“I don’t think Angus likes working at the store.”
“No.” Mrs. Mann handed me a steaming bowl of oatmeal.
The fresh milk was finished. I poured a generous serving of canned.
“Angus wants to be a mounted policeman,” she said, passing the sugar bowl. “Boys have their dreams.”
“That they do.” I stirred sugar into my oatmeal.
“He took food. A tin of biscuits, some bread, cheese.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll pay you for it.”
“He took no more than he’d eat if he was here. Less.”
“Mrs. Mann, do you think that hat makes me look old? Like someone’s mother? A man’s mother, I mean, not a boy’s?”
She sat opposite me with her own mug of coffee and addressed me by my Christian name for the first time.
“Fiona, God chose not to bless me with children. But if I had a fine son like Angus, I’d be so proud, I’d not worry about my hat.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Take a good look, Angus,” Constable Richard Sterling said. “In all the rest of your long life, you’ll never see the likes of this again.”
Millie whimpered. Man, boy and dog walked down into the valley.
Only fifteen miles lay between Dawson and the start of the gold fields. But it was slow going; the trail was scarcely a trail at all, just a path hacked out of the wilderness, scarred by the footsteps of hundreds, thousands, of men and women, animals and equipment. Underfoot, every patch of vegetation had long ago been crushed into mud. But on the hillsides rising sharply above the trail, white and yellow and purple flowers covered the ground in a gentle mist. Higher up, the tips of the mountains and the bottoms of ravines that the sun never reached were covered with dirty grey snow.
Millie’s tail was beginning to droop, and the straps of Angus’s pack dug into his shoulders like the fingers of an angry housemaster when at last they reached sight of the town at the joining of the Bonanza and Eldorado creeks, the place the miners called Grand Forks.
The hillsides were bare of trees, except for a few lonely growths high up. There was scarcely a blade of grass to be seen. Every tree had been cut down, and every inch of ground dug up. The hills were white with piles of gravel pulled from the mines and discarded, the riverbeds black with mud. Steam belched from beneath the earth and, instead of trees, the hillsides were crossed with ditches carrying water to the claims where men worked the sluice boxes, washing away gravel and clay, hoping to find a lump of shining gold left behind. White canvas tents and rough log cabins dotted the hillside, a few with lines of laundry stretched out on the ropes and cooking fires in front.
Miners, their faces streaked with dirt, their clothes ripped and ill-repaired, their beards full, their hair uncut, and their eyes blank, watched them pass.
“Everyone looks so…” For once, Angus found himself at a loss for words.
“Tired,” Sterling said. “They’re tired. Men and nature both. Can’t imagine what it must be like to work underground most of the day, or bent over pile after endless pile of muddy gravel.”
“But isn’t the gold running in the water? You only have to scoop it up and wash away the dirt, right?”
“Some of it was like that. But not much, and no longer. Most of the streaks of gold run through rock. And the rock is buried deep, under the permafrost. These men spent all winter melting the permafrost and digging into solid rock. And now that it’s summer, they have to wash the tons of gravel in the sluice boxes before they can pan for gold.”
“But soon they’ll be rich, right? That’ll make it all worthwhile.”
“The good claims were taken, Angus, long before most of these poor fellows even got news of the strike. Most of these men’ve been hired to work someone else’s claim. They’ll break their backs and nothing they find’ll come to them. And those who do own the ground they’re working and strike it rich? They’ll hand their gold over to your mother or one of the other dance hall owners for a chance to play the tables or dance with Irene or Ellie, or to sit in a private box wearing an ironed white shirt and buy champagne at forty dollars a bottle.”
Angus said nothing more for a long time. Millie, who up till now had seemed to enjoy the walk from Dawson, kept her head to the ground and her ears flat.
“What do we do now, Constable Sterling? How do we find this man, Mr. Walker’s friend?”
“We ask around. But first let’s have a rest.” Sterling sat down on a rock at the side of the trail and rummaged around in the saddlebags draped over Millie’s broad back. He found a chunk of dried meat and tossed it at the dog’s feet. She swallowed the food, licked her lips in appreciation and looked over at Angus wondering what he had to share.
Seeing that Sterling was unwrapping a sandwich for himself, Angus pulled out a hunk of bread and a slice of apple. He broke a corner off the bread.
“Don’t feed Millie,” Sterling said. “She’s a working dog, not a pet.”
Angus munched on his bread and apple, trying to ignore Millie’s expressive, pleading brown eyes.
A steady stream of men walked by, paying the newcomers no mind. One fellow had a dog tied to a sled piled high with his belongings. Millie pricked up her ears as they drew close, but the dog gave her no more attention than the men did Sterling and Angus. Angus could see the outline of ribs beneath mangy fur, and the dog’s eyes were red and weeping, too over-worked and underfed to sniff at a strange dog.
“I’ve been told Ruth’s Hotel is the best place to start,” Sterling said, stuffing his sandwich wrappings back into his bags.
Refreshed by the snack, Angus got to his feet and hoisted his pack onto his aching shoulders. He could see no sign of any hotel. A few canvas tents and rough wooden shacks climbed the lower slopes of the naked hill or cluttered the barren valley where, presumably, the creek had once run. The waterway still tried to keep to its ancient course, but it was stuffed with silt, packed with mountains of gravel, and overrun with mile after mile of sluice boxes.
A woman, dress streaked with dirt, filthy hair falling out of its pins, hands red and raw, eyes rimmed with fatigue, stood in the doorway of a grimy tent watching with scant interest as they passed. Rows of men’s underwear, trousers, and shirts fluttered in the wind coming from behind her.
She glanced at Sterling’s uniform, still neat and tidy, and Angus’s clean coat, and went back to her work.
“There it is,” Sterling said, as they passed the laundry.
“What? Where?” It took Angus more than a few moments to understand that they’d arrived at the hotel. It was a hut, backed up against the hillside, made of green wood held together, and not very well, with packed mud. A single rusty stovepipe poked through the ceiling. A few wildflowers grew directly out of the roof, adding a nice touch of colour to the endless brown and grey of mud and gravel surrounding them. A single bench, made out of a rough plank wobbling on top of a boulder, sat at the doorway. Even in Dawson Angus had never seen anything quite as bad as this. But Sterling hadn’t made a mistake: a crudely drawn sign stuck into the mud beside the front door boasted Ruth’s Hotel.
Sterling led Millie to the side of the hotel, where he unloaded her packs and ordered her to stay. She stretched luxuriously before turning three times and rolling herself into a furry white ball.
“You can leave your bag, Angus. Millie won’t let anyone take it.”
Angus placed his pack on the ground beside Sterling’s. One brown eye stared at him from under the dog’s bushy tail.
The door to the hotel stood open. Sterling had to duck as he