BRIDIE BALLANTYNE had been the first picture bride to come to Baranof. Perhaps this was because Baranof, from the beginning, had taken on a definitely solid aspect. Other settlements—Nome, Ketchikan, even Juneau—had had a wilder history. It was as though Baranof, and Baranof’s early sourdoughs, sensed that this was to develop into a substantial town.
Her coming had been the result of a joke fundamentally more stupid and rough than actually cruel. The men who had perpetrated it belonged to a lesser layer of the town’s citizenry in those early days. Drunk when the joke was devised, they were mildly resentful of the already successful Czar Kennedy. Probably they never would have conceived this jest if both Czar and Thor had not, each in his own way, been unique.
“Who does he think he is!” a prospector might say, after his fourth drink. “Keeping to himself, so high and mighty. We’re not good enough for him. Even the girls ain’t good enough for him. Him and that big Swede, too. Who do they think they are, anyway!”
“You’re just sore because your claim dribbled out on you,” a more reasoning one would say. “Why don’t you do like Czar does? Use your head.”
“Czar Kennedy, he uses everybody’s head,” the disgruntled one announced with a flash of drunken clarity. “Everybody he meets, he picks their brains, quiet and smooth as a cobra.”
“Cobras don’t pick brains. Leastways, if they did they’d have a sorry meal off yours.”
“Oh, so that’s the way it is! You’re in Czar’s pay, the way a lot of them are.”
“I’m in nobody’s pay. I work my own claim.”
“Yeah? Well, maybe I’m smarter than he is, some ways. Or you, either.”
If Thor Storm and Czar Kennedy had been philanderers, or even fairly steady patrons of those early-day saloons and Line houses, lonely when alone, driven to the false comfort of drink or the fleeting solace of the town women when oppressed, Bridie Ballantyne never would have known Alaska, much less become one of its most respected citizens.
Czar and Thor took a drink now and then at the bar of the Rocker Saloon or the Poke of Gold. But it was known that they were not drinkers. They were polite and friendly toward the girls, they knew the women in the little close-huddled log cabins on the Old Creek Road. But no woman claimed them, the two stood apart. Both, to the other citizens of the haphazard town, came and went mysteriously.
Baranof admired the two men, sometimes grudgingly. They sensed that in each there was something distinctive. “Not stuck up, though. I mean they don’t exactly act like they think they’re smarter than other people.” Then, wryly, “Say! But they are, at that!”
Confined as the Baranovians were by barriers of mountains, water, trackless tundra and killing cold, everybody’s business was everybody’s business. News traveled by what was called the mukluk grapevine. Mukluks are Eskimo boots of soft strong mooseskins, or caribou. News, then, that travels on foot, silently.
They say they say they say. They tried to extract news of Czar from Thor, and to verify Thor’s puzzling pattern of life through Czar. Each was loyal to the other, though by now their differences were many and acute. Each pursued his own way of life and process of thinking. The men were in direct antithesis.
That crazy Swensky he goes off alone with his dog team up to the Eskimo villages, they say he learned to talk Eskimo, he writes pieces about them, they say when he’s up there he lives right in with them, dirt and all and eats the stinking stuff they eat, raw. Summers back here he goes out in the salmon season with the boat crews that bring in the big catch for the canneries, July and August. They say he works like that, summers, so he can do his writing, winters, real scientific writing. He’ll talk to you about it, if you come right out and ask him, but for all he’s so good-natured and all, why, you feel he’s kind of studying you, he kind of studies everybody, friendly, mind you, but there’s a look in his eyes like he isn’t only listening to you, he’s storing away what he hears. Somebody said he married one of those half-breed Eskimo girls but he isn’t as big a fool as that, I mean he’s kind of crazy but he’s no fool. Leastways, he ain’t as crazy as all that. Any Eskimo will lend you his wife, anybody knows that, if that’s what you want.
Thor Storm had been absent from Baranof for more than a year. Isador Raffsky, the fur trader from Oogruk, came down with the news. Authentic news.
