Partly sunny, cool. North to the Klondike.
Eliza marks each step on the forward deck. She finds herself a spot at the port rail, and stares back over the smoky city of Seattle. Eliza licks her chapped lips and tastes salt. She balls her fists to keep warm and stamps her feet on the planked deck. She blends into the crowd and observes her fellow passengers, who clang clang clang up the gangway of the SS Ketchikan in droves.
The dapper men wear sack coats with matching waistcoats and trousers, and knee-length overcoats, trimmed with finest fur. The more fashionable among the men wear their hair short and sport pointed beards with no moustache, and top hats. Few top hats line the railings, however, as the majority of men on board wear the trappings of a woodsman, and carry their belongings close: picks, shovels, saws, rifles, and mining pans hanging hurdy-gurdy from their backs. A loud chorus of male voices overwhelms the groaning of the ship.
The society women wear heavily corseted traveling gowns, with the new leg o’mutton sleeves that balloon down to a tight wristlet. These stylish voyagers seem out of place, especially with their outlandish hats, some with ostrich feathers or dulled eyes of fox. The sporting women, on the other hand, wear tailored menswear, with high-collared blouses and skirts above the ankle, and expose the lower half of the leg above buttoned boots. Some of these daring women do not wear hats at all. Eliza admires the new look of their hair: soft and wavy, and quite feminine, framing faces and sending tendrils down their necks. Eliza’s severe bun and absurd outfit mark her as some other type of woman, amorphous and indistinguishable, perhaps a miner herself.
Eliza does not leave the port rail. As the steamer leaves Elliott Bay and heads north up Puget Sound, Eliza assesses that of the three hundred and some-odd aboard, less than thirty are female. She pulls Jacob’s slouch hat down over her face so that only her eyes and nose poke out. She wraps Jacob’s coat around her to stave off the wind. She reaches for one of the hot buns in her coat pocket and unwraps it slowly.
The Ketchikan plows up the Inside Passage from Seattle to Alaska, and passes layers of islands that mirror Cypress— silhouettes of ghost-like islands receding into dense mist. The vessel overnights at Nanaimo, and takes on additional passengers at Port Hardy. Eliza wonders how another human soul can fit on the already overcrowded steamer.
Below deck, the vessel reeks of human filth, but its stink minimizes on the upper decks. Room in steerage becomes even more cramped as people begin to spread out, and Eliza chooses to sleep sitting up in a corner. She wonders if she will ever be warm again.
One day I will wear a fur coat, and fur boots, and fur-lined mitts. Perhaps the fur will be the common fox, or perhaps the smoothest mink. But tonight I would wear the fur of a great brown bear if it would keep out this chill.
Eliza shivers on the top deck. She moves to the starboard rail, away from the wind. She stamps her feet to keep blood flowing. More than once she sees a pod of orca whales rising out of the sea; their black fins knife through the straits and—if she catches a rare glimpse—flashes of black and white appear in the creases between waves. Eliza gasps when a pair of orca breaches in the near distance. They slap the water on re-entry and disappear. Eliza mistakes swift porpoises that race the steamer with juvenile whales. She counts as many as eight or nine of the creatures flitting close to the Ketchikan. She leans over the rail to watch them duel the ships’s speed and crest its wake. They dart and dip and dive. Eliza becomes annoyed with incessant gulls tailing behind the vessel. Their constant screech is deafening. She hums to block out the sound.
The Ketchikan chugs up the rugged west coast of British Columbia and refuels in Bella Bella. On approach to harbor there, Eliza squints.
Can it be?
A shuffling brown bear, its nose low to the kelp-strewn shore, lumbers not a hundred yards in the distance. Eliza shudders. She hopes never to meet a bear in close proximity. She imagines its snorting and grunting and almost feels its hot breath.
By the time the ship reaches Prince Rupert, cold climbs through Eliza’s sparse clothing and nags at her very bones. She curls her hands into tight circles inside her new gloves and breathes shallowly. Deep breaths hurt her lungs. She develops a cough.
