His eyes widened. “All right. Have it your way.”
“Glad we have an understanding,” Alice said, releasing her grip. The clerk swept our money off the counter and placed two tickets to Barkerville in front of us. “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” she said.
I gave her an appreciative look and scooped up the tickets. They were for the first of April. We were leaving in just two days’ time.
Back out on the street, we took turns hugging each other and promising to write. Alice insisted we come for a visit in the fall.
“Timothy’s building me a fine house, and you’re all welcome to come and stay,” she said.
She was very happy in her marriage, and I was glad the risk had worked out and that she and her husband were so well-suited for each other.
Florence hugged me and gave me a copy of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol to keep as a memento of her. She couldn’t disguise her envy. “I’m not going to stay a governess forever,” she said. “I’ll find a way to get into the theatre somehow.”
Emma gave us each a Bible for the journey. “My friend David Spencer got these for me,” she said shyly. “I met him at church. We’re sweet on each other. He’s asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”
We all congratulated Emma and, with a final round of hugs, then said our final goodbyes.
That night, I wrote letters to both Wiggles and John telling them of my plans to travel to Barkerville and to advise them that letters could be sent to my attention at the Royal Mail office there. I felt a heady mixture of sadness and excitement, but overall I was happy to be leaving Victoria behind and taking a new path. Where it would lead and if it would prove to be what I wanted, I had no way of knowing.
Chapter Thirty-six
Once we had sailed from Vancouver Island to New Westminster on the mainland of British Columbia, the first part of the journey would be by an ignominious horse-drawn wagon on a narrow path as far as the town of Yale and the start of the Cariboo Wagon Road. The second part would be a stagecoach up the Fraser Canyon, through the Cariboo range lands, and finally to Barkerville. I was reluctant to board a ship again, but the distance across the water was short, and we were in the wagon in a matter of hours.
I recalled the conversation on the Tynemouth about the colony of Vancouver Island and the colony of British Columbia being separate, but when we arrived on the mainland, I could see that it made good sense to merge the two colonies into one, as they were very similar. Vast tracts of logged land, sawmills, and fishing boats dominated the landscape. What I didn’t like was the idea of consolidating British rule. Since my journey and my arrival in Victoria, I had begun to realize that the empire only benefited the privileged few. Perhaps if a new independent country was formed—Canada, as Sir Richard had called it—there would be more equity, but who knew when that would happen or whether it would bring freedom for everyone.
Sarah, Jacob, and myself jostled inside the old, wooden wagon as it creaked and bumped along the deeply rutted roads. We were squeezed in next to three other male passengers—presumably the highly regarded businessmen the stagecoach clerk had mentioned. They eyed us curiously, but didn’t engage in conversation.
Our progress was slow, and I took in the sights before me. All I knew of Yale was that it was a teeming gold rush town. There were only a small number of actual buildings, but tents and lean-to huts stretched along the river as far as I could see. The whole place was one seething mass of agitated, grim-faced men. They were everywhere—spilling out of overstuffed rude accommodations, loafing three and four deep on the wooden boardwalks, squatting around large campfires drinking coffee. The feeling of impatience and frustration was palpable.
Our driver, Louis Jandin, a boyishly handsome young man with black curls, explained that they were waiting for the Fraser River spring runoff to subside once the snow in the surrounding mountains had melted. Then they had a chance of tackling the notorious, death-defying rapids with some hope of success. The prospectors would either work the sandy bars along the river or travel north to the Cariboo. Some gold seekers had come from as far away as the coal pits of Wales and battlefields of the American Civil War, he said.
These were desperate men, I realized. They had risked all that was dear to them for a chance to escape lives of poverty and misery. As time wore on, they must have found it harder and harder to believe that they would strike it rich.
Louis stopped the coach in front of a small, dubious-looking wooden hut with a badly constructed sign out front proclaiming it to be an American-style restaurant. Sarah and I exchanged a doubtful look.
When we prepared to climb from the wagon, there was a great commotion as a group of strangers rushed forward to assist us. I murmured a thank-you and reached for the grimy hand of the closest man, but just at that moment, he was shoved out of the way.
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, Jeremy? I was here first! Get ye yellow scurvy face out of here,” the first man shouted at the man behind him.
I began to pitch forward into the street and had to grasp the wooden side of the wagon to keep my balance. A general shoving match ensued, and a brawl seemed likely, but Louis rescued Sarah and me by helping us down on the opposite side of the wagon. The three businessmen had made it out of the