“The missionary minister of the Presbyterian mission up near Kotzebue married them in a regular church ceremony, right in the Mission Church. A year ago, almost. The baby has black hair and blue eyes. A boy. Christopher Storm his name is.”
“So the girls around here weren’t good enough for him,” the boys jeered. “He had to be choosy and get him a real select Eskimo squaw. Say, I always knew he was nutty, but I sure didn’t think he was really crazy like that. Next thing he’ll be bringing her here, I suppose, and expecting our womenfolks to call.”
With a great show of casualness a questioner would approach Thor.
“Haven’t seen you for a coon’s age, Thor. You been away?”
“Yes.”
“Far?”
“Any place is far in Alaska, isn’t it?”
“I see Czar’s made another trip to Seattle and back. Way he goes Outside, you’d think it was across the street. What’s he do so much in Seattle?”
“Business, I suppose. He’s a man of business, Czar.”
“There was a fella here to see him last month, you were gone that time, too. Must have been one of those Seattle or San Francisco millionaires, he had a coat was fur-lined, and cloth on the outside, I guess the Eskimos aren’t so dumb after all, that’s the way they fix their parkys. Anyway, one of the boys saw it, says it was mink from collar to hem, inside, mind you! And a gold watch chain this thick, you’d think he was the one had struck Bonanza Creek. Know who he was?”
“No. Who?”
“I’m not telling you, I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know.”
“They say it isn’t all business strictly with Czar, those trips Outside. I notice he don’t have much to say to the nice girls here in town, or the other kind either. They say he goes around with high-class society in Seattle and they say he’s making up to Einar Wendt’s daughter, the Tacoma lumberman. Lumber king, some call him. They say she’s real plain-featured. And no chicken. Still and all, I guess Czar knows what he’s after, he usually does. Like the fella says, you can’t sometimes see the woods for the trees. They say he’s fixing to marry her. Is that right?”
“It sounds a practical plan.”
“Czar’s practical, that’s sure. Still and all, no daughter of Einar Wendt is going to come to Alaska to live. Czar’ll have to settle down in Tacoma, for all he says Alaska is the only place for him.”
In Czar’s presence, one of the men essayed a mild joke about this rumored courtship. Czar did not openly resent this, his face remained impassive, perhaps the cold blue-gray eyes became a degree more icy behind the screen of the long black lashes. A little later the joker found himself somehow in trouble. He had difficulty with his credit at the store. Big Lena, at the Nugget, treated him coldly, finally refused to have anything to do with him. Then an inexplicable dispute arose concerning his claim on Heekarree Creek.
There was no proof that Czar had had anything to do with all this. But the disgruntled joker decided for himself. Two or three friends were told of his little plan—just enough to carry it through. Sober, they never would have started it. Once started, it carried itself to the finish. When, terrified by their own success, they tried to stop it, it was too late.
They placed an advertisement in the Seattle Post.
Will exchange letters and photos with young respectable single lady of good appearance who can stand up to adventure and maybe roughing it in Alaska with young gentleman of steady habits who wants a lifetime partner to share his poke of gold. No shady characters or fly-by-nights need apply. Object matrimony. Send photo. Life in Alaska healthy and has got a fine future. Address: P.O. Box 19, Baranof, Alaska.
They had a dozen replies, but they decided on Bridie’s because hers was the briefest, the plainest. Her letter was literate enough, but there was about it a simplicity that the jokers mistook for ignorance.
She had been six months now in the United States; the vast overpowering size of it had filled her with pangs of loneliness and even fright, courageous as she was by nature. More in a spirit of fun and adventure than any serious intention she had answered the advertisement. There had come back by the return boat a photograph of the unknown Box 19. Czar Thor, it said his name was. Queer enough name, Bridie thought. But the photograph banished any criticism of the name. The handsome, almost spiritual, face; the magnificent eyes, the wavy hair, won the girl’s heart. This was romance. This was the Ameriky she had dreamed of when she had carried the heavy-laden trays in noisome hospital corridors.
