The plain truth of it was that Danny just did not trust Siwash Sam.
The Indian said that they should have left the valley two weeks ago. The time of the snows was upon them, he said. Soon, the passes would be blocked. The way would be dangerous. They must go now, to the fort called McPherson. Closer than Dawson City, it was a place where they could stake their claim and wait out the long winter.
Danny wanted no part of that. He said so. And, in private, he’d told Hugh the why of it. The moment they were gone, more of the heathens would come and take what they had found. He was that certain. Why else would Sam be so eager to leave? Men
did
stay the winter on the land—hadn’t they passed at least one cabin on their way to the valley? Well, then, he could stay, too, and that was the end of it.
Though his teacher did not agree, he stood by Danny. They argued it for several days. Finally, MacLeod gave in. Though it was clear to Danny that the heathen still objected, they decided that a shelter could be built, to keep him secure through the winter. There was food a plenty, and they would leave him with more than enough firewood.
It was settled then. Afterward, Hugh was distant with him. It grieved Danny to disappoint his teacher. But they had worked too hard to see their efforts stolen from them.
He’d thought it best to leave the camp for a space of time this morning. Tomorrow they would start the building of the cabin. Today, MacLeod and Hugh were planning to check the snares set in the woods, while the heathen began the organizing of their supplies.
He climbed the mountainside to the place where they had last been working. It was fair cold up there. The ground was already half-frozen. Danny had brought pick, pan, and pail with him. But he was getting no use of them. Instead, he sat quiet on a rock, and lost himself for a wee bit in the halls of his grand house.
A scrabbling noise from below caught his attention. Hugh was coming up the hill, followed as usual by the brown dog. He’d pulled his furry hat far down on his head, and wound a long scarf ’round his neck. He was picking his way carefully, mindful of the icy patches that dotted the hill.
“Have you left off hunting rabbits, then?” Danny asked. “And come to join me in some prospecting?”
The greeting brought a smile to Hugh’s face, as Danny had hoped. “Six bags of gold is enough for now, lad,” he replied. “That’s the ransom of at least one or two kings I’ve known.”
He sat down beside Danny. His face was red from the cold. It made his eyes seem an even brighter blue.
“I left the bunnies to MacLeod.” he said. “I thought we might have a word or two.” Danny turned to face him squarely.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he continued, quietly. “The winter will be fierce. And you’ll be alone. There won’t be any strangers, friend or foe, dropping by for tea and jerky.”
Ah, if only he could make his teacher understand! “The cold and snow won’t be killing me, Hugh,” he said. “I’ll have my sword to hand, though I doubt I’ll have the need of it. And a rifle. If it should be that I’m not wrong—if company does come to call.”
Hugh shook his head. “Daniel Patrick O’Donal, you’re as stubborn—well, as MacLeod himself. If I truly thought I was leaving you to danger, I’d stay behind.” He rubbed his gloved hands together briskly.
“I’d not be asking that of you,” Danny said. Then he grinned. “Sure and I know that you have to be going. You must be greatly in need of the sight of a face that’s not covered with whiskers.”
His teacher laughed. “Even the sight of my own face clean-shaven would be welcome, in point of fact.”
A loud rumble filled the air.
“It’s to be expected,” Hugh muttered. The dog got to her feet, whining.
A second, louder sound came from above, then another and another. Like the explosions from the big guns on the line, Danny thought. He could see his teacher’s face. He was looking over Danny’s shoulder, up the mountain. His eyes widened.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered.
Danny turned. For a bit of a second, he didn’t understand what it was he saw. Then it came clear.
From out of the clouds that covered the peak, a moving wall of white was sweeping down. He remembered the stories that he’d heard in Skagway of the great disaster at Chilkoot. Had it happened so quickly there, too? A day cold but dry, and then death coming from above, so sudden?
Hugh grabbed his arm and hurried him away. The dog raced ahead. Though they were in no danger so far below, still it was best to be off the slope.
They slipped and slid their way toward the lake. The whole of the time, the cannon sound rolled on. Hugh fell, landing on his bottom. Danny helped him to his feet. As he did, he chanced a look back. The mass of snow had reached the tree line. It would be stopped there, Danny thought.
