- Prey
- Sphere
- Black Rose
- The Great Train Robbery
- Blue Dahlia
- Carnal Innocence
- Dance Upon the Air
- High Noon
- Lawless
- Sacred Sins
- Tribute
- Face the Fire
- Holding the Dream
- A Man for Amanda
- All the Possibilities
- Next
- Prey
- Sphere
- Black Rose
- The Great Train Robbery
- Blue Dahlia
- Carnal Innocence
- Dance Upon the Air
- High Noon
- Lawless
- Sacred Sins
- Tribute
- Face the Fire
- Holding the Dream
- A Man for Amanda
The WildPage 2
Jack said nothing. Shepard would clearly brook no argument. “I’ve invested a great deal in this journey,” the old soldier went on. “More than money, you understand? Every wish I’ve ever made. I’m leaving them all here with you, and I expect you to carry them to Dawson and beyond. Don’t let me down, boy.” Jack shook his head. “Of course I won’t.” “See you don’t,” Shepard said. And with that he left, trudging back through half-frozen mud toward the shore, leaving Jack with all their supplies and equipment and enough determination for both of them. Jack watched him go and hoped he would make it home in good health, so that Eliza would not have to grieve. He found himself untroubled by the idea of making the journey alone, for most of his life’s journeys had been undertaken as solo ventures, even when he was surrounded by others pursuing their own paths. Shepard walked to the edge of town and vanished on the road down to the beach without once turning to look back. The moment he was out of sight, a huge grin broke out on Jack’s face. He felt a strange elation growing within him. Freed of his obligations to and concern for Shepard—and, yes, shorn of the guilt he’d been feeling at bringing the older man along—he felt more confident than ever in his course of action. He turned to look up into the mist at the Chilkoot Pass. He felt it drawing him almost physically, and he was tempted to run there now and climb it all tonight, supplies or not. Throughout the voyage they had heard tales of men who had died on the trail, and thousands who had faltered and turned back. Shepard had wilted at the mere sight of the ominous terrain. Not Jack. The frozen north would not defeat him. Only death could stop him now. CHAPTER TWO MARCH OF THE DEAD THE WORD AROUND DYEA was that a man with no destination could have camped on the Chilkoot Trail for months without wanting for anything. Warm clothes, dried and salted meats, canned beans, guns for hunting, tents…the trading post and the hardware store down in Dyea would have gone out of business if the stampeders landing by the thousands on the beach had but known that they could pick up all the supplies they needed right on the side of that trail. Especially on the westward side, making the climb up to 3,500 feet, where frigid winds buffeted travelers even in late summer, abandoned gear lay everywhere. And if the desire was for fresh meat, the cruel terrain of the Chilkoot Trail provided that in ample supply. Horses collapsed of exhaustion, broke their legs in crevices, or fractured their spines falling backward when the trail became too steep. Some were put down to end their misery, while others were left to die in agony by hard-hearted men who stripped them of their saddles and went on, not wishing to waste a bullet. Without Shepard accompanying him, Jack made the decision to travel light. Opening crates, he sorted through food stores and put aside essentials. Much of what they had brought on the voyage he sold to the proprietor of Hayley’s Hotel. Shepard’s clothes he traded to a burly, bearded fellow named Merritt Sloper, whom he’d met on board the Umatilla. Sloper had a particularly fine skillet and several bags of coffee with which he was willing to part, provided Jack wouldn’t refuse him a brew if their paths crossed on the trail. The deal struck, Jack took an extra blanket from Shepard’s supplies and then went through his own clothes. By the time he fell asleep that night, he had set aside, sold, or given away three-quarters of what they had brought with them. More confident than ever, contentedly exhausted, he fully expected to sleep through to dawn. When he woke in the middle of the night, disoriented, he sat up and breathed in the darkness. I’m in Hayley’s Hotel in Dyea, he thought, and then heard a groan. Jack held his breath. He had never been afraid of the dark, but he had learned to respect it. The groan came again: a floorboard, protesting under a weight that should not be there. Whoever walked tried to do so quietly. “Who’s there?” Jack whispered. A door drifted open where he did not remember seeing one before. He was so unsettled that it took a few seconds before he saw the hand splayed flat against the wood, and a few seconds more before he followed it back along the arm, across the shoulder, and to the face hanging behind it in the gloom. “Mother?” he