about it that resembled wealth; it didn’t even sparkle very
much. So its value had ceased to be a consideration. It was gold.
And Tom knew they were rich. How rich, didn’t matter.

The picture of Katrina had been another
matter entirely.

Over the winter, Tom had spent hours, hunched
over the stream, performing the repetitive task of sluicing his
pan. The work was mundane and mindless, and his thoughts went
frequently to Katrina.

It was curious, that as much as he thought
about her, Tom never spoke to John about Katrina, even though John
had come into the tent on a number of occasions to find John
looking at her picture. John’s silence was the product of either
not wishing to interfere in Tom’s personal life, or disinterest.
Either way, Tom had let the subject lay dormant, apart from his own
continuing remorse over losing Katrina to another man. But as for
that, Tom always thought of her as Katrina Hansen. Katrina
Stromberg wasn’t part of the fantasy.