Frank didn’t see how the going could get any tougher than it already was, but he refrained from saying that. There was no point in tempting fate.
No one slept much anymore. It was too cold for that. They simply lay in their robes and blankets and shivered. As a result, everyone was exhausted. When they gathered around the stove for coffee in the morning, their faces were gaunt and haggard. They looked like corpses, Frank thought, and he knew he looked the same. He felt like he had aged a year in the past few days.
When the time came to push on, Marie sank down in the snow and said, “I cannot. I simply cannot go another step. Leave me here.”
“We’re not going to do that,” Fiona told her. “We’re not going to leave without you or anybody else.” Anger suddenly made her voice even hoarser than usual. “It’s bad enough I lost the two in the shipwreck. You’re all going to Whitehorse so I can collect my money! Get on your feet, damn it!”
Her mittened hands clenched into fists, as if she were about to spring forward and club Marie back to her feet. Frank put his hands on her shoulders and said, “Take it easy, Fiona,” while Meg went over to Marie and bent down to take hold of her arm.
“Let me help you, honey,” she said. “We can make it. We’ll just work together.”
Fiona turned and pressed her face against the front of Frank’s parka as she began to sob. “It’s just so cold,” she said. “So cold. And I’m so tired.”
Nobody could argue with that. They all felt exactly the same way.
After a few minutes, though, Fiona calmed down and stopped crying, and Meg was able to convince Marie not to give up. They resumed their trek through the somber light.
Salty was right, of course: The approach to Chilkoot Pass was the worst of all. Frank hung on grimly to the reins and did what he could to help the horses struggle up the slope. The dogs strained against their traces. The women clung to the sleds and pushed them along. An icy wind rushed down the glacier and pummeled them.
Frank had faced death more times than he could remember, had heard bullets whistle past his ears probably hundreds of times, and yet he had never felt as close to the grave as he did during that long, gray morning as they climbed toward the pass. He was numb in body, mind, and soul, and his brain had slowed to the point that all he could think about was holding on to the reins and putting one foot in front of the other.
He was in such bad shape that he didn’t even notice at first when the slope underneath him changed. He had taken several steps before he realized that he was going down, not up.
“Salty!” he shouted over the wind as he came to a sudden stop. “Salty!”
“Yeah, I know!” the old-timer’s voice came back to him. “I know, Frank! We’re there!”
They had reached the top of Chilkoot Pass.
Chapter 30
The ordeal wasn’t over, of course. Far from it. But the pass represented a milestone to Frank and to the others. They had more reason to hope now that they could actually make it to Whitehorse and find the destinies that awaited them there.
But first they had to get down from this frozen, windswept pass.
Frank, Salty, and Pete Conway unhitched the dogs from the sleds and tied ropes from each sled to the next in line. Then Salty used the harnesses to attach about half the dogs to the last sled.
“That’s just for the first part, ’cause it’s the steepest and slickest,” the old-timer explained. “When we get lower, we’ll hitch the teams back on normal-like and put chains on the runners to slow ’em down, so they won’t overrun the dogs.”
That made sense to Frank. He said, “You’d better let me go down first with the horses. If they slip and start to fall, they won’t take anybody else with them.”
“Nobody but you,” Meg protested.
“I’ll be all right,” he assured her. “Salty, how far are we talking about?”
“Worst of it’s about a quarter of a mile,” the old sourdough said. “Be mighty careful, Frank. I’d hate to think about havin’ to go the rest o’ the way to Whitehorse without ye.”
Frank looked around at everyone, nodded, and then tightly grasped the reins, Stormy’s in his left hand, Goldy’s in his right. He stepped out onto the slope again. The horses hesitated, clearly uncertain whether they wanted to try it, but they had gone into danger and battle so many times with Frank, their gallant hearts wouldn’t let them quit now. They stepped onto the hard-packed snow.
It took Frank close to an hour to lead the two horses down the worst of the slope, one careful step at a time. But at the end of that time, they moved onto relatively level ground and he felt relief flood through him. Looking up at the pass, he pushed back the hood of his parka, took off his hat, and waved it over his head to let the others know that he had made it all right. A few minutes later, he saw the sleds begin to make the descent, followed by the dogs and the other members of the party.
Getting everybody down took awhile, but by late in the afternoon, they were all together again. Salty suggested that they make camp and wait for morning to continue on toward Whitehorse.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said, “and we still got some tricky slopes in front of us. We’ll need to be able to see where we’re goin’.”
No one complained, and while they were all still exhausted, the air of gloom and despair that had hung over the previous camp seemed to have evaporated. Frank thought that Fiona was still a little out of sorts, but everyone else seemed to have at least a trace of optimism about them again. Some of the young women chattered amongst themselves, Conway and Jessica sat near the fire with her head resting on his shoulder, Salty tossed dried fish to the dogs, and Meg came over to Frank to ask, “Are we going to start standing guard at night again?”
He smiled. “Salty and I never stopped. We’ve been switching off. We just didn’t tell anybody. We figured y’all could use all the rest you could get.”
“That’s not fair! I would have taken my turn.”
“We’ll probably start doing it again like we were on the other side of the pass, even though I don’t think we have to worry about Smith anymore. We’re too far from Skagway now. It wouldn’t be worth his time and trouble to come after us.”
“You can’t be sure of that, though,” Meg said.
“Nope. That’s why we’ll keep on standing guard until we get to Whitehorse and get you ladies matched up with your husbands.”
“Oh. Yeah, there’s still that to do, isn’t there?”
Frank said, “You don’t sound very happy about the prospect.”
A forlorn note crept into Meg’s voice as she said, “I guess I never really thought about what it would mean. I agreed to spend the rest of my life with a man I don’t even know. What if he’s awful, Frank?”
“That’s a chance you take with any marriage, I reckon. Spending time with somebody when you’re courting isn’t like spending the rest of your life with ’em. You may think you know what’s in another person’s heart and mind, but chances are, you don’t. Not all of it, anyway.”
“I know you,” she said softly.
“You know I’m good with a gun and I can fight. I don’t spook easy. That’s about it.”
“Not really. I know you love Dog and those horses of yours. You were kind to Mr. Jennings, you respect Salty, and you’ve tried to help Pete. You’ve risked your life to save ours over and over again. You’re brave, and you’re a man of your word.”
He laughed. “You’d have me blushing, I reckon, if I was that sort of fella.”
“But you’re not. And I knew that, too.”
“There’s something else about me you didn’t mention…I’m more than twice your age.”