The Guardian Part 4

Our deception began in Ellsworth, where I was fairly certain we wouldn't be recognized. I sacrificed the tickets to K.C., bought under my married name, and as Vivian and Charles Flammarion we boarded the Union Pacific bound for San Francisco. We had to pay an extra dollar for Daniel's bicycle, but he had read of people using them to get to the goldfields. I doubted that myself, but thought he might be able to sell it for a good profit in Skagway.

Six of the golden eagles got us a sleeper-the Pullman strike a distant memory-and though we were ready to make use of it, the sun finally setting on a rather eventful day, we first went to the dining car, which was a pleasantly stupefying experience. Crisp linen and heavy silver and too much beef and claret-a novelty, since Kansas was technically dry, and female schoolteachers might know where to go for a drink, but they dare not show up there.

We both slept through the change to Mountain Time and the little hamlet of First View, where we might have spied Pike's Peak in the light of the rising sun. It was quite visible when we managed to stagger down to last call for breakfast.

It was a pleasant three days for Daniel-excitement, rather than the anxiety of our first flight west. I treated him as an adult, even to the extent of letting him carry the Pinkerton man's pistol in his coat pocket, though he acceded to my request that he not carry it, or any other sidearm, to the Yukon. We knew enough about the Wild West to know that fools with guns killed other fools with guns, and the safest thing was not to challenge them.

In a way, I was terribly wrong. In the long run... well, no human will ever know the long run.

Denver looked interesting, and under other circ.u.mstances we might have tarried a day or two there. But we had to be realistic.

One of us an accused kidnapper and the other having a.s.saulted a Pinkerton man and, technically, deserted the army. I was reluctant to get off the train until we could lose ourselves in the confusion of Gold Rush San Francisco.

Likewise, we didn't get off at Cheyenne, early the next day, which was the last regular stop for over a thousand miles.

As we rose into the Rockies we were treated hourly to scenes of wondrous beauty. Mountains snow-capped in July. Boiling cataracts a hundred feet below us, as we crawled along trestle bridges that seemed none too substantial.

I couldn't properly enjoy the scenery, for my concern over what might be waiting in San Francisco.

Daniel had stopped shaving in an attempt at disguise, but three days' growth wasn't going co make much difference.

Chance favored us the second night. At dinner we were seated with two men, a father and son named Doc and Chuck Coleman, who were also headed for the Yukon. They were better prepared than we, having received two letters from a friend who was already there, and information from provisioners in Seattle.

The Canadian government, they told us, wisely would not allow any prospector to enter the country unless he brought in a year's worth of food, as well as necessities for panning. That's a ton of supplies.

Over coffee, after dinner, I made a copy of the list for Daniel, and later copied it into my diary: Food Bacon, 100-200 lbs.-Flour, 400 lb.-Dried fruits, 75-100 lbs.-Cornmeal, 50 lbs.-Rice, 20-40 lbs.-Coffee, 10-25 lbs.-Tea, 5-10 lbs.-Sugar, 25-100 lbs.-Beans, 100 lbs.-Condensed milk, 1 case-Salt, 10-15 lbs.-Pepper, I#._Rolled oats, 25-50 lbs.-Potatoes, 25-100 lbs.- b.u.t.ter, 25 cans-a.s.sorted evaporated meats and vegetables Equipment Stove-Gold pan-Granite buckets-Cups & plates (tin)-Knives, forks, & spoons -Coffee!teapot-Picks & bandies-Saws & chisels -Hammer & nails-Hatchet-Shovels-Drawknife -Compa.s.s--Frying pan-Matches-Small a.s.sortment of medicines Clothing 1 heavy mackinaw coat-3suits heavy underwear -2pairs heavy mackinaw trousers --I doz. heavy wool socks -6heavy wool mittens -2 heavy overshirts-2pairs rubber boots -2pairs heavy shoes -3pairs heavy blankets -2rubber blankets -4 towels-2pairs overalls-1 suit oil clothing- a.s.sorted summer clothing They said you could buy an outfit all a.s.sembled for around a thousand dollars, but you could save money and probably get better quality if you shopped around, which was what they planned to do.