She sent her photograph then, and a second letter. Looking at her picture—the honest eyes gazing straight out at you from the decent purposeful face—and reading her simple, self-reliant letter—the pranksters found the situation less hilarious than they had expected. They had meant to show the picture, the advertisement, and the letters to Czar just to kid him a little in the presence of the boys and girls if they could catch him, some evening, at the Rocker or the Poke. But it didn’t seem so funny now, and anyway Czar had gone on one of his sudden trips Outside. Bridie’s last letter created panic. She was coming. By the time this letter was received she would have left.
In a handwriting that was dashing in a childlike way, she stated her facts. “… from Ireland to the hospital in Lancashire, and there I got my training and then to America and my cousin in this Seattle.… I thought I never would see the end of the way, days it was to cross this big land … job in the hospital here in Seattle but the training is different to what we get in the old country … this Alaska you hear nothing else these days only Alaska, it sounds a fine big place and I was always one for adventuring and new sights.…”
“God Almighty!” The joker who was reading this letter looked up at his fellow conspirators. “This one’s coming. She’s left. Boys, I’m getting out of here until this blows over. I’m going out to the creek and stay. Anyway, thank God, Czar ain’t here but he’ll be back maybe even by the time she … look, I’m getting the hell out of here for a spell, anyway. Right now.”
Bridie Ballantyne took the small sum she had somehow hoarded—the great heavy American silver dollars that, big and shining though they were, still seemed to buy so little in this hugeous west place Indian-named Seattle—pagan Indian images mind you, to be had in the shops down by the river.
It was a staggering journey by boat, by train, by boat again. When first she had come to Seattle some of her old-world rosy coloring still bloomed in her cheeks. But before she left for Alaska, what with the hospital work, the preparations for the journey, and a clutch of doubt and fear at her vitals, she looked quite gray-faced as she came aboard.
The suit she had managed to buy for the journey was just the latest thing in Seattle, a long flaring skirt very grand, with three spaced rows of satin banding from the knees to the hem. The bodice had the new leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a high ruched collar. There was a jacket too, mind you, of the same stuff as the dress, and its sleeves were even bigger than the bodice sleeves, as they had better be. Topping this splendor was an ulster with a good collar, it buttoned right up to the throat, warm brown-and-gray woolen stuff, no shoddy for Bridie Ballantyne; and her hat was a broad-brimmed sailor sporting not a mere wing but an entire bird nesting in a sort of copse of flowers and shrubbery. Even in that day Bridie knew what the well-dressed woman was wearing. Her mother, back home in Ireland, had been a seamstress.
In the dour Lancashire hospital of her student training days, before ever she had set foot on the New World, she had bolstered her energy, her spirits, by singing a familiar song as she scrubbed and swabbed and emptied slops. Thousands of immigrant boys and girls before her had sung it in anticipation.
Your Mourne Waters wide,
I’m sailing for Ameriky,
Whatever may betide.
Whatever may betide. Well, good or bad, it was too late now, she told herself as, days later, she stepped off the boat. There was no one to meet her, scan the faces though she would. She clambered up the refuse-strewn beach to the main street of the town, a street of log cabins and tents. She stood a panic-stricken moment staring at mountains and water and sky. Seattle had accustomed her to the impact of lavish panoramas, but compared to this, Seattle was cosy. She lowered her gaze from the vast vision to the nearer sights. Sordid dwellings, dirt, bearded men. She never had seen a human settlement such as this.
Up the travesty of a street there was a log house outside of which an American flag hung limply from a pole, for there was no wind. The sun was warm yet the air was cool and heady. The American flag, well, then that place must be right enough. People seemed to be coming in and out, a group of men in good cloth suits and derby hats stood outside, talking with serious faces, like men of business and property, not roughs. She left her luggage there on the beach—the two old-country valises that held everything she possessed, including her nurse’s uniforms. She clutched to one side a handful of skirt and petticoat to lift them out of the mud, but not so high as to show her ankles—she knew what was right and proper; and mud would dry and could be brushed off with a whisk. She was reassured, as she plodded along, that everything—ulster, hat, gloves, high-buttoned shoes—all were as they should be.
