The Great Alone (67 page)

“Kelly!” A hand pounded his shoulder in a back-slapping gesture of greeting.

The blow jarred his arm and nearly sloshed the beer over the rim of his mug. Kelly quickly steadied the glass. Beer was almost always in short supply, since all of it was shipped in to Sitka from the States.

“What the hell you doin’ standin’ here all by yore lonesome? You look plum’ pitiful. Why don’t ya come celebrate with us?” Nate Wheeler swayed against him, blinking to focus his alcohol-glazed eyes. “I’ll buy ya a beer. Me an’ Gus an’ Corky h’been gettin’ the shit duty fer better’n two months now—all on account a’ havin’ some fun with a yeller-haired breed. An’ we’re gonna tie us on one t’night. Ain’t we, boys?”

Kelly glanced at the two louts standing behind Wheeler as they chorused an agreement. “Some other time.” He turned and leaned on the bar.

But Wheeler paid no attention to his refusal. “Hey, barkeep! Another beer for my friend here.” He slapped the money on the bar to pay for it, and shouldered another soldier aside to stand next to Kelly. “I ain’t seen you in a coon’s age. I’d ask where ya been keepin’ yoreself, but I reckon I already know.” He snickered and glanced at his two buddies. “Ya ever see a man look so sorrowful on a Satu’day night? Reckon he ain’t found that mother lode he keeps a-huntin’ fer.”

“Not yet,” Kelly admitted. “But it’s out there.”

After more than two years of tramping over the wild terrain in the blazing sun or sluicing rain, panning the mountain streams and chipping ore samples from rocky ledges, he’d found enough traces of gold to convince himself that there was a big vein of it somewhere.

“What’s he lookin’ fer? Gold?” The soldier named Corky draped himself on Wheeler’s shoulder. “Hell, I know whare there’s a bunch of it. An’ silver, too. Lots of it.”

“Where?” Kelly challenged contemptuously, and the man started giggling and leaned closer to share his secret.

“It’s right here. It’s been right under yore nose all this time.” He tittered gleefully. “I bet we ain’t standin’ a hundred yards from it.”

“Yeah, it’s probably in somebody’s safe,” Kelly jeered, then took a swig of his beer and wiped the foam from his upper lip.

“Naw, it ain’t. It’s layin’ right out in the open.”

“Then how come you ain’t picked it up?” Wheeler taunted.

“ ’Cause it’s more’n one man can tote.”

“Bullshit.” Kelly snorted.

“Hey, I can prove it!”

Restlessly, Aila Tarakanova turned her head from side to side on the bed pillow, groaning softly at the hot, stifling weight that pinned her to the down-filled mattress. In a frantic attempt to free herself she flung out an arm. Then she felt the sudden draft on her skin and awakened in a cold sweat, her mind filled with the nightmare of the rape and the echoes of her screams. She jammed a fist in her mouth to silence the shrieks before they hit her again, unaware that she had made no sound louder than a moan.

She lay motionless, casting wild glances about the dark room and listening for the faintest sound, conscious that her nightgown was wadded under her hips but afraid to pull it down—afraid they’d spring on her from the shadows. All she could hear was the sound of her own breathing. She wondered if they’d gone. Tears began to roll down her cheeks as she clutched the Bible tighter to her breast.

Her terror-warped mind was no longer capable of separating nightmare from reality. Fear came back to grip her in its icy talons. Whimpering for her husband, she crawled cautiously from the bed, panic rising in her throat when there was no response. She crept through the darkness into the parlor.

“Lev.” She sobbed his name, so soft yet so loud to her ears.

She found him lying slumped on the sofa motionless, the way they’d left him that night. Suddenly she heard a noise outside and whirled around to face the front door, panicked by the thought they were coming back.

Terrified, she turned and ran, fleeing the house by the back door and running into the snow-speckled night, mindless of the snow beneath her bare feet. Certain she was being pursued, she searched for a place to hide. Houses weren’t safe. They had broken into her home. “Where?” she sobbed brokenly, both arms clasped across the Bible, hugging it to her chest.