Daniel stared at the list. "You can't carry all this stuff from the boat to the goldfields on your back."

"Some do, partway," Doc said. "About a hundred pounds at a time, maybe more on a sledge. You go up a ways and start piling it up, and go back for another hundred pounds. When you've got it all piled up in the new place, you start over." He laughed at Daniel's expression. "Not all the way. You get to the Yukon River and build a raft, and let the current take you to Dawson."

"Won't somebody steal your stuff while you're going back and forth?"

"Reared not. I suspect it goes hard on someone who gets caught. Besides, everyone has about the same stuff anyhow."

"We're hoping to get mules, too," Chuck said. "They have lots of them in Skagway."

"Depending on what they cost. We don't want to be flat when we get to the fields." He gave his son a look that bespoke past arguments. "Man'd be a fool not to hold back enough to get home on. Not everybody pans out. It's a gamble."

Chuck changed the subject. "Were you planning on going along with Charles, Mrs. Flammarion?"

"Oh, no! This ishis adventure."

"Wise decision," Doc said. "Hear tell some've done it. Hard place for a woman, especially"-he looked down at the table-"one as handsome as you, you don't mind me sayin' it."

"I don't fancy pulling a hundred-pound sled," I said, "or even leading a mule through ice and snow. I'll find a job in Skagway, and wait for... Charles to come back with his fortune."

"Skagway ain't no church picnic, neither," Doc said. "You might ought to stay in Seattle."

"I want to see him off. Make sure he's got a good mule and his shoes are tied."

"Mom..."

"But if Skagway is too rough, or I can't find a good job, I won't stay there. Go back to Juneau or Seattle."

"Not back home?"

I'd been telling the lie so long it almost felt true. "Philadelphia, no. We left because there are too many sad memories there. My husband died recently."

"Oh." Doc and Chuck exchanged glances. "Then we have that in common, too. After my wife pa.s.sed away, I couldn't bear living on the farm. So we sold it and decided to head for the Yukon."

"Neighbors said we were running away," Chuck said angrily.

"And if we were?"

"I'm sorry," I said. "Where was the farm?"

"Sedalia, Missouri." He gave me a wry smile. "It ain't Philadelphia. I took you for a city woman, Mrs.

Flammarion." He p.r.o.nounced it"Flam-reon."

"Call me Rosa," I said. "Everyone does."

"And I prefer Daniel," Daniel said. "Never did like Charles."

"Me neither," Chuck said.

"Saw you get on back there. You got kin in Kansas?"

Half a lie. "No, I took a temporary job teaching there. The school year's over, and when Daniel graduated, he decided he wanted to join the stampeders. I came along to see that he got a good start-and to see this part of the world."

"Yeah...." He looked out the window at the vague shapes sliding by in the darkness.

"Pop... ," Chuck started.

"Uh-huh." He put his elbows on the table and looked straight at me. "Rosa, is your boy easy to get along with?"

"I generally find him so."

He shifted his gaze to Daniel. "Son, Chuck and me, we were just talkin' about takin' on a partner or two, at least as far as Dawson. Cost everybody less that way."

"Dad and me don't have ten years of school between us," Chuck said, "so you could help that way. But we know a heck of a lot about mules and shovels and all."

Daniel chewed his lower lip for a moment. He didn't look at me. "I would be glad to. Proud to." He smiled. "I don't know much about shovels."

Doc laughed. "Called 'em idiot sticks in the army. A stick with an idiot on one end and a shovel on the other."

I had a sudden cold feeling, but then realized Doc was only a few years older than me; he couldn't have been a Union soldier.

He saw my disquiet. "I wasn't much of a soldier. Spent two years in Texas lookin' for Indians; never found a one. Came back to farm and raise a family."

"You have other children?"