When she reached the place with the flag she hesitated. The men looked at her with interest, they seemed still to be discussing a topic of real importance and now it seemed to her that she herself was, incredibly enough, a possible part of this discussion. Their glances were respectful enough and they held not only interest but conjecture. As Bridie stood, hesitating, uncertain, one of the men—an older man with a settled look about him, and some gray in his mustache—came toward her.
“Are you the nurse, ma’am?” he asked.
Falteringly, “Yes, I’m a—I’m the nurse.”
The man’s face cleared, he seemed almost to beam. Panic-stricken, she thought, But that can’t be him, he doesn’t look like the picture, so old-looking, surely that can’t be him. The man turned to the others, he waved a triumphant hand. “Here she is, boys!” he shouted. “Here’s the nurse.”
The other faces beamed, then. “What difference does it make,” she asked, almost resentfully, “that I’m a nurse?”
The older man laughed at this, a little ruefully. “We’d about given up, and that’s a fact. We tried nearby first, Fairbanks and Nome, if you can call that nearby, but it got so we figured nobody would come, Seattle or anywhere, though we tried. Nobody would come on account it was smallpox.”
“Smallpox!”
“Seven of them down with it now, two new ones at the All Nations, and Ideal at the Lucky Streak, her face’s a sight they say, like a red raspberry patch, and fever.” Now he looked at her as though for the first time, doubtfully. “You look young,” he said, “for a nurse. Doctor’s off up north. But I bet you know what to do for smallpox, first off.”
“Balsam of Peru lotion,” she replied, automatically. “Balsam of Peru lotion. Apply to pustules. For relief.”
“Sure thing!” the man agreed, triumphantly. “That’s the stuff. The girls don’t want no men around—for a change. Not,” hastily, “that we’re scared.”
“Ya-a-ah!” jeered someone in the group.
“Well, maybe you are, but Thor ain’t,” the man retorted. “Thor went and fixed them some tea and tried to help, didn’t you, Thor?”
“Thor!” Bridie repeated, stiff-lipped. She looked up at a giant of a man who now stepped forward from the crowd—a man well over six feet tall with a short golden beard and eyes that were different from the other men’s eyes, serious but friendly, too, and smiling.
“Where is your luggage, miss?” he said. His words and voice were different, too, something like that London doctor who had been head of the Lancashire hospital.
Gazing at him Bridie gasped, “Are you English! You didn’t say you were English.”
“Heh, Swensky! Heh, Thor!” a voice called. “You an English swell?”
Heedless of this, still gently smiling, the big man looked down at her. “I’ll fetch your luggage if you’ll point it out to me. Possibly there may be a room for you at Mrs. Belcher’s boardinghouse, a respectable place, I can assure you of that. But I’m not sure she’d want you there after you’ve seen your patients. After all, Mrs. Belcher has two small children, it might be a risky thing—–”
“Oh, no, no!” she cried. “It’s a mistake!”
Soothingly, he went on, “If Mrs. Belcher objects, you can stay in my cabin and I’ll move in with someone else until it’s over. Czar’s moved out, anyway, it will be quite all right.”
Desperately, she cried, “But you’re not him! His name is Czar—wait a minute”—she groped in her reticule for the photograph and fished it out, her hands shaking—“Czar Thor, his name is. Mr. Czar Thor, Box 19, Baranof, Alaska. I came to see him. They called you Thor, but you’re not him!”
The big man took the photograph from her and gazed at it in silence. He looked down at the girl’s face upturned to his—the plain, fresh decent face upturned to him. One of the other men had peered over his shoulder.
“Kennedy!” the man yelled. “It’s Czar Kennedy!” Then he, too, stared at her. “Why, say, miss, Czar’s left for Seattle and Tacoma to be married. He left on the boat last week. He’s married by now.”
Years later, when Christine was a woman and the mother of children, Bridie still found herself answering the questions questions questions put to her by this insatiable lover of the always mysterious Alaska. Bridie could answer the questions freely and frankly now and she had miraculously retained, old as she was, the astringency, the piquancy of her verbiage. She loved to hear the ripple of Christine’s sudden laughter when the answer to a question was more than ordinarily pungent.