But on this side of the lake the trees were sparse. The ground—the rocky ground that had given up its treasure to them—was not hospitable to growth.
“Sweet Jaysus,” Danny said, as the white wave crashed on. It uprooted trees, sweeping them along. Then it came to the edge of the rocky slope, dislodging boulders, sending them careening downward.
There were times when Danny thought that Mother Kelly still watched over her changeling child. This was one of them. It was only by the merest fraction that he and Hugh missed being buried beneath the mingled rock and snow. Knocked from their feet they were, and tumbled about. But the bulk of the terrible slide swept by them, down upon the camp below.
The cheechakos did not know how lucky they were. But Sam did. The rockslide had taken the tents and one of the sheds. It was the one where they kept the gold-hunting tools and the fresher stores of food.
A sled and four of the dogs who had been staked out, because they could not be trusted to roam free, had also been caught. Sam felt that loss the most. But the second shed, with the store of blankets and the food supplies that they had brought with them, had been spared.
And it was in this shed that they had kept the gold. So that, too, was spared. Though Sam would have gladly traded a pouch or two for more meat.
Sam would not have wished this thing to happen. And he took no joy in it. But it did put an end to the crazy plan of leaving the Irishman behind. It had surprised Sam greatly that the Scotsman had agreed to it. He knew that when the snows melted, they would have returned to find the young fool’s body frozen where it lay. He told the Scotsman this. But it had not seemed to concern him. Sam thought that strange.
Now it did not matter. There was no more of such talk. They must all leave, and leave at once. The fort was many miles distant. Much time had been wasted.
His fault, his responsibility. He had been distracted by his grief. And his burden of worry—had they waited too long?
This he had not told the Scotsman.
Sam stood in the dying light of day at the waters edge. He spoke a word to the spirit of the bear, asking it to guard the valley, until the time when he and the three white men might once more walk by the lake.
Tomorrow, before the dawn, they would be gone. And when the snows came, Sam knew, it would be as though they had never been there.
We left the valley in the first week of December,
Duncan thought to himself, composing his next Argonaut’s report as the two sleds raced through the snow-covered emptiness. He had the team led by Vixen. She was full of energy today, leaping through the fresh powder, pulling the other dogs along in her wake. They’d been running beside Sam and his sled, but now they had drawn ahead.
We were fortunate,
he continued,
to find that the passes were not yet blocked. We made excellent time through the mountains. We are now well on our way north and a bit west toward Fort McPherson.
He whistled and pulled on the traces. Ahead, the ground sloped slightly. At the bottom of the slope lay the frozen surface of a narrow river. The smooth ice was dusted with snow.
Duncan guided the sled to the place where the snow was disturbed by the tracks of several deerlike animals. Vixen barely slowed her pace as they skimmed across.
He was just calculating that they might well reach McPherson by December 25, when he heard a terrible chilling sound. Thunder, muted rolling thunder, mixed with a sharp snap/crack. It was ice breaking, he knew. Yet it sounded like wood in the fireplace, green wood popping and sparking as it burned.
He braked the sled, pulling the dogs to a stop. But they were still moving as Danny threw himself off to the side, and rolled clumsily to his feet. He gave a strangled cry as he rose.
“Hugh! Sweet Jaysus, Hugh!”
As he turned and began running through the snow, back toward the river they had just crossed, Duncan had a fleeting thought that he had never heard the young Immortal swear before.
Danny was flailing in the deeper snow, but Duncan kept to the path just broken by the sled’s passage. Without snowshoes, it was a heavy task, but he had no time to strap them on.
The white world was full of other sounds now: Danny behind him screaming Fitzcairn’s name over and over; the yelps of the dogs that had been pulling the second sled, as they struggled vainly to break free of their traces; Sam’s guttural voice, crying for help in a mixture of Siwash and English.
He did not hear the familiar tones of the man he had known for three centuries, the still-detectable British accent that grew more clipped in times of excitement.
