The Floor of Heaven (48 page)

Charlie was only too glad to follow. He’d slept in caves that were as open and vast as the Great Plains when compared to this pokey cabin. The squaw jabbering in Chinook between pulls on her bottle didn’t help make things too hospitable, either. Carmack had ignored her. But then, Charlie had noticed, the man wasn’t an Indian anymore. He dressed in proper trousers and gumshoe boots—no more caribou leggings and knee-high moccasins. Who says becoming rich don’t change you? Charlie thought with a silent chuckle.

What was no laughing matter, though, was the fact that Carmack was mighty suspicious. It was durn insulting. Charlie was of a mind to wash his hands of the whole matter. He’d done what he’d needed to do, and it didn’t set well with him to be thought of as a liar. Soapy Smith wanted to take this fellow’s gold, well, Charlie was coming round to thinking, he was welcome to it.

But now that they were outside, it was as if leaving the confines of the tight cabin had opened George’s mind up, too. As Siringo kept talking, it became clear to George that the detective, if that’s who he really was, already knew a good deal about his plans. A troubling amount, actually. Siringo knew that George had met with the NorthWest Mounted Police. And he knew the precise route mounted police captain Zachary Taylor Wood had chosen to get his gold out of the Yukon, and then out of Alaska. As well as the very day they’d scheduled for the trip. If this Siringo was working in cahoots with a gang of thieves, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to divulge this information. Why not simply use it to make your play? Why let on you knew where and when the gold would be traveling? Unless Siringo was trying to win his confidence. Maybe his plan was to double-cross Smith and make his own move. Or it could be true: Siringo had come to warn him. Years of prospecting had taught George that impossible notions sometimes turned out to be not so impossible. Either way, George reckoned, it was worrisome: Lot of folks knew how he planned to get his gold to Seattle.

The two men walked in silence for a while, George lost in conflicting thoughts. When they reached a patch of flat ground surrounded by the stumps of several felled trees, George stopped. Why should I trust you? he blurted out, finally getting to the heart of what was bothering him.

Charlie looked him squarely in the face. “I’d be a poor excuse of a Texan, were I to double-cross the man who’d save my gun hand,” he said, a stiff edge to his voice.

George considered his words. At last he spoke. Stick around for dinner. Then we’ll talk, he decided.

DINNER HAD been bacon and beans, and Charlie had helped himself to a pull or two of the squaw’s whiskey to wash it down. Now they were down by the creek bed, smoking cigars in the bright glow of the Yukon evening.

You were me, what’d you do? George asked. Supposing, that is, I were to believe you.

Charlie rankled at being called a liar in so many words. But, he reminded himself, he had lied to Carmack once before: He’d said his name was Davis and that he was a machine oiler. For that matter, he’d even suspected Carmack of being an accomplice in the Treadwell mine theft. So maybe now they were even.

First thing I’d do, Charlie offered, is go see your friend in the mounted police. You need to tell him that there’s been a leak. He’d better come up with a new plan.

George agreed that this was the reasonable course of action. But then he went on to ask Siringo something else that he’d come to wonder about. He wanted to know the detective’s plans. Now that he’d passed on the information, did Siringo intend to head off straightaway to find his fugitive?

Reckon you might need another gun, Charlie said. Think I’ll keep close until your gold is on the boat and steaming to Seattle. If you don’t mind, that is.

Long as I don’t have to rescue you again, George said without a trace of a smile.

THE NEXT day they went to meet with Zachary Taylor Wood. The captain was a proud man: proud of being the grandson of the twelfth president of the United States, and no less proud of being an officer in the NorthWest Mounted Police. He felt Siringo was impugning both his own honor and that of the Mounties by asserting that the plans he had worked out with Carmack had become known to Soapy Smith.

Charlie let the man have his say, and when the Mountie was done, he asked a direct question: How else would you explain things? It seems pretty clear your secret ain’t much of a secret anymore.

That set Captain Wood bristling again, but in the end he realized he had no reasonable choice, and he picked a new route. They wouldn’t take the White Pass, as they’d previously agreed. Instead they’d bring the gold over the Chilkoot and straight into Dyea. The captain would make sure a tugboat was waiting. Once the gold was on board, they’d head to Skagway, where the steamer would be anchored.

