Karen didn’t take her upbraiding easily. She got to her feet, hands on her waist. “I’m not the same Karen Pierce. I’ve lost my mother, my father, and now Aunt Doris. I nearly lost my own life. Not only that, but I just got word that the Barringer children’s father has most likely died in an avalanche. Please don’t expect me to be the same woman. You went off to safety with Peter. Safety and love and comfort. You had no idea of Paxton’s threats, and you have no idea how badly I want that man punished.”
“But, Karen,” Grace tried to reason, “it isn’t our job to punish him. If you have proof, take the matter to the law. Better yet, take it to God. Vengeance belongs to Him.”
“If I wait for God, it might never be taken care of.” Grace’s mouth dropped open in surprise, but still Karen wasn’t moved. “I don’t have much faith in what might be done to put an end to Martin Paxton’s evil deeds.”
“Sounds to me like you don’t have much faith, period.”
Karen looked hard at Grace. “I don’t want to discuss my faith or lack of it. I only want to see Paxton suffer as he’s made others suffer. Peter understands me. Why can’t you?”
Karen stormed from the room, knowing that she’d deeply wounded her friend. It hadn’t been her intention. She had been happy to see Grace once again, but something in her gentle demeanor set Karen on edge. Something in her peaceful spirit forced Karen to think of the wall she’d put between herself and God. A wall that grew higher and deeper by the minute.
“JACOB, LEAH, I NEED to talk to you upstairs,” Karen said as soon as supper was finished. She didn’t wait for either one to respond to her, but instead got up from the table and moved toward the back stairs just off the kitchen.
For a new building, the floors certainly creak a lot
, she thought. With each step, the stairs seemed to groan, evidence of their shoddy carpentry. Karen didn’t mind for once. She listened to the sound and heard her own heart in those wooden moans. She felt old and tired. How could it be that she had passed thirty years and had so very little to show for it? All of her girlhood friends were married with large families of their own. She was still single and cared for a dead man’s children.
“This is about Pa, isn’t it?” Jacob asked.
Karen waited until they were inside their room before she spoke. “Mr. Ivankov brought back a letter.”
“Then he’s alive?” Leah asked with hope.
Karen met Jacob’s fixed stare and knew she couldn’t hold the truth from them any longer. “I don’t know, quite honestly. Adrik found a man who resembled your father. He had this letter on him, but nothing else to identify him. The man had been battered by the avalanche, and Adrik had only seen your father on a couple of previous occasions.”
Jacob said nothing, his face losing its color. His eyes refused to blink and he maintained his stoic gaze, while Leah cried out loud and threw herself onto the bed.
“No! He can’t be dead!”
Karen handed the letter to Jacob and went to gather Leah in her arms. “I know this is hard. But, Leah, we don’t know for sure that it was your father.”
“I knew he was in trouble. I knew,” Leah sobbed. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.” Karen stroked the girl’s hair as Leah buried her face against Karen’s chest.
Karen watched Jacob as he read the letter. She knew the content, but she waited for him to say something about the message.
“Perhaps you could read the letter to Leah,” Karen suggested.
Jacob looked up. “Let her read it herself.” He threw the page at Karen. “Where’s his body? I’ll know if it’s him. Even if nobody else can recognize him, I can.”
Leah cried all the harder at this reminder, but Jacob refused to be moved. Karen could see the hardness in his eyes. He was walling himself in, just as she had.
“Why don’t you talk to Mr. Ivankov about it?” Karen suggested. “I don’t think this is the place or the time. I’ll read the letter to Leah while you go find Adrik. He should be somewhere around the church. I heard him say he was helping to deliver supplies from the wharf.”
Jacob, his blue eyes now damp with tears, licked his lips and pulled on his fur hat. Taking up his coat, he headed for the door.
“It won’t be light for long,” Karen called after him. “Don’t be gone after dark. Things are getting more and more rowdy around here, and with the new load of stampeders, I wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble.”
“I’m not going to get into trouble,” Jacob replied in a clipped tone.
