Heartbroke Bay (18 page)

Read Heartbroke Bay Online

Authors: Lynn D'urso

BOOK: Heartbroke Bay
7.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
A single shovelful of sand changes everything.
While Hans and Michael mutter of returning to Sitka, shooting Dutch, or both, Harky subdues his dislike of the water, drops a shovel and pan into the skiff, and rows awkwardly for the beach. Dutch, eager to breathe air untainted by animosity, accompanies him.
The day has dawned without storm. The water is flat as a table and the color of tarnished silver. Shreds of mist still hang among the hills, and the farther reaches of the fjord remain hidden behind a veil of rain, but in the west the sun struggles to break through beneath a streak of gold.
In Harky’s hands the oars chop at the water without rhythm or grace, and he steals wary, sidelong glances from beneath the brim of his hat toward the mouth of the bay half a mile away. Dutch, too, is chary of the current, which they both fear may suck them into the terrible surf. Seals, bug-eyed with curiosity, follow the wandering course of the skiff in its advance toward shore.
Once ashore, Harky tilts the skiff to its side, shoulders its considerable weight by the gunwale, and carries it well up the beach. Michael has given him stern warning of the tide’s ability to rise with speed and stealth behind the unwary, and of its eagerness to steal anything left within reach. Harky accepts the Irishman’s admonition as more proof of the sea’s treachery and urges Dutch to hurry.
Tools in hand, the unlikely duo wanders among a Stonehenge of tall boulders spaced along the concave bight of the shore. Michael’s prediction to Hannah—that the rain would chew at the drifts of snow, exposing the earth to the prospectors’ shovels—has proven only partially correct. Near the mouth of the bay, the snow has grown rotten and crumbling, with portions of open ground visible at the mouths of small creeks, but farther into the bay, where the glaciers chill the atmosphere, the moisture falls as wet snow and the intermittent mutter of distant avalanches can be heard.
The baritone rumble of the earth falling in on itself and the thunderous quaking of the glaciers dropping icebergs into the bay puts Harky much in mind of cannon fire. He grows nervous at the memory and struggles against the melancholia that rubs against the walls around his heart.
The sand is dark chestnut and littered along the water’s edge with bits of shell. A wandering line of tracks describes the explorations of a cloven-hoofed animal, perhaps a deer or a mountain goat nosing along the interstice of forest and beach before veering inland. Behind a small point of land scattered with broken stones they find the ambling, plantigrade tracks of a grizzly—deep, platter-sized depressions marked across the top with the indentations of non-retractable claws. Harky stops beside a boulder the size of a washtub that has been flipped aside by the bear as it sniffed and dug at some intertidal delicacy. He stamps his boot track over a track and sees that the grizzly’s foot is fully as long and a good deal wider than his own. Dutch peers ahead and behind, then into the woods, wondering aloud if they should return to the cutter for the shotgun. Harky shrugs. He carries his pistol in his coat, but knows the caliber would be woefully inadequate against an animal with a head the size of a keg of nails.
“We best just stay out of the brush. See him on the beach, we’ll head the other way.” He is not eager to return to the confines of the boat or the tippling skiff.
At the mouth of a green, mossy creek that trickles across a fan of pea-sized gravel, Harky punches at the ground with the shovel. The metal blade rings without penetrating the stony surface.
Moving over a pace or two, stepping carefully to keep his balance among the water-slicked stones, he slices into a soft deposit of sand. Garbed in black oilskins that droop on his dissolute frame, Dutch stands like a priest at communion, holding the pan out level to receive the offering from Harky’s shovel. Bending at the waist, he lowers the metal lip of his chalice into the stream at a shallow angle, scoops a few spoonfuls of water into the mixture of sand and gravel, and begins washing.
At first the score remains nothing to nothing. Dutch is poised to tip the contents out on the ground, when Harky reaches out with sausage-fat fingers and tweezes a bright pebble from the pan. The small stone glows green and wet, and Harky briefly considers taking it as a gift for Hannah before dismissing the idea and thumbing the bead back into the pan.
Dipping and rocking, Dutch continues sluicing the lighter elements of the slurry into the stream, working the muck down to a few spoonfuls of sand.
“Wait a minute, Dutch.”
Dutch pauses before pitching out the concentrate. Harky bends down to look, bends closer, then drops the shovel and takes the pan.
Holding it in one hand, he tilts it this way and that, trying the light from different angles, shifting it softly side to side in a subdued panning motion, then probing at the finest black and green bits that linger in the curve of the pan. Among them is a speckle of yellow dust as faint as the scales of a butterfly’s wing. It is gold, fine as flour, but still dense and heavy enough to be segregated from its sister elements by the rocking of a pan.
Harky says, “Guess that’s it.”