When the captain was done sharing his new plan, he abruptly turned grave. There is, of course, another problem, he began. Mr. Smith controls a large and capable force. The Skagway Military Company is under his command.

Well, George said easily, the Mounted Police are a fairly large and capable outfit, too. How about assigning a squad or two to accompany us to Skagway?

Can’t, the captain said. It’d be illegal. Once you cross over the summit on the Chilkoot, the Mounted Police have no official authority. It’s American territory. I’ll make the trip with you. I can let it be known I’m on my way to Vancouver to meet with my superiors. No one’s going to make too much fuss about one Mountie. But if word gets back to Washington that an armed squad of NorthWest Mounted Police came over the trail and marched into Skagway, it’ll be seen as an invasion. Might even wind up starting a war between the two countries.

Well, said Charlie. I guess that’s it then. The three of us against Soapy’s army.

Five, George corrected. My two Indian partners will be there. They know how to shoot—a bit.

It won’t come to that, the captain said confidently. There’s no telling how Soapy came to hear about the original plans, if in fact he actually has. But now that they’ve been revised, Soapy certainly won’t have any knowledge of the route or the new departure day. Everything will proceed without incident, he promised.

ON THE way back to Bonanza Creek, Charlie explained that while he trusted the captain, he had too much respect for Soapy Smith not to worry about an ambush. That was why he’d come up with a strategy for evening the odds a bit. There was no point in sharing his plan with the captain, he explained. The Mountie would just get all prickly again.

George listened with attention as the detective detailed his idea. When Siringo was done, he let all he’d heard run through his mind. It’d mean losing Jim and Charley and their guns for the first leg of the journey. But if they got ambushed on the Chilkoot by an army of thieves, two more rifles wouldn’t do much good. Either way, it’d be a massacre. And he suspected Soapy wouldn’t choose to march his army into combat so far from their home territory—and so close to the Mountie post on the summit. He’d strike closer to Skagway, where he felt safe and invincible. Siringo’s plan gave them a chance to put up a good fight along the most dangerous part of the route.

Yes, George told the detective. Might work at that.

George went off to share the plan with the two Indians. They listened, and quickly agreed. Sure, George, we will do it, Jim promised. It was their gold, too, he reminded the white man. Then, without further discussion, the Indians left camp. They’d a lot to do in the two days before the day the gold would be shipped.

IN SKAGWAY two nights later, a gang member took a seat across from Soapy. They were alone at the boss’s table in the back room. Yeah Mow, the handle of a hatchet sticking out from his belt, stood guard. No one dared approach.

Just got word, the spy announced with excitement. The gold’s leaving on a new day. And they’re taking a new route.

FORTY-TWO

nce the three men crossed the Chilkoot summit and began their descent into American territory, they went on alert. It was as if they could sense danger approaching. Earlier on that June morning, after George had told Kate and his daughter that he’d be back to take them to the steamer in St. Michael in a day or two, they had left the camp on Bonanza Creek. It was unseasonably cold, the way it can get in the Yukon when a chilly spring seems reluctant to move on into the full promise of summer. The day was gray and foggy, too; the threat of rain hovered. But they went off without too much apprehension; after all, they were still deep in the Canadian wilderness, far from the reach of Soapy’s machinations. Charlie found himself agreeing with Carmack’s analysis: The Skagway Military Company wouldn’t come marching over mountains and mount a charge across the Klondike River. That’d be too bold a play. They were a crew made up of gamblers, thieves, and outlaws, not frontiersmen. They’d spring their trap when they felt they had an advantage. So the three men—Charlie, George, and the captain—made their way toward the Chilkoot Trail, trying to pretend as if they were out for an early morning stroll. They walked shoulder to shoulder, while George gripped the reins of the string of packhorses that trudged behind them loaded down with a fortune in gold.

Without sharing a word or even a nod, however, they fell into a single line as soon as they started down the Chilkoot Pass and into American territory. The Mountie was in the lead, and he was primed; the latch on his shiny leather holster was now undone. Nevertheless, he was way too lackadaisical a point man for Charlie’s comfort. The captain might be full of pluck, yet in the Red River Indian War Charlie had seen too many brave men recklessly steer their outfits into ambushes. Caution and vigilance were traits to be admired as much as courage, Charlie had come to learn. He’d no doubt that should it come to a gunfight, the captain would be a fierce and intrepid warrior. But Charlie feared that Wood was too dismissive of their adversary; he refused to take seriously the possibility that a motley collection of gamblers and outlaws could pose a threat to a ranking officer in the NorthWest Mounted Police.