He stalked from the room and slammed the door behind him. Karen felt as if her nerves had snapped with the crashing of the door. Tears came to her own eyes and without understanding why, she began to cry. It was as if all the pressures of the day began to overwhelm her all over again. Funny, she had never been given to tears prior to coming north. The long dark months of winter, the cold, the lawless greed, and the bad news that just seemed to keep coming ate away her final reserves of strength.
“Oh, Leah. I’m so sorry.” Karen held the girl tight, needing comfort as much as the child did.
They cried for a time, then they just held each other as if the world had ended and they were the last ones to survive. Finally Karen spoke.
“I won’t leave you,” she whispered. “You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. I won’t let anything happen to you as long as I have breath in my body.”
“But you might die, too,” Leah said, straightening up to look Karen in the eye. “Everybody dies.”
Karen couldn’t argue that. “But while I’m here, I’ll do what I can to ensure you’re fed and clothed and cared for. I just want you to know that.”
Leah nodded. “Will you read the letter?”
Karen edged off the bed and picked the piece of paper up from the floor. The letter looked like it had been carried around for months, even though it was dated just yesterday. Why he had felt it necessary, Karen couldn’t say. Perhaps he’d seen too much death along the trail. Hadn’t Adrik told her of folks freezing to death within inches of the main path? Maybe Bill had seen this, as well.
Karen cleared her throat and took a seat on the corner of the bed. Leah wiped her eyes and moved close as Karen began to read.
“1898, 2nd of April.
Jacob and Leah Barringer, in care of Miss Karen Pierce, lately of Dyea.
Jacob and Leah,
I miss you more than I have words to say. You know I’ve never been a man for writing letters and such, but as time weighs heavy on my heart, I felt it necessary to send a post to you. The trail is hard and cold—there’s never any real warmth. I’m glad you’re safe back in Dyea. I seen a woman and child die yesterday from the cold. The woman’s feet had froze ’cause she had no boots. Her man must have left her behind or got separated from her, but I kept thinking of you two and how even though I missed you, I’d done the right thing in leaving you behind. You might both hate me by now. I hope not. You might not understand, even with me telling you about the bad times on the trail, but I love you more than life. I’ll come back for you, I promise.
Your father,
William Barringer”
Karen folded the letter and handed it to Leah. She waited for the girl to say something, anything. Leah took the letter and reread it to herself, then tucked it inside her blouse. She looked at Karen, her broken heart so clearly reflected in her eyes.
“If Pa is dead, they won’t just leave him up there, will they, Karen?”
“No, honey, Adrik said they took the body to the morgue.”
“Can we take some of the money and bury him all proper like? Can we order a stone with his name so folks won’t forget who he was?”
Karen thought of her own father buried somewhere out in the middle of the wilderness. How comforting it might be to have him close by, to know she could go visit the grave as she did her mother’s.
“Of course. We’ll use all the money, if need be.”
Leah nodded and lay back on the pillows. “Thank you. I knew you’d understand.”
————
Jacob had no words for the way he was feeling. Responsibilities had come to him at a young age, and if his father were truly dead, the burden would be even greater.
“Mr. Ivankov!” Jacob called out as he climbed the church steps two at a time. “Are you in here?”
There was no answer. Jacob looked down the aisle to the podium where he’d heard the pastor preach on many a Sunday. He looked beyond the pulpit to where a cross had been nailed to the otherwise unadorned wall.
“I don’t understand this at all,” he said, knowing that somehow God would understand he was speaking to Him. “I don’t see the sense in it. I don’t know how this can be fixed.”
“Some things can’t be fixed,” Adrik said as he came up from behind Jacob.
The boy turned to rest his eyes on the big man’s sympathetic expression. He didn’t feel like being strong and brave. He didn’t feel like fighting or arguing. He simply wanted to be comforted. Falling to his knees, Jacob cried bitter tears.
“He shouldn’t have gone. We needed him here. He shouldn’t have gone.”
Adrik knelt beside him. “I know, son. I know.”
“I don’t know why God is doing this to us.”
“Why do you suppose it to be the way God wanted it?”
Jacob shook his head and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “God is in charge of everything.”
