Sitka (7 page)

“They didn’t take the schooner?”

“He hadn’t the schooner with him. That time he was sailing a barkentine. They didn’t take her, either, just the cargo. Six thousand prime sealskins. Six thousand mind you.” The man spat. “And lucky, at that. Had it been Baron Zinnovy he’d have been lucky to be alive, to say nothing of ship and crew.” “Zinnovy?”

“If you’re in the trade it’s a name you’ll know soon enough. He’s out from Siberia to command the Russian patrol ship, the Kronstadt. And none of your vodka-swilling scenery bums such as they’ve been sending out, but a tough man, one chosen to do a bloody job and put the fear of the Lord in such of us as sail north.”

“He’s already on the north coast?”

“He’s right here ... in Frisco.” He indicated the square-rigger. “He came aboard of her, but as a passenger, mind you.

“If I’m to fight a man, give me a brute every time, but this one is cold and he’s smart, and fresh from the Russian navy with a lot of ideas. I’ve heard them say his idea is to end the free trading with a rope, a knout for the Indians and a noose for the Boston men, and the deep six for their ships.” “That’s a large order.”

“Ay, but this one’s man enough, don’t you be doubting that. I say it as hate to, he’s man enough.”

The square-rigger had lowered a boat that was coming shoreward. Jean strained his eyes against the distance, making out but one passenger aside from the boat crew.

“You’ve been sizing up the schooner, and she’s a likely craft, but you’ll be needing a skipper, a man who knows the islands. You’ll find none who know them better than myself, from Vancouver Island to the Circle.” He gestured at himself. “You see me now, name of Barney Kohl, standing in the middle of my property. But wealth, man? ‘Tis not property that makes a man rich, but what’s in his skull, and I’ve a pretty lot upstairs. You’ll be needing a man with more in his head. Jean LaBarge, than mincy ways and nancy talk. You’ll be seeking a man who knows the way of a ship and the sea, and the tricks of the Kolush prominent among them. You’ll be needing me, LaBarge, if it’s yonder schooner you’ll be buying.”

Kohl was a name well known to shipping: a tough rascal by all accounts, not above cutting a corner or two, but a good man with a ship, and a fighter. He had bargained with the Kolush and dealt with the Eskimo, and had a couple of running battles with Russian patrol ships.

“You know the kind of man Zinnovy is and you’d still go north?” Kohl took the pipe from his teeth. “That’s why I want to go. There was a ship lost up there, and I know what happened.

“You’ve heard of the mosquitoes on that coast? They’ll cover every naked bit of a man and eat him alive. I’ve seen a man after being left naked by the Kolush, black with them, driven crazy by them.

“Well, there were six men left alive when their ship was taken, and Zinnovy had the six whipped with a cat until the muscles were laid bare and then tied them, bloody as they were, to trees. Then he left them for the mosquitoes, and I was the one found those men—or what was left of them.” “You’re hired,” Jean said, “if I can buy the schooner.”

“You’ll get it. I’ll see to that ... you’ll have her within the week.”

The second lighter had now reached the dock, piled high with bales of furs. It bumped alongside and a heaving line was tossed shoreward. A dockside hand started for it, but LaBarge was nearer and snared the monkey’s-fist on the end of the line with a one-handed catch, Barney Kohl grasped the line beside him and together they hauled it in, hand over hand, then the heavier line to which it was belayed. They threw three fast turns around the bollard and topped it off with a half-hitch to complete the tie. Stepping back, they grinned at each other.

“I’ve a thought where the owner may be,” Kohl suggested, “so let me handle the deal. He knows I’m on my uppers and I can wrangle a better price than you.” A dozen husky longshoremen moved toward the lighter and began tumbling bales within reach of the crane. Jean LaBarge ran an appraising eye over what he could see of the skins. Without breaking a bale he knew they were prime stuff; he had broken enough bales while he was aboard the Yankee ship to assure him of his judgment.

A few spattering drops of rain fell, and he stood on the dock, liking the feel of them on his face. Beneath the wharf the waves slapped against the piles, a pleasant sound, a sea sound. He liked the damp, chill morning and the salt air, the ships lying out there on the waters of the bay, the black-hulled schooner he hoped might soon be his own.