And it is.
NINE
Dear Diary,
It has been two weeks since our departure from Sitka, and construction on our home for the summer has begun. Mr. Severts is a wizard with the broadax and saw! He carves wood into thick planks for a table, benches, and a door, while Harky and Dutch work at bringing logs to the beach, where Hans takes them in tow behind the skiff to deliver them to our site. It will be a shanty of wood and mud, but seems palatial after the close quarters of the boat. There will be no fine finish, as the men are eager to begin recovering gold.
Throughout the day, first one, then another of the men—and sometimes all at once—drops all he is doing and wanders off to shovel at the sands. So far our “poke” is only a small glass jar in which a few flakes and grains of gold reside. Hans filled the jar with clear water, which magnifies the appearance of the tiny bits of gold. Everyone enjoys shaking the jar and watching our wealth swirl about, as if it were one of the crystal-and-water snow scenes Poppa used to bring Mama from Paris.
We are eating well, as we must consume all of our eggs, fresh meats, and vegetables before they spoil. Soon it will be flapjacks or bannock bread for breakfast, bannock bread and beans for “lunch” as Americans call it, and beans and bannock bread for supper. I am becoming adept at baking the bread, which is simply flour, water, salt, and baking powder, in the Dutch oven.
The discovery of gold has seen Dutch somewhat forgiven, but he remains much subdued. The cutter lies at anchor, the pendulousness of its mast drawing arcs against the sky, as the miners pack the remaining goods and cargo ashore. The smell of mildew clings to everything, even wood and metal, and seems particularly strong on the pages of Hannah’s journal. On the first clear, bright day she drapes the green branches of spruce trees near the camp with blankets and clothing, hoping the odor will dissipate in the crisp air.
Logs of wrung-out silver driftwood are notched to lie neck to ankle across each other in the rude shape of a cabin. Moss gathered from the forest floor is used to chink the uneven spaces between the logs. Squirrels chitter in indignation from the trees.
The carpenters have no patience, nor is glass available, for such niceties as windows. The interior of the cabin would be dark and dreary were it not for the roof, formed by stretching the cutter’s canvas jib over a low framework of poles and weighting it in place with boards and stones. Hans wants to cover the roof with sod as well, but Michael argues that this will rot his sail. Sunlight through the sailcloth bathes the interior in dim yellow light. Harky must hunch his neck to pass through the door.
The dirt floor of the cabin measures twelve by sixteen feet. Michael drives four short poles into the ground with the flat of an ax, fastens horizontal planks to the posts with wooden pegs, and uses a brace and bit to bore a line of holes through each plank. With a coil of small-diameter line, he weaves an open netting between the planks by passing the rope from hole to hole across the frame and covers this with a layer of resinous spruce branches to form a bed for Hans and Hannah. Michael, Harky, and Dutch will continue to bunk on
Tara
, but the woodstove is moved into the cabin for Hannah to cook on. Only Dutch complains of the cold.
He is also the one to discover the shattered wreckage of a boat strewn among the debris of the shore and all hands fall-to with saws and crowbars to salvage what they can of the weathered planks. From the size of the planks, Michael estimates the craft to have been larger than the cutter. There is no evidence of the cause of the ship’s end or the fate of its crew, but its planks go to good use as shelves and a food locker in the new cabin. Hans sets aside the longest and best to build a sluice box and shaker, saving many hours of hewing and sawing that would otherwise be required to produce lumber from logs. The silvered bones of the ruined vessel remain a stark reminder of their isolation from the outside world.
After a night of heavy rain the tracks of a grizzly are found close by, crisp and sharp in the sand. Hans and Harky decipher the animal’s path, tracing where the grizzly pawed at a shovel left out in the rain, approached the wall beyond which Hans and Hannah slept, circled the cabin as far as the door, then departed the way it came.
The tracks are well defined, unsoftened by the rain—clear evidence the visit occurred only a short time before Hans opened the door at first light. The prospectors marvel that the Nelsons heard nothing.
Michael brings his shotgun ashore and leaves it with a carton of shells.
It is Dutch who suggests that the bulk of the food be returned to the cutter. “No sense baiting a bear into bed with you, is there Mrs. Nelson?” says Dutch. “Old Elijah smells that bacon, he’s liable to come in without knocking.”
Most of Dutch’s suggestions are brushed aside without consideration, but this one makes sense to all, and the potatoes, meat, cases of canned goods, and sacks of beans and flour are taken back to the boat for safekeeping.

Other books

The Winter Thief by Jenny White
Priceless by Christina Dodd
Lure by Deborah Kerbel
Thin Line by L.T. Ryan
The Devil You Know by Victoria Vane
My Enemy, the Queen by Victoria Holt
Goodbye Dolly by Deb Baker
When Magic Sleeps by Tera Lynn Childs