The Floor of Heaven (30 page)

A short day later, all of Soapy’s renewed hopes were forced to scramble over another obstacle. The Canby had started up the Turnagain Arm, a narrow twenty-five-mile inlet leading toward the gold fields, when just after midnight there was a loud creaking noise, like a giant groan, and all at once the boat started keeling over. People screamed in panic, and for a terrible moment it looked as if the boat was going to fall flat on its side. But it held steady, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. What had happened, Soapy learned, was that the tide had abruptly gone out, leaving the boat’s prow wedged into the muddy flats. Sailors secured the Canby by stout cables to a copse of nearby trees, and the shaken passengers were led off over an improvised gangplank. It was a bit of an inconvenience, but Soapy reckoned it’d be sorted out soon enough. Come high tide, the Canby would be back on its way.

He was wrong. The Canby was not going anywhere, at least for another three weeks, maybe longer. Word had reached the captain that the ice was too thick farther up the inlet for any travel. In May? Soapy moaned helplessly. But the captain just shrugged. Up north the weather is a mite unpredictable, he offered. Until the ice melted, there was no alternative but to camp on the muddy spit of land across from the beached boat.

And as if that wasn’t sufficient to shake Soapy’s mood to the point of collapse, the captain had some even more discouraging news. Reports had it that the fields up north were pretty much played out and people were heading off before winter set in. Any man continuing on could very well find a ghost town waiting for him.

When Soapy heard this, he just gave up. A weariness that was pure defeat seeped into his bones. It was as if the tide had gone out on his life, too, and he was stranded. Mired down in muck like the damned steamboat. His luck had finally run out, and Soapy knew that a gambler without his luck was playing against a stacked deck. Better to walk away from the table than to keep tossing coins into a pot he was destined to lose. He now realized that this entire Alaskan expedition had been a mistake. The latest in a life of mistakes, he decided with a new bitterness. He was confused, and sad, and resentful. Soapy didn’t know what to do next, and then he realized he didn’t have much of a choice. He assembled his dispirited gang, the men circling around him in the soft, oozing mud.

Boys, he announced with the grim resolve of a general announcing a surrender, we’re heading back to Seattle.

THE FIRST ship making its way south was the steamship Utopia, and Soapy and his gang quickly booked passage. Yet once again there was a delay. No sooner had they boarded then they were informed that the captain of the ship was too sick to give the order to raise anchor.

The skipper was Dynamite Johnny O’Brien, a two-fisted Irishman whose exploits were so famous in ports up and down the Pacific coast that his taking ill wasn’t simply unexpected, it struck most who knew him as impossible. Why, Dynamite Johnny had fought Chinese pirates, escaped from cannibals, romanced a nubile Tahitian princess, and nearly became emperor of the island of Yap. His nickname was testimony to his explosive temper, and he’d never failed to come out swinging when an impertinent sailor dared to challenge his orders. He’d take on all comers, often two or three old salts at a time, and at the end he’d be the only man standing. But now Dynamite Johnny had collapsed on the deck. Two of the astonished crew carried him to his cabin, and he lay there in agonizing pain.

After a frantic search for a doctor, one of the Utopia’s officers managed to locate a prospector who’d once studied medicine. He conducted a hasty examination and diagnosed that the captain’s appendix had burst. “About a thousand-to-one shot to pull through,” he told the officers hovering around their half-conscious skipper. “I’d operate if I had any tools,” the lapsed medical student added. The words came out as an afterthought; there was no real commitment to them.

Dynamite Johnny, however, lifted his head. “Doc, I heard you say I had a long chance to pull through. I’m a sport and God knows I don’t want to die in this damn place. Go ahead. All you need is a knife and scissors.”

Although anchored, the Utopia was rolling on the rough sea, so it was decided that the operation should be performed on land. The captain was carried ashore in brutal cold to a cargo hut. His men laid him across three planks balanced on two packing cartons, and a knife and scissors were honed to a razor sharpness. Whiskey was the only anesthetic, and Dynamite Johnny drank liberally. Still, he remained conscious for most of the surgery. At one point he softly hummed an Irish reel.

Dynamite Johnny survived the operation, but lay burning with fever in the hut for several days. When the fever broke, the captain, wan and weak, was carried back to his ship. Two days later he managed to rouse himself. From his bunk, he gave the orders to raise anchor and get under way.