During the day, Eliza eyes her fellow travelers, stacked close as sardines in conversation. She has yet to speak to anyone on the voyage.
“Bad advice is seldom forgotten!” a booming voice resounds. “Just remember that a fool and his money are soon parted. And there be many fools on this journey.”
Eliza turns to see a ragged character holding court on the opposite side of the rail. He looms over all the other would-be miners.
Why, he must be seven feet tall!
The man’s head is covered in a mop of wild red hair and his face is all but obliterated by a full beard in a darker shade of red. He wears long suspenders over his sweater and smokes a long-stemmed calabash pipe.
Just like Sherlock Holmes!
The man’s thick Scottish accent attracts as much attention as his stature. As if on cue, he crosses the slatted deck to the near rail.
“A nickel will get you the best advice you’ve ever known,” the tall stranger says. His burr elongates the word “ever.”
“Name’s Richardson, Donald Martin Richardson, that is. People call me Shorty. And you’d be?”
“Mrs. Waite.”
No other explanation.
“Pleasure’s all mine, Mrs. Waite,” Shorty says, with a mock low bow. “Pardon me for saying, but from a distance, I thought you were just another cheechako. I can see now I was terribly mistaken. We redheads need to stick together.”
Eliza laughs aloud.
I might not need to use my hunting knife after all.
But that thought is short lived. According to Shorty, con men and gangsters travel the marine highway to Skagway, ripping money from unsuspecting travelers.
“I’m one of the lucky ones in this crowd of fools,” Shorty confides to Eliza. He pronounces “lucky” like “looky.”
“And what do you mean, sir?”
“Heard of Rabbit Creek? They call it Bonanza now. Hit the mother lode there last summer. Up by Dawson. Yukon Territory. My partners stayed behind while I—ahem—settled some business in Seattle. Heading back up there now, the wiser, and the richer.”
He winks at Eliza.
“If you don’t mind a piece of free advice, Skagway’s no town for a woman, unless of course you’re one of the sporting girls.”
He cocks his head to the left and raises an eyebrow. A pair of modish young women stands not five feet away on the leeward deck. One girl has unbuttoned her blouse to reveal ample cleavage, despite the chilled air. She fingers a locket in the deep crevice of her bosom. Eliza notices the lack of a wedding band.
“But there’s a fortune to be made, in more ways than one. And I like you. I’ll see to it that you don’t get snookered. There’s another woman in Skagway on her own—has a passel of boys, she does—Harriet Pullen’s her name. Best pie maker in Skagway. She’s hoping to open a hotel, she is. I believe there’s room in our town for a few honest women.”
Shorty winks again at Eliza.
“Now, you’ll pardon me. I’ve got a few nickels to earn. Some men get rich from the digging; others get rich off the diggers.”
Shorty turns to snooker the men nearest him on the rail, and pinches the vogue woman on her ample ass as he passes. She lets out a high-pitched giggle and wiggles her backside at him.
Shorty’s grand tales of thievery and corruption in Skagway and nearby Dyea draw an audience.
“Nothing like firsthand information, boys.”
Crowds flock around Shorty for stories and advice during daylight hours on the ship’s crowded deck. The circus continues in the saloon late into the night. Shorty’s purse grows with every new nugget of information that he shares.
“So here’s what you’ll need, boys. Every Klondiker heading over the pass needs a ton of supplies, and I don’t mean that figuratively.
“You’ll need heavy woolens, flannels, buck mitts, and moccasins. Blanket rolls and mackinaws. Mosquito netting and camphor. Add to this: navy beans, bacon, rolled oats, and flour. Coffee, tea, condensed milk, and vinegar. Potatoes. Onions. Mustard and pepper. It’s not for the faint of heart, boys. You’ll get turned back at the Canadian border if you don’t have the supplies. Don’t think I mean it? I’ve seen plenty turned away.
“That’ll cost you a nickel, partner. I don’t give advice gratis! Thanks, and yes, thanks. And you, sir? Yes, a nickel.”