"Two daughters, both married. Two grandkids-had to get outa there, makin' me feel old."

We had to leave the dining car so others could have the table, but we moved into the lounge car for coffee and talked for a couple of hours about the world they were going to and the worlds we had left.

That was strange. The man and his son were direct, simple, honest folk, their life stories predictable and uncomplicated. Daniel and I had a life story that was a carefully woven fabric of lies, often rehea.r.s.ed and elaborated on.

Doc's father had not served in the War Between the States, because of bad eyesight. Being half blind hadn't kept him from homesteading, though, and his small farm prospered and grew as his family grew.

Except for his stint as an unsuccessful Indian fighter, the Missouri farm was almost all that Doc knew of the world. He had been to St. Louis a few times, and his experiences in that metropolis did not leave him looking forward to coping with San Francisco and Seattle. I promised to help them negotiate with merchants in putting together their "kits."

(Doc got his name by virtue of having taken a mail-order course of instruction in veterinary medicine. It was what we'd call a "degree mill" now, but I was to find out that he had a way with animals, and was intelligent, and knew his limits.) We returned to our sleepers, but the coffee and excitement kept me awake for a long time. The last quarter moon rose into the clear night, and gave the snowy mountaintops an ethereal blue glow. I realized that hours had pa.s.sed without my having thought about Edward or his Pinkerton men.

We had planned to get off the train as widely separated as possible, since the Pinkerton men would be looking for a young man in the company of his mother. It was possible they would have photographs.

I was thinking of how to explain this odd separation to the Colemans, and came to an obvious solution: we would get off with them, instead; a rustic family of four. I would let down my hair, and wear my plainest dress, with no corset. Daniel had jeans and a disreputable work shirt.

We played cards with them the next day, and chatted, as the train worked its way down the western slope of the Rockies, across a stretch of desert, and then through the riot of green that irrigation had brought to the California desert. Before we even got to Berkeley, Doc suggested we ought to get all our luggage in one place and try to stay together.

We had no idea what to expect. Wagons would transfer us and our baggage to a San Francisco ferry, where anything could happen. a.s.suming Daniel and I even made it off the platform.

The train squealed to a stop in a cloud of dust and smoke and steam, and if any of Edward's agents were looking for us, we gave them the slip. We put our things aboard a wagon and elected to walk alongside it.

It was a refreshing walk, July in Berkeley like May in Kansas. The streets were muddy ruts but there were boardwalks and, farther into town, sidewalks of brick and stone.

The ferry was crowded and slow, its steam engine hissing and clattering so loud we had to yell to converse.

The San Francisco dock was a crowded bedlam. Doc and I left the boys to stay with our things while we went to inquire about pa.s.sage to Seattle.

An interesting thing happened while we were gone. There were lots of soldiers and sailors in the area.

Daniel saw a Kansas flag and left Chuck to go talk to them.

They were headed for the Philippines, following the 20th Kansas, to which Daniel would have been attached in Topeka, had I signed for him to join underage. So he wouldn't have gone to follow the Rough Riders to glory in Cuba, after all. The Kansas troops were shipped overseas to, as the man who talked to Daniel put it, "go kill n.i.g.g.e.rs in the Philippines."

Thank G.o.d Daniel hadn't gone with them. The truth of the Filipino insurrection was decades in coming, mainly because the truth was too horrible to accept: American soldiers killed at least 200,000-women and children as well as soldiers-and Kansas was at the front of the slaughter.

Pressed into my diary at this point is a later article from theAnti-Imperialist League Journal. Yellow and crumbling, it dropped into two pieces when I unfolded it. It quoted letters from the 20th Kansas: a captain said, "Caloocan was supposed to contain 70,000 inhabitants. The 20th Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private under him repeated that he himself had torched over fifty houses, killing women and children.

Twenty-two Kansans died there, out of more than a thousand in the regiment. Four deserted somehow. I wondered what Daniel could have done-what he could have become-faced with that scene of h.e.l.lish extermination. And then six more months of slaughter.