“Go ahead,” he said finally. “You’ll be sailing as mate.” Kohl had started away, but the words brought him up short. “What?” Obviously he did not believe what he had heard. “Me? As mate? And. who’ll sail as master?

What man is fitted to—“

“I’ll be in command.”

Their eyes met and held, measuring each other. Kohl was astonished, then angry.
 
For fifteen years he had sailed as master of ships, and half that time aboard his own vessel. And now he was expected to take a back seat.
 
“You’ve commanded before?” he asked skeptically. The thought of sailing as second-in-command to a man who, so far as he knew, had never gone to sea was not to be borne.

“I have. And I can use a mate if you’ve a liking for the job. If you haven’t, I’ll get another man.”

“Oh, I’ll take it!” Kohl was exasperated. “What else can I do? I’ve no liking for the beach, that’s certain, and a man must eat. You’ve got me over a barrel.” “I’ll have no discontented man aboard my ship,” LaBarge said flatly. “If you’re shipping with me because you’re broke, I’ll stake you so you’ll have no worries until you get another ship.”

Kohl’s irritation waned. “Well,” he grumbled, “that’s fair enough. It’s more than fair. No, I don’t want your stake, I’d rather have the job even if I am stepping down. I’ll go to sea.”

“Good ... you’re on the articles as of now. Come see me tonight and sign them—or as soon as you’ve lined up a deal for the schooner.” Kohl turned away, still a little angry, yet as he walked away, his irritation waned. He was going to sea again and in a schooner that was as sweet a bit of seagoing merchandise as he had ever seen. He was no dockside sailor who did his seafaring when talking to the girls, but a deep-water man who liked it out where the big ones rolled. Besides, around Frisco there was every chance he’d some night have a drink in the wrong place and wake up, shanghaied aboard the ship of some lubber who couldn’t navigate a dory in a millpond. Anyway, he reflected with a grim pleasure, after a trip north LaBarge might lose his stomach for those waters and be only too happy to turn the ship over to him.
 
Jean LaBarge smiled as his eyes followed Kohl’s broad shoulders down the dock, then he turned to watch the crane swing shoreward with several bales of hides.
 
As it swung in to the dock he saw one of the bales slip, realized instantly it was improperly slung, knew the whole load was going to fall. At that moment a young woman stepped around a pile of lumber directly into the path of the sling.
 
The crane jerked and the bales broke loose and there was a shout of warning from the lighter, but Jean was already moving.

Scooping the girl into his arms he lunged for safety. One of the bales struck him a glancing blow that sent them both rolling. The bales of furs tumbled to the dock, and Jean sat up, shaken by his fall.

The girl sat beside him, flushed and angry. The scarf that bound her hair had come loose and the wind blew a strand of dark hair across her face. Angrily, she brushed it away, glaring at him. She was younger than he had first thought, and uncommonly pretty. At that moment, her face flushed and her hair blowing, she looked ... he leaned over and kissed her full on the lips.
 
For an instant, startled, she stared at him. Then her lips tightened and she drew back her hand to slap him, but he rolled swiftly away and got to his feet, grinning. He offered his hand.

She took his hand and he drew her to her feet, and when she was standing properly she slapped him. There was a whoop of laughter from one of the men on the dock and Jean LaBarge turned. His hat had been knocked off by the fall and his dark hair fell over his brow. “If the man who laughed will step out here,” he invited, “I’ll break his jaw.”

Nobody moved, all the faces looked equally innocent, and carefully they avoided each other’s eyes.

The girl was brushing a few slivers of the dock from her clothing, “Ma’am,” he said apologetically, “you were in the way of being hit by those bales, and—“ She straightened to her full height, her chin lifted. Coolly, imperiously, she said, “I have asked for no explanation, and I expect no comment. You may go.” He was puzzled. “Sure,” he agreed doubtfully, “but if you’ll accept a suggestion you’ll take a carriage. This is no place for a woman to walk without an escort.” Her eyes straight ahead, she said quietly, “You may call a carriage.” Gathering the folds of her skirt, her chin lifted, looking neither right nor left, she walked to the edge of the street. Jean glanced at her profile, so perfectly carved, and her hair, rumpled now, showing dark from beneath her scarf. When the carriage for which he signaled drew up before them she disdained his offered hand and got into the carriage and drove off without a backward glance.