The first officer hesitated, then gave Dynamite Johnny the news: The coal bunkers were scraped nearly bare. Without coal, the ship wouldn’t be able to make the voyage.

It took all of Dynamite Johnny’s strength to raise himself up from his supine position. He sat on his bunk and forlornly contemplated the ship’s predicament. Then a thought occurred to him. Before he’d taken ill, he’d noticed that when the tide receded, a coal formation had been revealed. He ordered the crew to begin digging up coal from the bottom of the bay. Exhausted, he fell back onto his bunk.

For the next two days, whenever the tide went out, the crew shoveled coal from the bay floor. Knee-deep in mud, whipped by bitter cold, they did backbreaking work. Ten tons of coal were added to the steamboat’s coal bunker. But more would be needed if the Utopia was to reach Seattle, and on the third day the crew refused to shoulder their shovels and trudge back into the muck of the bay. And since their captain could barely find the strength to sit up in his bunk, they knew no one could force them.

The passengers by this point had grown restless. For Soapy, in particular, the prospect of spending another day anchored in the harbor was a torture. Now that he’d made up his mind to leave Alaska, he was desperate to get under way as soon as possible. He wanted to put distance between himself and this frozen nightmare of a land, the site of his comeuppance. Being moored in the harbor was a constant reminder of his failure. Another grating day sitting here, he thought, and he’d burst more than an appendix. It was in this raw state that Soapy knocked on the captain’s door, then entered.

“When do you sail, Skipper?” Soapy demanded.

“No coal, mister, and no money to buy any with, dammit …”

“How much do you need?”

The captain said it would cost $300 to fill the coal bunkers.

Without another word, Soapy reached into his wallet and took out the bills. The fact that he wanted to get under way was one reason for his generosity, but it was not the only one. It was part of his showman’s nature to make grand gestures. And, truth be told, after Soapy’s run of misfortunes, it restored a bit of his pride to cast himself as the ship’s savior.

Over the three days that it took for the coal to be delivered, Soapy spent a good deal of the time in the captain’s cabin. The two men traded stories, each vying with the other to prove who’d led the more eventful life. Encouraged by their friendly, albeit competitive conversations, Soapy found himself feeling less rueful about the past and more sanguine about what the future might hold. The dialogue was restorative, too, for Dynamite Johnny; nursed by Soapy’s presence and attention, he slowly grew stronger.

At last the coal was loaded on board and the Utopia steamed off. Eight hours later it came to a halt in the middle of the gulf. The engines stopped and the anchor was lowered.

Dynamite Johnny was perplexed. He wanted to investigate, but he couldn’t lift himself from his bunk. All he could do was summon the mate.

The engineers refuse to burn any more of this coal, the mate explained flatly. The quality’s too poor.

The captain couldn’t help but notice the boldness in the mate’s tone. From his bed, Dynamite Johnny did his best to shoot him a withering look.

The mate was not cowed. “We’ve decided to anchor here under the lee of Cape Elizabeth and wait for a supply of good coal,” he went on defiantly. “The crew agrees with the engineers.”

“Why in the devil wasn’t I told of this?” the captain bellowed. Once more he tried to rise, but a pain shot through his side as though he’d been stabbed with a bowie knife. “Who do you think is master of this ship?”

“We didn’t think you were in any condition to handle the ship, Captain.”

Dynamite Johnny exploded: “Call Smith, the bearded passenger. At once.”

By the time Soapy entered the cabin, the captain had managed to get to his feet. Without bothering to go into the details, Dynamite Johnny told his new friend that the crew was mutinous. He needed Soapy’s help.

Soapy opened his long black coat. Leather holsters were strapped under each armpit, and both held revolvers. “Glad to be of service,” Soapy agreed.

It was a struggle for Soapy to lead Dynamite Johnny up the ladder to the deck, and when they arrived, Soapy had to assist the spent and ashen captain into a chair. But the captain’s voice had its old boom as he called for the crew to assemble. With Soapy standing next to him, his guns drawn and cocked, a ferocious and loyal sentinel, the captain ordered each member of the crew to swear their allegiance. They’d get the ship into Juneau where a new supply of coal would be purchased, or else.

