So for the next five days, he couldn’t let down his guard, Frank thought, and he couldn’t once they passed that point, either, because Soapy Smith was hardly the only threat out here. The wilderness itself was an even bigger danger.
“How about from White Pass to Chilkoot?”
“Count on two days, at least. ’Taint far, but like I said, it’s slow goin’.”
“And then on to White Horse?”
“Another week, if we’re lucky and these brutes do better’n I think they will.” Salty waved a mittened hand toward the dogs pulling his sled. “Could be ten or eleven days.”
Frank thought it over. “So it’ll take us at least two weeks to get to Whitehorse, maybe longer.”
“It’ll be longer,” Salty declared. “I’d bet this fur hat o’ mine on that.”
Fiona must have been listening to the conversation. She turned around to look at the old-timer. “Will it be this cold all the way, Mr. Stevens?”
“Cold?” Salty repeated. “Beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am, but this ain’t cold. This here’s a nice balmy day compared to what it’ll be once we get up around them high passes. Problem is, it’ll be even worse a month from now.”
“You think winter will hold off that long?” Frank asked.
“I durned sure hope so. If a real storm comes in whilst we’re up there betwixt White and Chilkoot…”
Salty’s voice trailed off, but the old-timer didn’t have to finish the sentence for Frank to know what he meant. A blizzard striking at the wrong time could easily mean death for all of them.
The first day’s travel went well, although some of the women complained bitterly of the cold and their muscles were stiff and sore from riding all day on the sleds.
Meg really took to it, though. She had taken Bart Jennings literally when he told her to sing out so he could follow her voice, because a lot of the day she sang songs as she stood on the back of the sled and steered it with the gee-pole. She tried, without much success, to get the other women to sing with her.
When they stopped at midday, while watery sunlight filled the sky, Meg came over to Frank and asked, “How am I doing?”
“You’d have to ask Salty,” Frank said. “He knows a lot more about handling sleds than I do. Matter of fact, I don’t know a blasted thing about it.”
The old-timer came over, slapping his mittened hands together. He grinned and said, “I heard what you asked, girlie, and I don’t mind tellin’ you, you’re doin’ a top-notch job. You sure you’re really a cheechako and not an ol’ sourdough like me?”
Meg laughed and pushed the hood of her parka back off her blond hair. Her cheeks were bright red from the cold, and at that moment, Frank thought she was one of the prettiest women he had ever seen.
“Maybe it just comes naturally to me,” she said. “I don’t know if Frank told you or not, but I used to do a lot of plowing.”
“I reckon that experience comes in handy.” Salty moved on to Jennings and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re doin’ a fine job, too, Bart. Never would’a figured a blind man could steer a sled, but you’re managin’.”
“Thanks, Mr. Stevens.”
“Shoot, call me Salty. That’s all anybody’s called me for nigh on to fifty years.”
“What’s your given name?” Frank asked curiously.
Salty frowned. “Well, now…I wish you hadn’t asked me that…I’m tryin’ to recollect. Been so long since I heard it. Seems like it’s George. Yeah, that’s what it is. George. Maybe.”
They set up one of the Primus stoves Frank had bought at the store back in Skagway, melted snow and heated water for coffee, then set off again with Frank riding Stormy this time instead of Goldy. Most of the travelers were gnawing jerky so their bodies would constantly have fuel to burn. Hunger just increased the effects of the cold. During the long, gray afternoon, they stopped several more times to rest the dogs, pushing on each time after only a short halt.
They had to find a place to camp for the night before darkness fell. Salty led them to a spot where a scattering of boulders formed an irregular ring. The big rocks blocked the wind to a certain extent, and so the snow hadn’t drifted as deeply in the space between them. Salty pointed out that they could clear off a spot and build a decent- sized fire.
“I reckon the ladies’ll like that,” he said. “It’ll help ’em thaw out a mite.”
“I’m all f-for th-that,” Fiona said through chattering teeth. “This is a h-hellish country.”
Frank wondered what she had thought it would be like when she came up with the idea of delivering mail-order brides to the miners all the way in Whitehorse. She probably hadn’t thought much about the hardships involved, only the money she could make.
Salty started showing Bart Jennings how to unhitch the dogs, working by feel. While they were doing that, Frank and Conway walked into the trees and found enough dry wood for the fire. When they got back, they found that Meg and Jessica had swept an area clean with their mittens. They piled the wood on the hard-packed dirt. Frank picked out some of the branches and arranged them so that they would burn properly. He had a plentiful supply of matches and tinder now, so he didn’t have to rely on flint and steel this time. Within a few minutes, he had a nice little blaze going, and the women made grateful noises as they gathered around the flames.
Fiona stood close beside Frank and said, “It was a good start today, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, a good start,” Frank agreed.
But they still had a long way to go, he reminded himself. As Soapy Smith had said that morning before they left the settlement, a long,
And as Frank looked out across the wilderness in the fading light, he couldn’t help but wonder what the night