Then she saw the spires of the cathedral silhouetted against the beacon atop Baranov’s Castle. She’d be safe in God’s house. She ran toward it, slipping and sliding on the slushy street.

Her lungs felt as if they were about to burst, and her heart was pounding so loud she could hear nothing else by the time she reached the cathedral steps. She stumbled and clawed to the top of them, never losing her grip on the Bible. She barely had enough strength to open one side of the heavy double doors, but she managed it and staggered into the sanctuary of the church.

A candle flame flickered near the altar. She moved toward it, tears of relief blurring her vision, her bare feet making no sound. Then she noticed a cloaked figure by the altar and halted abruptly, believing him to be a priest. An overwhelming sense of shame filled her with an abject dread of facing a man of the church. As yet he hadn’t noticed her. She darted a quick glance at the adjoining small chapel, then began to inch her way toward it.

Suddenly, off to her right came a hoarse whisper in English. “All right, which one of you damn fools forgot to make sure the door was shut tight? Corky, you were the last one in. Go shut it before someone outside notices it.”

“Who the hell’s gonna see it?” The hissed answer came from the robed figure by the altar. “I ain’t never heard a’ nobody comin’ t’ church in the middle of the night to pray. Hey, Kelly, come ’ere an’ look at these chalices—or whatever the hell they are. I’ll betcha’ they’re solid silver. Didn’t I tell ya’ this stuff was jest layin’ aroun’.”

Another figure moved in the shadowed darkness of the church. Aila noticed a fourth. There were four men—four Americans. None of them wore the cassock of the priest. They had on dark blue cloaks—Army blue. They were soldiers, she realized and gasped in fear.

“What was that?”

The candle was lifted to throw a wider circle of light. Its faint glow reached her as she stared in horror at the soldier with the shock of straw-colored hair sticking out from under his cap. He was one of them! One of the men who had raped her! Wildly, she wondered how he had gotten here ahead of her. She raked her fingers through her hair, snagging them in the snarled tangles.

“Would ya look at that crazy ole witch?” The one holding the candle took a step closer.

The movement seemed to break the grip of fear that had temporarily paralyzed her. No, she thought, they weren’t going to do it to her again—not in the church! She turned and ran to the front door that she had unwittingly left standing open.

“Stop her!” one of them yelled.

Aila screamed when she heard the heavy clump of footsteps pursuing her. “Forget her. Let’s grab the stuff and get out of here!” another shouted.

But the sound of the footsteps didn’t abate. “Hey, lady! Wait,” came a husky, low-pitched call. “You can’t go out there.”

Dan Kelly saw the look of stark terror on her face as she darted through the open door. He had seen such unreasoning fear once before in a homesteader’s wife after some Indians had murdered and mutilated her husband, then had their fun with her. He ran after her.

At the top of the church steps, he paused to look down the street, half expecting to see her running down the middle of the main thoroughfare shouting the alarm to the soldiers in the saloons and the barracks and guardposts beyond. The street was empty except for a handful of half-drunk soldiers and a couple of Tlingit prostitutes from the Ranche. No one was showing any interest in the church. The old woman’s one short scream wasn’t likely to rouse attention. In this town at night, women screamed all the time, sometimes with cause and sometimes without.

There was a movement in his side vision. Turning, Kelly saw a wraithlike figure flitting close to the buildings along the street on his left. He ran down the steps and took out after her, muttering to himself, “Where the hell is she going? There’s nothing this way but the sound.”

As the buildings thinned out, he briefly lost sight of her, the white of her long gown and the paleness of her wild hair blending into the backdrop of the snow-covered ground. But she left tracks in the newly fallen snow. Kelly followed them at a loping run, puffing slightly from the sharp cold that burned his lungs.

As he scanned the area ahead of him, the old woman seemed to materialize before his eyes. It took him a second to realize that the black waters of the sound outlined her pale figure. The watery expanse checked her headlong flight. She paused, appearing to hesitate as she glanced frantically to the left, then the right. Considering all the chances she’d passed up to seek the safety of other people, Kelly doubted that she’d turn right. The main part of town lay in that direction. Slowing his steps, he angled to the left, cutting off that avenue of escape. She appeared to panic when she saw how close he was.