Doc and I found a freighter willing to take us to Seattle for seven dollars apiece, though with absolutely no amenities. We were to come aboard immediately and wait until their holds were full and they could steam.

I stayed on the deck and guarded our things while the men went out for supplies. They came back with more beer and whiskey than I would have, but they also brought plenty of water and food and blankets, which would come in handy.

The men played whist while I wrote in my diary and read, and just before sundown the steamer's whistle screamed twice and she cast off. Once we were under weigh, it cooled off immediately, and clouds began to gather. We improvised a shelter in the last light, using one of the blankets as a sort of tent roof and cargo crates as walls. It began to rain, but we were dry and almost cozy, sitting around a candle, the men drinking whiskey while I made sandwiches and drank a whole beer. I even had a cup of water laced with whiskey, which tasted awful but warmed me inside.

After a while the first mate came down and bade us put out the candle. I pointed out that it would be difficult to sustain a bonfire in this rain, and he admitted that was so, but he had regulations to enforce. So we surrendered to darkness and wrapped ourselves up in blankets, using bundles of clothing as pillows.

My diary makes no note of this, but I well remember that after the boys were sound asleep, Doc came to me, and we gave each other some comfort, stopping short of actual adultery.

The next morning he tried to talk me into coming along with them to the Yukon, and a part of me was tempted, but I demurred. This was Daniel's adventure, and having his mother along would spoil it for him.

("Adventure" is how I saw it; the physical challenge would be salutary, I thought, and I reluctantly admitted that it was time for the ap.r.o.n strings to be cut. Far better this than war.) Seattle was even busier and more chaotic than San Francisco had been. None of the hotels near the water had any rooms vacant. Stampeders usually had to wait a week or more before finding pa.s.sage north. After a long search, I found a room in a private home, a half mile from the outfitting stores on First and Second Avenues. The woman who rented it to me advised me to check with the Chamber of Commerce downtown, which maintained a Woman's Department for female prospectors. I didn't bother telling her that I was only going as far as Skagway.

I did have time to go by there before meeting the men at one thirty. It was interesting. They were basically set up to talk you out of going, but if you have to go, be prepared for this and that. They gave me a list similar to the one Doc and Chuck had, with a conspicuous addition: "a small revolver, to be carried on your person, with a quant.i.ty of appropriate ammunition."

The men were waiting for me in front of Nell's Chowder House, with the pushcart piled high with sacks of flour and beans and tins of bacon, coffee, tea, sugar, and so forth.

We had good chowder, keeping an eye on our things while exchanging stories about our morning's adventures. When I told them about the revolver, Doc got serious, and said he'd overridden his boy on that one, as well; they only carried a rifle, for game. Carrying a pistol would more likely get you into trouble than out of it, he said, echoing my sentiment.

Writing that down, I have to wonder again whether that was the turning point of all our lives. Everyone on this planet.

Doc and Chuck went off with an empty pushcart and the list while I took Daniel and his heavily laden cart to our new home. I offered to help him push it up the hills, but he good-naturedly declined, saying there would be nothingbut hills from Skagway on.

We unloaded the cart into our room and relaxed in the parlor for a while, having tea made with an electrical kettle. I realized it was one of the last times I would have alone with Daniel, and although I tried not to be sentimental, he sensed my natural anxiety and nervously tried to make light of the dangers he was facing.

He looked fit and strong. For years he had been working summers and weekends at the press room, and much of that was heavy lifting. He also lifted weights and wrestled at school, an enthusiasm that had left me both surprised and relieved.

We finished our tea and pushed the cart back down to the hurly-burly near the docks, where Doc and Chuck were waiting at the Chowder House. To our surprise and Daniel's delight, they had secured us s.p.a.ce on a Russian steamer, theWhite Nights, leaving for Skagway the next day. Our accommodations were the same as we had enjoyed on the trip from San Francisco, a tent on the deck, but this time we had a real tent. And over a ton of food.