As Duncan got closer, he slowed. If you examined the seemingly solid expanse of ice closely, you could just tell where the water ended and the land began. The sled had fallen through a good fifteen feet out, the ice beneath breaking up like spun glass. The flailing of dogs and men had widened the hole, and the rushing torrent of water beneath could now be seen clearly. And heard.
Cracks extended out in all directions. Even as Duncan watched, another ragged chunk of ice broke off and was swept away, sucked under the surface and borne downstream.
The ice held for the deer,
he thought.
It held for me. It’s December. The rivers should be frozen solid.
But
this
river most certainly was not. And by a stroke of ill fate, the ice had not held for the second sled.
He saw one dog disappear. He saw Sam clinging to the sled. He did not see Fitz.
Danny caught up to him then. He didn’t stop, but stumbled on toward the frozen river.
“Danny.” Duncan grabbed him by the arm. “No. Wait.”
The young Immortal struggled to pull free.
“Wait? Are you daft? Look there, MacLeod.” He gestured wildly toward the still-widening hole in the ice.
“Where is Hugh?”
“You look.” With some difficulty, Duncan held him back. Fitz had told him truly—Danny was strong. “The ice is breaking up all over. We must go carefully or we’ll all be lost.”
Duncan kept his grip, until he could see the young man calming himself. Only then did he release his hold. Danny stood statue-still.
“Hugh does not swim well, you know,” he said in a hollow tone. “What shall we do then, MacLeod? How shall we reach them?”
Duncan looked around. There was no time to go back to the sled for the rope that was in the gear. And no place near to the river bank to anchor it, even if it were to hand.
But they had their belts. And the whip, which had been frozen to Duncan’s glove, had dropped just a few paces back. Danny fetched it. Then the two men unfastened layers of fur and thick wool to reach the wide strips of leather around their waists.
As quickly as his fingers, made clumsy by the heavy gloves he dare not remove, would work, Duncan joined the two belts together.
Sam’s cries were becoming more feeble, and the yelping of the dogs was abruptly cut off. “Another poor beast has just gone under,” Danny said flatly.
Duncan knelt in front of Danny, and attached one end of the joined belts to his ankle. “Danny. Listen to me. You’re lighter than I am so you must go out first. Take the whip and lie down flat. Spread out as much as you can.” He measured the distance to the hole with his eyes. “Here.” He handed the whip to Danny. “I’ll hold on to the belts. You get as close as you can—if Sam can get a grip on the whip, I can pull you back and him out.”
The young Immortal took a deep breath and turned toward the river. Two of the dogs that had been harnessed to the lost sled had somehow gotten free of their traces and pulled themselves out onto the ice. They’d crawled a few feet away, where they lay, whimpering and twitching. Duncan did not want to give a thought to how cold the water must be.
Danny knelt then, and slowly, so slowly, inched his way toward the Indian. Duncan stretched out behind him.
They did not speak of Fitzcairn.
Often before, in situations of great danger, Duncan had noted how time ran differently. He had fought in battles that were over in an eyeblink or went on for hours, though by the clock both had lasted the same number of seconds. He had faced other Immortals, had crossed swords for what had to be many minutes but felt like a few heartbeats.
The sled had gone through the ice perhaps five minutes ago. Now, as Danny crawled across the ice, lifetimes were passing.
“Softly, that’s it. A bit more.” Duncan murmured encouragement. A sharp cracking sound, and Danny went still. But no more ice broke, and he was able to get near enough to extend the whip to Sam.
The Indian grasped it. He was very weak, Duncan could tell. But he was also wiser than any of them in the ways of survival in this land. So he wound the whip around his wrist and held on with both hands.
Duncan pulled back, slowly, steadily, hand over hand, backing up himself, until he had solid ground beneath him. There he rose to his knees. He closed his mind to everything else—the churn of the water, the cries of the dying dogs, Sam’s grunts of pain as he was hauled across the ice. There was a thing to be done here, and he would do it.
And then they would talk of Fitzcairn.
There was one bad moment when another foot of ice gave way, and Sam and Danny both nearly went into the frigid water. But Duncan struggled to his feet and tugged sharply. He reached down and grabbed Danny, nearly lifting him and Sam, who still had a devil’s grip on the whip, into the air.