The next morning Donald knocked on their door before they’d even had breakfast. “Come see the river now,” he said.
Pearl and Emma quickly dressed and followed him to the bank. Many of the townspeople were there, as were the Drurys, the Berrys, and Sam.
Pearl saw that the breakup had settled into a steady migration of ice floes. Some of the chunks, closer to shore were rotating, slowing as others hit them. She could even see open water between some of the ones further out in the river.
Gregory was on the shore throwing rocks at the chunks of ice. Occasionally, he looked up at them as if to make sure they were still there and again either Isabel or Henry would acknowledge him.
“Gregory wanted one last look before we head back to our cabin.” Isabel smiled at Pearl.
Joseph came up to them. “I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee on the stove if anyone wants a cup before leaving.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Ethel said. “We didn’t bother making any this morning.”
“I’ll just get Gregory and join you,” Henry said to Isabel.
Suddenly there was a yell. They looked up and saw a man pointing to the river.
There were several gasps as they spied a small figure standing on a large ice floe that was drifting down the river.
“Gregory!” Isabel screamed.
Henry took off at a run down the bank and to the river. He ran along the shore gesturing to Gregory but soon seemed to realize that Gregory would not come off. Henry hopped onto the edge of a piece of ice that wobbled precariously at his weight. He dashed across it and leaped onto the one Gregory was standing on. The other men ran beside him on the shore. Joseph grabbed a rope from someone as he went by. Pearl reached for Isabel but she, too, headed to the shore.
“Oh, my god,” Pearl said, as she saw Gregory look up and see his father. Her mind went to the first time she had met them on the boat and the way that Gregory had taken off down the stairs with his father behind him. Now, as then, Gregory turned and darted away from his father. Was that his laughter she heard?
Pearl could only imagine Henry’s fear as he ran to save his son. And he was catching up to him, his long strides being one to Gregory’s two. Then Gregory reached the edge of the flow. He looked back at his father barrelling down on him. He wasn’t ready to be taken back to the shore. There was water between the ice and the one next to it farther out in the river. Gregory got ready to jump.
“Nooo!” Pearl was sure she heard Henry yell.
Gregory almost made it. His one foot hit the floe but the other missed. He fell into the frigid water. He tried to grab hold of the edge of the ice but his hands kept slipping. He was floundering in the water, his head going under. Henry raced to the edge of the ice and jumped into the water. He went under then came up. He swam to Gregory and tried to hoist him up on the ice. But Gregory’s wet clothes added weight and his hands barely moved to grasp the edge.
Pearl could see that Henry’s movements were slowing. His wet clothes and heavy boots were pulling him down and he was losing the precious energy he needed to rescue his son. Sam, Donald, Joseph, and Clarence ran along the shore following the flow of the ice downstream. Isabel stumbled after them.
They were yelling at Henry. Joseph made a lasso in the rope and threw it out into the water. It landed near but by now Henry was oblivious. His stamina and body heat were gone. His only thoughts were of his son and he held him close as they sank under water. An ice floe glided over the spot where they disappeared.
Everyone stared in stunned silence. Henry and Gregory were gone, taken by the river. It had happened so fast. No one knew what to do. Pearl heard a far off wailing. Sam had his arm around Isabel and was trying to guide her back to the store. But she kept slipping out of his grasp and running along the shore following the ice. Finally, Sam and Joseph managed to convince her that her husband and son were gone. She fainted and Sam lifted her in his arms. He carried her up the bank to the store. The other men walked slowly behind.
The watchers along the river gradually left, stunned by the tragedy they had witnessed, unsure of what they should do now.
Pearl’s little group followed Sam into Joseph’s store. Isabel had recovered and Sam set her down gently in a chair. Everyone was in a state of shock. They had no idea what to say. Emma held tight to Donald. Sam knelt with one arm around Isabel wiping tears from his eyes with his other hand. Isabel sobbed against Sam’s arm. Joseph had gone into the storage room. Clarence and Ethel stood apart talking quietly.
To keep from crying, Pearl busied herself taking the coffee pot off the stove and pouring coffee into mugs. No one noticed. She added some wood to the fire. It was warm in the building, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. When Ethel Berry came over and took charge Pearl signed with relief.
“We must have a service for Henry and Gregory before we leave,” Ethel said.
The suddenness surprised Pearl. At home it took days to arrange a funeral. But this was different. There was no funeral home, no minister, and no bodies to bury. And it wouldn’t be easy for anyone, even Isabel, to come back in a week. They had to do what they could now.
“No!” Isabel cried. “You can’t have a service for them. What if they survived and come back?”
“They won’t have survived.” Sam spoke in a gentle tone. “No one lasts very long in water that cold.”
“But you don’t know for sure. They may have.”
Pearl watched the way Sam tenderly, almost lovingly, convinced Isabel that her husband and son would not be returning. When Isabel finally realized what he said was true, she began wailing again. She rocked back and forth in the chair, torn by her grief.
“We’ll spread the word about the service,” Sam said, then turned Isabel over to Emma.
Donald and Clarence followed him out the door. Joseph returned and Pearl saw that his eyes were red. He’d gone into the storeroom to cry on his own.
“I heard what you said, Ethel,” Joseph said. “With Pearl’s help I will supply a lunch.”
“Yes,” Pearl agreed, glad for the distraction. Her mind went into task mode, mentally listing everything they needed. She barely registered that this was the third time she and Joseph were planning something together and always at his request.
Pearl went to the three bakeries that had been set up during the spring and asked for anything they could donate. The women were generous with their bread and pies, offering to take them to the warehouse. Emma quickly whipped up a batch of plain cookies and baked them. Pearl set up the lunch on the table Joseph and Paul assembled in the store. It was the one they had built for the Christmas party and taken apart afterwards. Other plates and pans of food also showed up as men and women arrived for the service.
