Whyborne
Alaska struck me as almost as lonely as the desert wastes we’d crossed in Egypt. In part this was due to the measles epidemic; many of the native settlements we passed were either severely depopulated or utterly deserted. The only real habitation we came to was the town of Nulato, an old trading post that had blossomed somewhat with the influx of miners making their way from the Klondike to Nome. We didn’t stay the night, however, only paused long enough to replenish our stores of dried fish for the dogs. Not long after, we turned north along one of the Yukon’s many tributaries. The land grew ever more rugged away from the great river. We saw caribou and eagles, and once an entire wolf pack watched us lazily from the hillside.
Griffin adapted to the rigors of our journey with an enthusiasm that took me aback. He exchanged crude jokes with the guides, all of whom seemed to have manly nicknames like “Grizzly” or “Buckeye.” He learned the routine of the camp and pitched in with gusto, chopping firewood or the spruce boughs for our beds, feeding the dogs, even mushing short distances under Jack’s watchful eye.
I’d never really seen this side of him before. Oh, I knew he’d worked in some dubious places out west as a Pinkerton. Disguising himself as a cowpuncher in order to track down a criminal, or running down train robbers on horseback, that sort of thing. But it had all seemed so distant from the Griffin I’d known, living in a modern house in a modern city.
It was easy to forget he’d learned manners and proper speech in Chicago, and his only real education came via a few years in a one-room schoolhouse on the prairie. His life chasing outlaws in the west was only a few years behind him, and not just a story he related on occasion to entertain others.
He’d chosen me, I reminded myself as I watched him split green logs to form the base for the evening fire. My sole offer to help had been rejected more or less politely, which was probably just as well, considering I’d never handled an ax in my life. Griffin fell in love with me, not one of these muscular frontiersmen who went about chopping wood and mining gold. Or wrestling bears, for all I knew.
And it wasn’t as if I was unaware of my own shortcomings in certain areas. My brother spent a great deal of my childhood mocking me for being slender and sickly. But it had been some years since I’d felt my lack of athleticism quite so keenly.
The terrain became rougher as we passed into the mountains, even as the daylight hours grew shorter and the weather colder. Often we had to leave the river, as an increasing series of rapids made passage difficult even when frozen, and find our way around them along the steep slopes.
Our progress slowed to a crawl, and I began to wonder if we would in fact arrive in Hoarfrost before the solstice. Back in St. Michael I’d thought we had plenty of time, but I hadn’t appreciated just how difficult it would prove to actually get there. Griffin also appeared to anxiously note the days. If we didn’t arrive in time, what might happen? Would we find the town destroyed by some unleashed creature? Surely the hardy prospectors were more able to defend themselves than the Eltdown villagers, since as far as I knew no grizzly bears prowled the English countryside. But would such ordinary defenses suffice against an otherworldly threat?
Perhaps. Bullets worked quite well against ghūls and ketoi. On the other hand, it took a magical lightning blast to destroy the daemon of the night in Egypt.
The trail, such as it was, brought us at last to a place where the river became a frozen waterfall cascading down from the heights. “We’re not getting the dogs up that,” Griffin commented.
“No,” Jack agreed. He pointed to the sheer slope of the ravine cut by the waterfall. “Fortunately there’s a trail we can use.”
“A trail?” I exclaimed. “For what—mountain goats?”
“It is a bit narrow,” he admitted. “And a few horses have been lost on it. I propose the four of you go on foot, while we redistribute weight more evenly among the sleds, just to be safe.”
It was a cold, miserable hike. The trail started out wide enough, but quickly grew far narrower than I would have liked. I soon found myself plodding along at the very end of the line, gasping in the thin air and silently cursing Seward for buying this accursed wilderness from the Russians.
Jack’s sled was directly ahead of me, and his occasional calls to the dogs echoed back. I tried to distract myself from the unending climb by studying the frozen waterfall. The sun crawled over the horizon, although it never got very high now before descending again, and its reddish light reflected in the cascade of ice. If I’d been sitting beside a warm fire with a cup of cocoa in my hands, I would have called it glorious.
As it was, my aching legs and cold feet somewhat detracted from the scene. With a sigh, I turned my attention back to the trail, just in time to see the outermost runner of Jack’s sled slip off the edge.
Everything happened very fast. The sled tilted, shifting it even further toward the precipitous drop. Jack yelped and flung his weight to the inside, but it was too little too late. The sled began to pivot off, sliding off the trail, the poor dogs barking frantically as they dug in.
“Cut the dogs loose!” Jack shouted, and jumped for the trail himself.
The sled slid farther just as he leapt. His foot missed the edge of the trail, and he slammed into the snow and rock of the slope. He flung his arms out, scrabbling wildly, but finding no purchase. He slid toward a drop that would end with his body lying broken at the bottom of the waterfall.
I didn’t think, just hurled myself to lie on my belly, hands reaching over the edge for him. I managed to grip one of his wrists, and he got my other wrist with his own hand. His green eyes went round with terror.
“I’ve got you!” I said.
We began to slide toward the edge.
I swore furiously, tried digging in with the edge of my snowshoes, but it did no good. Jack’s weight dragged us both inexorably toward the abyss.
I tightened my grip on him. “Help!” I shouted. “Someone help!”
There came a terrifying crunch, and the sled plummeted past Jack—thank God with no dogs attached. The edge of a runner struck his shoulder, yanking us both forward.
A heavy weight landed on my legs.