“I want steam up in this old tub and I want it in a hurry! Understand me?”

The chief engineer responded with a contemptuous stare. He hadn’t spoken, but he was clearly reluctant to obey the captain’s orders. And if he wouldn’t cooperate, there’d be no chance of getting the other men in the engine room to agree.

Dynamite Johnny looked at Soapy and gave him a small nod. It was a swift and graceful gesture. Immediately, Soapy stepped forward. His face was tight with menace as he pressed the barrel of his revolver into the engineer’s temple.

“Agreed, agreed,” the engineer blurted out at once. And so the mutiny was quelled.

In Juneau, the Utopia took on a new batch of coal, and eight days later it docked in Seattle. The captain gripped Soapy’s arm for support as he walked slowly down the gangplank. Dynamite Johnny had lost nearly forty pounds in the course of his illness, and was a gaunt and stooped version of the sea captain who’d sailed to Alaska two months earlier. As Soapy assisted his new friend down the gangplank, he couldn’t help but feel diminished, too. These were not the circumstances in which he’d expected to return to Seattle.

SOAPY CHECKED into the Butler Hotel, on Second Avenue and James Street, in the city’s raucous downtown. For days he remained alone in his room, trying to come to terms with what to do next. In the past, he would’ve simply concocted a new scam and convinced the boys that Easy Street beckoned. They would’ve followed along obediently. But up in the north he’d lost his sense of purpose. It wasn’t that he no longer knew where to set up his tripe and keister or how a man with guile might proceed to find his next mark. The plain truth was, he no longer cared. He’d lived the con man’s life for so long that it’d become a habit. But now he felt like taking a rest. He no longer wanted to make new plans or pursue new schemes. All he knew with any certainty was that he’d never, never set foot in Alaska again. The whole damn territory could freeze up and disappear, for all he cared.

A MONTH later Soapy was still in Seattle. His old huckster’s sense had left him so completely that when he looked at his gang, he wondered how he ever could’ve had the ingenuity to command such men. Worse, he knew he was losing their respect. If he didn’t come up with a score, if he didn’t put money in their pockets soon, they’d start drifting off. And he wouldn’t blame them.

It was on one of these long, slow days that he received a letter from his wife. She’d used stationery from the Ingersoll Club, another of his old Denver gambling parlors, and the letterhead immediately brought back memories of better times. But as if to remind him that the past remained forever past, Mary had crossed out the address and written, “St. Louis Mo.”

Dear Husband,

I would have written to you sooner but Jeff swallowed a fish hook and I did not want to worry you until I found out it would be necessary for him to go under an operation, but he is getting along all right and doesn’t seem to suffer.…

It is dreadful hot here, suffocating, lots of rain and then intense heat. I nearly went crazy the day Jeffy swallowed that hook but I know now that he will be all right.…

When he put down the letter, Soapy was no longer a man filled with questions about what to do next. Instead, he was a father a long way from his family, wondering how his ten-year-old son had managed to swallow a fish hook. And why he wasn’t with them.

TWENTY-FOUR

he two detectives were also beginning to have their doubts. They had sailed the rainbow canoe down the Dyea River, crossed wide, choppy waters to Bischoff Island, continued south until the scalloped snowcapped peaks of the immense mountains surrounding Sitka jutted above the horizon, and then abruptly turned east to revisit the heavily forested lee coast of Admiralty Island. They’d abandoned even the pretense that they were following the thieves’ trail. Now each new day’s course was set by a guess. But despite Charlie’s recognition that Alaska’s coastline was strewn with uncharted islands and broke off into hundreds of twisting channels, that the prospects of their finding the schooner were slim, he insisted that they continue the search. Most likely it’d been rash to have given McParland his word that he’d corral the thieves and recover the gold, but there was no taking it back. So doggedly they sailed on. Then, on a morning when the chill in the air was brisk enough to cause Charlie to flinch whenever the wind slapped his face, he steered the canoe across the whitecapped waters of Chieke Bay and saw the schooner anchored in front of an Indian village.

When they sidled past the sleek boat, the two detectives got a further surprise. The deck of the schooner was loaded with farm animals, some in crates, others tied to the masts. Charlie joked that it looked like Noah’s ark. But there were no signs of the two thieves, so they put their bewilderment aside and headed without delay to the shorefront Indian village.