“I’ll never forget that first day. Come, like a ninny, to marry a man who’d never heard of me, and finding myself nursing a bunch of girls down with smallpox in a House. Not one of them died, I’ll say that for myself, but then they were a husky bunch, they had to be to stand this climate then, no conveniences. Conveniences! Well, we won’t go into that. A gold-rush camp, rough as a bear’s den. They were kind of like children, those girls. Their minds, I mean. Dull-thinking, most of them. They’d sit in their wrappers, afternoons, in the back yard, fenced in, it was, wearing Mother Hubbard wrappers, there was a hammock I remember, slung between two posts. They’d wash their hair and fluff it out in the sun, summers. And the waiter—he was a Negro fella—he brought them beer and sandwiches on a tray, and they talked and laughed and read those yellow-back paper novels or the little newspaper, maybe, it was about the size of a handbill. Sometimes they played games, like little girls. I’ve seen ’em play jacks, even, on the back steps, and fight over the little rubber ball.”
“An easy life—for that day.”
“A hard life.”
“Bridie darling, don’t be offended—but were you ever—after all, you’d been tricked into coming to Baranof—were you ever tempted to give up and go into one of the—–”
“I was a nurse,” Bridie said, simply.
“I never could understand why you didn’t marry either Grampa Thor or Grampa Czar—anyway, after both my grandmothers died or whatever it was. At least, I suppose Grampa Thor’s wife died, too. My other grandmother. Doesn’t it sound mixed up! But anyway, why didn’t you? I’ve seen those pictures of you, you were young and—and fresh—and your eyes looked out so straight and honest and direct.”
“That was it, I guess. Straight and honest and direct. I don’t mean to sound crabby. Truth was, I was in love with both of them, it sounds crazy, but it isn’t. They weren’t in love with me. There I was, looking after you when your ma died that awful death, nursing everybody, and I was in the house, either Czar’s house or Thor’s, day in day out, crackling around all starched and bossy and independent. Everything plain and aboveboard, like you say. I was like a loaf of bread in the house. There’s always a loaf of bread in any house, poor or rich, there it is, if it’s only half a loaf or a bit of the heel, it’s bread, you don’t get excited about it, you take it for granted. That was me.”
“But Mrs.—Mrs. Ballantyne. Of course now everybody calls you Bridie, but you must have married somebody.”
“I did. Hardly anybody knows that. I was discouraged, I guess, about Czar and Thor. Czar was looking higher than me, and Thor was in the clouds, he had to be democratic, he was hell-bent on being democratic, he had to be more democratic than the usual run, so be married as much outside of his own line as Czar had outside of his—but in what they call reverse. I was married one week to a fellow from Nome, I’d put by a bit of money, nursing, and he skipped out with it. It was pretty hard to skip out anywhere in Alaska those days, there was nothing to skip in or on except by dog sled or boat. So maybe the varmints got him, I never heard. I just kept my name Ballantyne and left it at that. Chris, I’ve almost forgotten how he looked. Isn’t that awful!”
“You’re wonderful, Bridie darling. You’re as vital and wonderful today as you were then.”
“I’m an old woman. I’m not talking in complaint. I’ve had a fine ride of it, the people and the scenery every inch of the way. The world owes me nothing. Now I’m an old old woman, and not really needed.”
“Don’t say that. We all need you. I need you, the children need you. Everybody—–”
“Nope. Not so. Who cares about the old, really? Well, I’ll tell you, Chris dearie. Nobody. They say they care, they say ain’t she wonderful now, my, she’s young for her age, look at the way she gets around, her mind is clear as a bell! But they don’t really care and why should they? It’s only natural. I say to myself, I say, you’ve had your nice ride, you’re old, the new models come along, the old ones only block traffic on Gold Street, they have to pull over to the side to let the new ones go by, the fast ones, the big bright-colored blue-paint jobs.”
“Addie Barnett was saying only yesterday she never saw anyone—–”
“I know, I know. Addie’s a fine girl. I’m not complaining. Only I want you to know I’m old—but not foolish.”