“Don’t run, lady,” he called to her softly, trying to calm her fear. The hem of her gown was crusted with snow. As she backed away from his approach, he wondered how she could stand walking in that ankle-deep snow without any shoes, yet she seemed immune to the cold. She wasn’t even shivering, although her arms were crossed in front of her as if protecting something. “It’s all right, lady. I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be frightened.”

He crooned to her, hoping that if she didn’t understand English at least his tone of voice might make an impression on her, but she continued to back up with each step he took toward her, retreating ever closer to the water’s edge, all the while slowly moving her head from side to side in some silent denial.

When she reached the ice-crystaled shore, she stopped. Kelly relaxed and smiled a little, confident that she would listen to him now that she could retreat no farther. He held out his hand to her, continuing to talk to her in low, soothing tones, repeating the same phrases over and over again.

“It’s all right, lady. Don’t be frightened. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Without warning, she turned and ran into the water. Kelly yelled and started to run after her, then stopped, thinking she would halt if he didn’t chase her. But she waded in deeper, her flight impeded only by the increasing depths of the water and the tangling weight of her wet gown. She slipped and went under. Kelly splashed in after her, but she surfaced, flailing to get away from him.

The water flowing over the tops of his boots felt like liquid ice. A man wouldn’t last three minutes in water this cold, Kelly thought and stopped. The crazy old woman was a good thirty feet from him, a pale blot in the dark water. As panicked as she was, she’d fight him even if he was able to reach her. There was a good chance both of them would drown.

With a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, Kelly slowly backed toward the shore. He could hear the panicked sounds of her breathing, yet she didn’t cry out for help. He could barely see her. His wet feet felt numb, mere stumps attached to his legs. He wondered if she was losing the feeling in her limbs, too.

The white patch he was watching in the black sea suddenly disappeared. There was no more sound except the quiet lapping of the water on the shore and the distant revelry from town. Kelly turned and walked slowly in the direction of the barracks. He avoided the church that the others had stayed behind to loot. He didn’t know where they were now—and didn’t care.

The body of Aila Tarakanova washed ashore the next day. It was found by her distraught husband, who had begun searching for her in the predawn hours when he had discovered she was missing from their home. The townspeople paid little attention to the death. They were all in an uproar over the looting of St. Michael’s Cathedral. The theft had been discovered early and the culprits had left a clear set of tracks in the fresh snowfall, leading to their apprehension and the recovery of the stolen items.

Because there was still no civil law to prosecute the guilty, the townspeople’s only recourse was to appeal to General Davis. The commanding general seemed to be of the opinion that perhaps this time his soldiers had gone too far. In punishment for their offense, he ordered privates Nathan Wheeler, William “Corky” Travers, and August “Gus” Miles drummed out of the service and sent back to the States on the first available Army transport.

Kelly was one of the guards assigned to escort the three men, now dressed in ill-fitting civilian clothes, on board the ship bound for home. None of the three had implicated him in the robbery in which he had taken no active part other than to enter the cathedral with them.

Their faces were all smiles. They’d been kicked out of the Army, all right, but they’d also been kicked out of this Godforsaken northland called Alaska. The lucky bastards were going home. Most of the other soldiers viewed them with envy, but not Kelly.

He felt confused and guilty. A woman had died that night, the same woman, it turned out, that his buddies had recently spent time in the stockade for molesting. It explained why she had been so terrified that night. In a sense they had killed her. Yet he had played a role in her death, too. He reminded himself that she’d been an old woman, another of those Russian breeds, yet that didn’t ease his troubled conscience very much.

He glanced at the chain of snow-covered mountains that rose dramatically from the island’s shore. The sight of them spurred thoughts of gold. Kelly had no desire to leave this country until he’d found it. Maybe, come spring, he’d take a look around the Silver Bay area.