Charlie had no such illusions. He was at the rear, and he was on guard. His eyes darted about, trying to spot a telltale movement in the timber or the glint of a rifle barrel protruding from a gap in a rock outcropping. His ears listened for the crunch of boots on the hard ground or the sharp snap of a branch. He wanted to advise Wood to strike a slower pace. He wanted to tell the Mountie that he wasn’t invincible. Any man could stop a bullet; and, in fact, despite the morning’s thick fog, the blue-and-red Mountie uniform made for an easy target. But Charlie reckoned the proud Mountie wouldn’t be persuaded, so he kept his thoughts to himself and his senses tuned to every new moment.

IN SKAGWAY, Soapy reviewed his troops. He had devised the attack with a gambler’s logic: Raise the stakes high enough, and the intimidated mark will fold. That was why he’d assembled his full force and had made sure they were outfitted for battle, rifles and sidearms for each man. His hope was that Carmack and the Mountie would stare at the well-armed aggressors and realize that to oppose such odds would be suicide. They’d hand over the gold without firing a shot. But if they weren’t reasonable men, Soapy had sufficient firepower on hand to wipe them out in the first volley.

WEDGED IN between the Mountie and the detective, George shared the others’ silence and kept a very tight hand on the reins as he led the packhorses down the trail. His mood was subdued. He was no stranger to the Chilkoot, but he’d never studied the trail this way before. On previous treks his mind had focused on the physical challenges, the stamina and muscle he’d need to haul himself over the trunks of fallen trees and across the massive boulders that littered the path. Now he saw each new obstacle as a hiding place, a covert from which a gunman might suddenly emerge. Of all his times on the trail, trips made in the harshest of weather, days when the wind shot down from the mountaintop with a fury, when ice froze into slick, perilous sheets and the snow pounded, when rivers of oozing mud flowed, when the risk of falling off the narrow trail and flying to his death five hundred feet below brought a terror to each new step—nothing had left him as apprehensive, feeling as if he were balanced on a razor’s edge, as this long journey. Then again, never before had he made the trip hauling nearly a quarter of a million dollars in gold.

NOW THAT his men were assembled, Soapy selected his advance force. There’d be only seven men, and their role was crucial to his plan. If they performed as instructed, his army wouldn’t need to fire a shot. So he chose men who had proved themselves to him in the course of their unruly years together, in adventures in places like Creede, or Leadville, or Denver. He wanted men who enjoyed a good fight, who wouldn’t retreat when bullets started to fly, who would charge into the pitch of battle. He wanted killers.

Soapy chose quickly; he’d already given the matter much deliberation. As soon as he finished, he pulled the seven hard cases off to one side and gave them their instructions. When Soapy was satisfied that each of the men understood what was expected, he sent them off.

Then he returned and addressed the remaining troops. Follow me, he ordered.

IT WAS with a sense of genuine relief that Charlie came to the end of the Chilkoot Trail and began the walk across flat ground into Dyea. They were closer to Soapy’s territory, but he no longer felt trapped. The trail had offered too many opportunities for an ambush; he’d imagined bushwhackers suddenly surrounding them at any moment. They wouldn’t have had a chance. At least now at the first sign of trouble they could take cover in the forest, hunker down, and make Soapy come for them. There were only three of them, but with the trees for protection, they could put up a fight. The bastards would pay with blood if they tried to take the gold.

WHEN THE three men got closer to the Dyea beach, George saw his old cabin. No one had claimed it, and it remained abandoned, a relic of a life that had ceased to exist. It belonged to a time when he’d felt he was more of an Indian than a white man. Such sympathies no longer had the slightest sway over him. It was as if all those convictions had been affirmed by another man; which, in fact, he just might well have been, so deeply were those years buried in him. And yet, irony of ironies, here he was once again putting his faith in Jim, in Charley, in the braves who’d been his Tagish brothers. A fortune was at stake, and all he could do was hope the Indians would stick to Siringo’s plan.