asked. With recognition came the familiar smells of home—stale cooking and incense. “There will be doom,” his mother said, but not in her own voice. The tone was flat, cool as ice, almost disinterested. “Doom in the north, a cry of death in the great white silence, and the spirits will bear witness.” She entered the room, and Jack caught his breath. That’s not my mother, he thought, and though the idea was ridiculous—the woman standing before him was his mother, with her hair, face, and nightdress—he could not shake the idea. There was something disquieting about her appearance, as if a stranger hiding beneath her skin was trying to force itself out. She was dreadfully stiff, skin almost translucent and the shade of freshly fallen snow. There was something disquieting about her appearance, as if a stranger hiding beneath her skin was trying to force itself out. He had seen something like this before. She had told him it was her spirit guide speaking through her. He had never before believed a word of such foolishness, and he hated her false spiritualism. She fooled people with it, preyed on their suffering, and— Is she fooling me now? Am I here, or am I at home? He thought he was dreaming, but such knowledge usually granted the dreamer control. Here, he was the one being controlled. “Get out of my room,” he whispered. “Something follows,” his mother said, smiling. It was a sickly expression, and it did not touch her voice. “Yet still you’ll die in the snow, cold…and almost alone.” Then she turned and left. It was a few minutes before Jack could leave his bed, but when he approached the door, he found a blank wall. He touched it, and it was only wood. I’m awake now for sure, he thought, and after returning to bed he could not return to sleep. He watched dawn cast its cleansing light over Dyea. Unsettled by the nightmare, yet determined to let daylight blanch it away, Jack was the first to leave town that day on his way toward the Chilkoot Pass. He’d left Dyea with two horses carrying his kit, his own pack twenty pounds lighter than it had been the day before. His shoulders were padded so the straps did not cut into him, and he’d set off at speed as the sun rose over the white peaks, the crack of Chilkoot Pass gleaming on the horizon. That had been four days ago. Now his eyes watered at the stench of rotting horseflesh beside the trail, and he kept as much distance as possible from the others jostling for position as they climbed. He’d been making excellent time, outpacing most of the white men and even some of the Indian carriers, who were used to the terrain and the climate. He kept his focus fixed on the mountaintops, his goal in sight, and kept to himself. Several times fights had broken out, and he’d had to guide his two horses around the stinking combatants as well as others who had slowed to exhort them on, grateful for the distraction of potential bloodshed. Jack had never been one to shy away from a fight, but he could already feel a cold bite in the air as he climbed higher and higher, and feared winter would arrive sooner than any of them had bargained for. The debris of surrender littered the sides of the trail. He passed men who had given up and were making their way back to Dyea, eyes downcast in defeat. They had failed and were ashamed, and Jack vowed that he would never be one of them. Such failure must be hard to live with, and there was no sense of relief in their bearing, even though their physical hardships were behind them. As he walked on, the trail rising higher, the going steeper, memories of his dream flashed across his mind. He often dreamed of his mother, sometimes fancies of the perfect relationship they had never had, more often interpretations of her lovelessness and occasional cruelty. She could be a stone-hearted woman: When Jack was a boy she had often exhorted his stepfather to beat him when he misbehaved, and the only affection she gave to Jack came on days when he managed to bring a paycheck into the house. And there were those times when she’d made him lie on the kitchen table during a séance and called upon the spirits of the dead to damn him for some boyish wrongdoing. Even back then he’d never really believed, but she’d done her best to ensure that the process scared him. |
- The Loners
- The Saints
- Switched
- Fangtastic!
- Re-Vamped!
- Vampalicious!
- Tome of the Undergates
- Black Halo
- The Skybound Sea
- If You Stay
- If You Leave
- Until We Burn
- Before We Fall
- Every Last Kiss
- Fated
- Suspiciously Obedient
- Random Acts of Crazy
- Random Acts of Trust
- Her First Billionaire
- Her Second Billionaire
- Her Two Billionaires
- Her Two Billionaires and a Baby
- His Majesty's Dragon
- Throne of Jade
- Black Powder War
- Victory of Eagles
- Tongues of Serpents
- Empire of Ivory
- Crucible of Gold
- Delirium