Eliza learns that first the miners must trudge up the “Golden Staircase” at Chilkoot Pass outside of Dyea, a single-file human stream of gold seekers who climb an ice stairway to an elevation of three thousand feet. Most miners make the ascent up the ice stairs at Chilkoot near forty times, carrying an average of fifty pounds per climb. They deposit their goods in hapless piles at the summit and then skid down the pass to retrieve another load of goods. This initiation rite cannot be avoided; if a miner does not have the requisite two thousand pounds of survival gear to see him through the quest, he risks being turned away by the Canadian border agents before reaching Dawson.
“It’s a circus up there. Of course one can hire a packer at a price of one penny per pound, but often the packers ditch you if another miner offers a higher fee,” Shorty continues. “I’ll find me a Tlinget; they’re the fastest. And I’ll pay the going price plus a penny more.”
Eliza does the sums in her head. First, one needs to get all his or her supplies to the top of Chilkoot Pass. That could take over a week. But that feat represents less than one-tenth of the distance to the mother lode.
The faint of heart must turn back, or freeze to death. Or starve! Or—God forbid!—perish or go mad.
SHORTY SHARES HIS KNOWLEDGE WITH ELIZA FOR FREE.
“I got one piece of advice for you that’s the most important of all. Don’t get mixed up with the likes of Jefferson Randolph Smith. He’s a filthy, good-for-nothing crook. Used to work for him, but not anymore.
“He’s known as Soapy. Soapy Smith. He’s a conniver and blowhard. And he’s trying to turn Skagway into his own little kingdom. Take it from me, he ain’t doing it the honest way. He’ll try to befriend you, and then he’ll stick a knife in your back when you’ve barely turned your head.”
Shorty mimics a jab.
“You know the old saying, ‘An open Foe may prove a curse, but a pretended Friend is worse.’ Well, that’s Soapy Smith in a wee nutshell.”
Shorty extends the word, “wee.” The lanky Scot pulls a folded newspaper from the chest pocket of his mammoth fur coat, and his stubbed second finger points to an editorial dated last week in the Portland Oregonian:
“Skagway and Dyea have more liars per square mile than can be raked up in any 1,000-mile area elsewhere . . .”
“Just remember that, little missy. Can’t trust a soul. Watch your steps, watch your words, and watch your purse, that’s my best advice to you. They’ll bilk your soul if they can.”
Eliza feels a flush rise to her cheeks.
Who of us is immune from this madness?
Eliza begins to doubt her decision to travel north, but that thought turns from likely to ludicrous; to return to Seattle now she would have to jump ship and swim. The waters that swirl around Cypress reach fifty degrees at the height of the summer. With floating ice in the Inside Passage, Eliza guesses the water here hovers closer to freezing. Even the rain pelts down in freezing rivulets, falling in grey sheets from the ceiling of the sky down to the ever-greyer sea. Eight days of fine mist cause Eliza’s hair to escape the confines of its bun. Not even Jacob’s hat can keep wisps of her coarse copper hair from escaping.
On approach to Juneau, Eliza feels she can almost touch green velvety moss anchored on exposed rocks at the entrance to Stephens Passage. She has her first glimpse of a true glacier and trembles at the thought of crossing one. From the deck of the ship she sees a sign: Juneau Bakery.
Not long until I open my own establishment!
Eliza spends her days planning. She draws rough sketches with a pencil, and uses an eraser liberally. She finds comfort in the loud chugga-chugga-chugga of the ship’s engine. She avoids other passengers, except in the ladies’ washroom, where it is impossible to avoid another human being. She eats sparsely. Talks to Shorty when they happen to pass. Reminds herself that the hunting knife will be her surest friend. Pores over her recipes. Makes lists. Bundles Jacob’s coat around her. Loses herself in raisins and cinnamon and yeast.
Stray scraps of paper multiply in Eliza’s oversized bag. She can almost smell bread rising.