Within three hours, most of the residents of Dawson had gathered in front of the store to honour and say goodbye to Henry and Gregory Drury. Many had never met either of them, but they came out of a sense of obligation. Henry had been one of them. Isabel stood bravely, her tear-streaked face determined. Sam remained beside her.
Clarence stepped up to present the eulogy for Henry and Gregory. He told of their meeting and how their friendship had grown over the winter as the two couples played cards on the cold evenings, helped each other on their claims, and shared meals.
He ended with. “The one thing that always stood out about Henry was that he loved his son. He would do anything for him and right now, wherever he is, Henry is happy that the two of them are together.”
Isabel collapsed in Sam’s arms and there were few dry eyes in the crowd.
* * *
Emma was at Clara’s discussing her wedding dress. Later Pearl was to meet Emma and Joseph in front of the warehouse to decide where the marriage ceremony would be held. Until then she worked on an article that she titled, Romancing the Klondike.
My cousin, Sam, who had been living in the north for five years, wrote letters home about his life along the Yukon River. He and his friends spent their days wandering the land, panning for gold, finding enough to pay their bills and purchase new grubstakes. They had a freedom that the average person with a job and family did not have. I read and reread those letters and it all sounded so romantic that I wanted to experience the northern lifestyle for myself.
I did come north last summer and I soon discovered that reality was not as romantic as words on a piece of paper. My cousin, Emma, Sam’s sister, and I arrived in August about the same time as the first inkling of gold was found on a small creek known as Rabbit Creek. The creek was renamed Bonanza and an off shoot was called Eldorado. Both were quickly staked by prospectors who already lived in the vicinity.
The miners built small cabins and sometimes up to four men lived in them. Heat in the cabin was supplied by a sheet-iron stove which was kept red hot in the winter and did little to dispel the cold. Above the stove usually hung a tin of sourdough bread starter, which was a staple in the north. It was used to make bread, biscuits, and flapjacks. Few cabins had windows and the inside was hazy from candles, the fire in the stove, and cigarette smoke.
Many of the men had left their wives and children to look for gold in the early 1890s. They carried wrinkled, worn photographs of their families with them and showed the pictures to anyone who expressed any interest, sometimes to those who didn’t. The men needed to speak of home and family as if doing so brought them closer.
Here in the north towns rose and died at the whim of gold. Circle City and Fortymile, both along the Yukon River were large thriving towns until the discovery of gold near the mouth of the Klondike River. Within months, they turned into ghost towns and Dawson became the place to be. Businessmen and women took down their signs and travelled, some for hundreds of miles, over the frozen river on foot or by dogsled to reach the new town and set up business again.
The town of Dawson, staked by Joseph Ladue in the fall of 1896 and named by him in January of this year, slowly took shape over the winter. It began with just his warehouse and saloon, his sawmill, and a few tents. By this spring, more than fifteen hundred men and women lived in the few cabins and the hundreds of tents of all shapes and sizes.
Gold was worth sixteen dollars an ounce and there was hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold being found along the creeks. Miners carried their gold dust or nuggets into the store in sacks where it was weighed out on a scale by the proprietor to pay for their purchases.
However, right now, here in Dawson, gold has no value. Most everyone has enough containers of nuggets and gold dust stacked in their cabins or buried on their claims to pay for anything they want. But what they want cannot be found here. There are no large, respectable homes to be bought, no elegant carriages to ride around in, no fine suits and top hats to wear, none of the extravagant products that only the rich can afford to buy. There isn’t even frivolous merchandise such as ice cream or chocolates to be sampled. Gold is the cheapest of commodities because of its abundance and its lack of buying power.
Of course, the lives of many of the men, who for years had nothing to call their own except a gold pan and shovel, will change once they leave on the steamboats and reach the outside world. Here they are still prospectors, but there they will be wealthy members of society.
It’s funny how the actual living of the life takes away the romance of it. I’ve changed my mind on the dreamy side of living in the north and I’m sure that, right now, these men and women don’t look at their lives as being romantic. That may be altered in the coming years when they think back about their time spent here.
Pearl put her pencil down but left the paper on the table. She wasn’t sure if she would add more to it later, but right now she wanted to take a walk before meeting Emma and Joseph.
She stood and left the tent, strolling slowly through the town that she now called home. It was a beautiful spring day. The days were getting longer and warmer and there was little darkness. Flies were buzzing around any garbage they could find. Birds were returning. She didn’t know their names, but she liked hearing their songs again.
It was a few days since the breakup on the river and there were scarcely any chunks of ice on the water. She knew that riverboats would soon be arriving and her life would change. Emma and Donald were taking the first boat out, but she wanted to stay for the summer.
She was on the verge of acting in a most unladylike manner by telling Joseph how she felt about him and she wanted to give him a chance to respond.
Pearl joined Emma and Joseph in front of the store. It was time to decide where the wedding ceremony would take place. They looked at the door of the warehouse where Emma would emerge, checked where the minister and Donald should be waiting on the riverbank, and figured where the guests and other people would stand.
As they discussed the arrangement of the important event, no one mentioned the horror they had watched from the same spot only days before.
They heard voices on the water and turned to see small vessels coming downstream. Pearl never failed to be surprised at the people who always seemed to be coming from nowhere.
“Who are they?” she asked Joseph. “And how did they get here so fast?”
Joseph shrugged. “Never seen them before, but they probably started this way last fall and spent the winter along the river.”
Joseph walked down to greet them. He liked to welcome newcomers to his town. He’d give them a brief history of the place and offer them a lot or lumber. Most had come to stake gold claims so turned down his offer. He usually smiled and pointed out where his saloon was.