He stood alone on the edge of the street, staring after her. She had spoken with an accent faintly foreign. He knew of no woman, even in this town of San Francisco, who dressed so well. There was some vague difference in her manner, some inner poise and awareness that puzzled him. He turned his back on the street and walked slowly back to the growing stack of bales.
 
There was no reason why he should think of the girl, yet he did. He knew many girls, for in San Francisco a rising young man as tall, ruggedly handsome, and as well off as he was, was naturally an object of attention. He had kissed her strictly on impulse, but the more he thought of it the more he was glad that he had done it.

The black-hulled schooner was stern-to now, and looking along the line of her hull he sharpened his eyes with genuine pleasure. What a craft she would be for the fur trade! How easily she would slide through the water in those narrow channels to the north!

From the beginning both Hutchins and Jean had looked to the furs from the north for their business. They had supplied the mines with equipment as they had supplied ships, but they knew the fur industry was the coming thing.
 
Now, if ever, was the time to go. Rumors had been affecting the market, and he had an idea prices on fur were going to rise drastically. Just such stories as Kohl had told him were sure to have their effect.
 
Theoretically there were no restrictions on the trade with Russian America.
 
Actually, the Russian American Company exercised complete control over Alaska and the coast islands; the authority of the Company was subject only to the Czar himself, and as they said in Sitka, “God’s in his heaven and the Czar is far away.” The governor of Siberia was a stockholder in the Company, and like most stockholders concerned only with profits. The Boston traders had cut deeply into those profits, with better offers for furs, and with ways that were generally more considerate of the natives.

The claim of the Russian American Company to exclusive trading privileges in Alaska and the neighboring islands was a claim not many Americans were prepared to admit. The Boston men had been encroaching on the area for years just as the promyshleniki, those free-roving hunters and traders from Siberia, had been moving into Canadian or American territory when opportunity offered. Under Baranov, trading in the Russian-American area had been distinctly dangerous unless that trade was carried on with Baranov himself, then the government of Russia had interceded and opened Russian America to free trade. The ruling was still in effect, but it meant no more to the Company than many another, and they waged open war on all who dared trade in their territories.
 
Restrictions of the Company, or even of a far-off Czar, had little effect on Americans, a people impatient of any restriction, and trade with the Pribilofs continued.

The seal islands did not interest Jean LaBarge. The risk was great for the profit involved, but the coastal islands were a veritable maze. Charts of the area were sketchy and inadequate and what knowledge of its waters existed was only in the memories of those ship masters who had cruised the channels and traded in the islands, or among the Indians themselves.
 
With such a schooner as the one in the harbor a man might slip in and out of those channels with small chance of encountering a Russian patrol ship. The furs of the coast were excellent and Jean had made it his businesss to learn which villages were outlets for the furs of the interior. Tonight he would learn more.
 
Tom Herndon’s parties were a clearinghouse for news. Whoever was somebody in San Francisco might be found there on Tuesday nights. Herndon’s wife came from the Carolinas with southern ideas on entertaining, and with money enough to gratify her every whim, she entertained on the grand scale.
 
The face of the girl on the wharf kept forcing its way into Jean’s thoughts. A connoisseur of accents, as everyone in San Francisco must eventually become, he could not place hers. There were many German and French settlers now, but her accent was not German or French. Suddenly, he remembered the square-rigger recently arrived in port. But what would a girl, and such a girl, be doing on a ship from Sitka? During the Russian occupation of Fort Ross there had been several girls of good family there, and others had visited with their husbands or fathers, but Fort Ross had been long abandoned.
 
Disturbingly, her face remained in his mind, and the feel of her body in his arms. There had been that brief instant when she rested, passive, in his arms, an instant when it seemed natural and right, as if she would always be there.
 
When she had realized the situation she had straightened quickly away from him.