“Well, I do believe God is in charge. I believe He has power and authority over the universe,” Adrik said. “But I also know God has given us free will to make choices and decisions for ourselves. He gave it to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Told them what they could do and what they shouldn’t. Then He let them decide for themselves whether or not they’d obey. They chose to listen to other voices. Your pa did the same.”
“My pa was a good man!” Jacob declared, glaring in anger at Adrik. “If you say he wasn’t, I’ll—”
“Whoa now, son, don’t go getting riled. Everybody makes poor choices from time to time, and whether you like it or not, everybody sins against God. You know that as well as anybody.”
Jacob continued to glare for a moment, then looked away and nodded. “But my pa was a good man. He was a Christian man, too.”
“I’m glad he was. But Jacob, being a Christian doesn’t mean you aren’t going to make mistakes. It doesn’t mean that bad things will never happen to you, even when you’re doing the right and good thing. Why, I once saw a man go after another man who’d fallen off a ship. He knew the other man couldn’t swim, so he went to help him. The other man was scared and desperate, and when his would-be rescuer came, he latched on to him and drowned them both. It wasn’t fair or right—after all, the first man hadn’t fallen in on purpose and the second man was going to help—putting his own life in danger to help his friend.”
“So what’s that got to do with my pa?”
Adrik leaned back and pushed his fur hat up away from his face. “Neither man would have died if they’d done what they were told to. They didn’t listen to the advice of others. The first man wasn’t supposed to be playing around at the rail. He was supposed to be loading salmon into the hold of the ship. They knew he couldn’t swim and had given him a job in a place where he would have been safe. The second man knew better than to jump in after his friend, but his emotions got the better of him, and reasoning and logic went out the door. He should have thrown his friend a line or a life ring. If either man would have done what he was supposed to do instead of doing what he thought best, then both would be alive today.”
Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “My pa was doing what he thought was right. I’m going to do what I think is right. I have to find out if that man was my pa.”
“You’d be hard pressed to learn that for sure, unless you found your pa face-to-face.”
“Why do you say that?”
Adrik frowned. “Most of the dead will be buried together. You’re not going to find him, and even if you do, well, you can’t be sure of recognizing him.”
“I’d know my own pa,” Jacob declared. “I have to try, Mr. Ivankov. I have to go and at least try to find him. If he’s dead, then I’ll take up where he left off. He had a dream of finding gold and making a better life for us. I won’t let that dream die.”
“It was a mighty selfish dream, if you ask me. He was a grown man with two children, and he knew you needed him here. He probably should have loaded you both up and headed back to the States, where you’d all be safe. Instead, he let himself buy into the stories of gold and put himself in danger and left you and Leah behind.”
“Don’t say that.” Jacob’s temper flared. He wasn’t about to sit and listen to this man mean-mouth his father. How dare he say that his father had done the wrong thing. He got to his feet and stared down at the larger man. “I’ll fight you for saying that.” He balled his fists and held them up as if to prove his point.
Adrik pulled off his gloves and slapped them against his thigh as he got to his feet. “Jacob, I’m telling you this because I don’t want to see you make a mistake. I know you’re hurting and I know you’re angry, but going north is foolish. Plain and simple. Greed is what’s driving men north. Greed and wild stories about things that don’t even exist.”
“The gold is real,” Jacob said. “My pa said it was real.
Other people are coming back rich. You know it’s real!” His voice was steadily rising.
“The gold might well be real, but so’s the cost. Are you ready to pay that price? Folks on the trail were warned about the dangers. Avalanches were predicted for several hours ahead of when they actually started happening. The Tlingits stopped packing and went down the mountain. They told people why, but no one wanted to listen. They had to get just one more pack over the mountain. They had to press just that much closer to the goal of finding gold. Had they listened, they wouldn’t be dead now. Your pa might very well be among those gone—if so, then he didn’t listen, either.”
Jacob felt a strange aching in his throat. He wanted to speak, but words wouldn’t come. He wanted to hit Adrik Ivankov, but he knew nothing would come of it, either.
“I’m going. I have to find my pa. I was always going to leave, I was just waiting for warmer weather. But now I’m going on my own. Pa has a cache and money. If he is dead, then I’m going to see to it that his dream comes true.”