We examined the list and divided it in two, with the Colemans basically going after hardware and Daniel and I gathering medicine, cooking utensils, and all the clothing except shoes and boots, which each would try on himself. We would also pick up the remaining food, evaporated milk and dried fruit, adding from my Chamber of Commerce list crystallized eggs, if we could find them, and lime juice to prevent scurvy-and improve the flavor of the cheap whiskey.

We would take our bounty directly to the ship, where there was supposed to be an armed guard for overnight security. Chuck volunteered to sleep with the goods, though, while the rest of us had one last night under a roof.

All three men were about the same size, so buying clothes was a simple matter of Dan trying them on and buying three sets. It was a bulky lot, rather than heavy, but we managed by lashing the pile down on the cart. Daniel couldn't see over the pile, so I had to guide him through the streaming crowd down to the docks and theWhite Nights. The gangway was steep and he did let me help pull the cart up.

The Colemans weren't there yet, and the officer on deck, a young man who seemed fl.u.s.tered by having a woman on board, spoke no English. He did respond to Daniel's Latin-the first time he had used it outside the cla.s.sroom-and led us to our cache, an area marked off with red ribbons andcolman/flemarion chalked on the deck.

We stacked the bags and boxes and then took a tour of the ship. "Rust bucket" was the term that Daniel used, and I just hoped it had enough st.u.r.dy rust to keep us afloat as far as Skagway. A lot of it was leaving the ship via a steady stream of brown water being pumped out from below.

The Russian ship had not been built with pa.s.sengers in mind. It did have a large cargo area on deck, and that's what we were. The only concession to the cargo being human was an outhouse rigged over the stern.

We read and wrote until it began to get dark. I was starting to worry about the Colemans, when at last they heaved their way aboard, complaining that there wasn't a pick to be had in all of Seattle, though they did find four pick handles. I supposed they would be easy enough to come by in Skagway, though at an inflated price.

A Chinaman on the dock was selling fried fish and potatoes, so I sent Daniel down to get us some, while we settled accounts by candlelight. They asked me to do the addition and division, but I insisted we both do it, and compare results. After a couple of puzzling discrepancies were sorted out-Doc forgot to include the $120 he paid for the pa.s.sage to Skagway-we came up with $1,833 divided three ways, with my giving the Colemans an extra fifty dollars for pa.s.sage and my share of the food and drink going north.

All told, we owed them $155, hardware being more expensive than clothing.

I gave Doc a five-dollar bill and six golden eagles. He gave three to his son and both laughed, hefting and clinking them, thinking about gold to come. We sealed the deal with whiskey, mine with a good portion of sugar-water and lime juice. Daniel arrived with the fish and we had an amiable dinner party. Then the three of us repaired up the hill, Doc and Daniel carrying sleeping bags, which elicited some drunken comments, that I pretended not to hear, from a man sitting on the curb. Doc excused himself and fell back to kick the man in both shins. I whispered thanks to him when he returned.

(I wasn't sure whether Daniel, with his back to us, was aware of either the insults or the retribution. I had never given him instruction in s.e.xual matters, and it's possible he hadn't understood the man's innuendo.) The landlady was reading in the parlor when we came in. She gave me a stern look, but said nothing but "Seventy-five cents if you want breakfast." We declined, saying we'd found a ship and would be leaving early.

I was a little nervous preparing for bed, lest Doc expect a repeat of the previous night's intimacy, which of course I couldn't do with Daniel in the room. But both men were asleep and snoring, exhausted, minutes after unrolling their sleeping bags. I suppose I was both relieved and annoyed.

We did have a hearty breakfast downtown, johnnycakes with bacon and eggs, which prompted Doc to go off in search of a couple of jugs of maple syrup. Daniel and I went on to the ship, so that Chuck could go ash.o.r.e and eat before our ten thirty departure. Sitting on boxes, we played double solitaire and reminisced about Philadelphia and Dodge. As if by mutual agreement, his father's name never came up.