For What He Could Become Page 18

  Bill checked the map scale. Something he’d learned in the army was going to be of use. He measured his finger on the scale, then put that finger in a straight line from Arctic Village to the three rivers spot. It looked about fifty to sixty miles. He smiled at Verda, who took hold of his arm and squeezed. Of course, he knew that what looked easy on a map could be very difficult when you were on the ground.

  Back at the cabin, he went out to the shed and found an old oil barrel. Twenty minutes later he brought it inside and set it down on the floor.

  “What’s that?” Verda asked.

  “My bear-proof food cache. You got a padlock?”

  “There’s one in the bottom cupboard behind the sugar sack.”

  Bill slipped the padlock through the hasp. “Now no bear can get my food.”

  “How’d you make it?”

  “It’s just the two ends of an oil barrel. I cut the middle out to make it smaller and put a hinge on one side and a lock on the other. With my food in it I won’t have to pack it with me all day while I’m looking for gold.”

  “That’ll work. How do we pay the pilot?”

  “Give him some of the gold,” he said.

  “How much?”

  “I’m not sure about that. Maybe ask Carl what gold’s worth. Herb said he gave some to Carl to sell in town, so he must know something about it.”

  “Bill, we can’t let on that we know anything about where the gold might be. Do you want me to ask him?”

  Carl might wonder why I’m suddenly wanting to know gold prices, but he’d probably give Verda the information without question.

  “It’d be better if you did it,” Bill said.

  Verda was out the door without another word.

  In the cut-down barrel Bill worked out a place for everything he needed. He wouldn’t have to take anything but the barrel and the pack board he’d found in the shed.

  When she came back, Bill looked up. “What did Carl say?”

  “Lots of nothing. He did say it could be worth more than two hundred dollars an ounce, depending on a lot of stuff, but not to sell it at the store.”

  “Did he know where Herb’s gold site was?”

  “I asked him, but if he knows he’s not saying.”

  She took down the gold and poured some of it into his palm. “Rub it,” she said. “Rub your other hand over it and just feel it.”

  “What am I supposed to feel?”

  “Just do it for a little bit. Feel it.”

  Bill rubbed it. He turned his hands over and rubbed more, then smiled. “It feels warm. I like it.”

  “Other people are going to like it too. We just need to figure out how do this trade with the pilot.”

  Verda left the gold on the table and made some sandwiches of bread and smooth peanut butter. Bill preferred chunky, but Herb hadn’t because it got under his lower plate, so there was a case of creamy peanut butter stored in the house.

  “You know what we can do with lots of gold?” Verda asked.

  “Anything we want to, I suppose.”

  Verda picked up the jar of gold and held it in front of his eyes. “Bill, we have something in our hands right now that won’t come again in our lifetime. You haven’t done too well, and I’m alone and an orphan, and—“

  “You’re pretty old for an orphan,” Bill interrupted.

  “—and neither one of us can let this chance slip by.”

  She stared at him, her dark eyes puffed after the two funerals, but piercing as the eyes of a hawk.

  “I want to live in a house with electric lights that go on any time I want them to. And running water—hot water. We don’t have a lot of years left to us. We have to make this chance work.”

  Bill looked at her face and wanted her dream to come true. ”I’ll try,” he said. “I’ll try real hard, Verda.”

  The plane leveled off at 3500 feet, and Bill couldn’t imagine so much country holding the three rivers and Herb’s gold. It overwhelmed him to be looking over that much country.

  What he had practiced for his adult years was a poor background for this work he was taking on now. He hadn’t been out in the wilds since the Bulge, and then he had lots of guys around him and before that he was eighteen—over twentyfive years ago. He was going to go out where only two people knew where he was and look for some gold where he wasn’t sure it was and then bring it back so he and Verda could live on it the rest of their lives. Whoopee! Who did he think he was?

  What if I did find it, though? How would it feel to dip the pan into one of those rivers and come up with a bunch of gold nuggets to add to the jar? How long did it take Herb to gather that gold, and how much of it had he sold? Well, I know this, Herb found more gold than he needed to live on and had some left over. That was enough, wasn’t it? I don’t want to be rich—just comfortable.

  “Where to?” the pilot asked.

  Bill produced the map he had made from the one at the store. “Up around the Porcupine River. I need to see if there are any trails on the ground here. Could you circle over the village and then go out this way?”

  “You’re paying for it. I’ll go where you tell me.”

  They flew for an hour and a half looking for three rivers and a dome. Finally the pilot said, “I don’t think there’s anything here like what you’re looking for.” Just at that moment a connecting river came into view.

  “There,” Bill said. “Can you land there?”

  The pilot landed the plane on a gravel bar, dodged between rocks too big to hop over, and splashed through several ponds of water. He held the tail wheel off the surface while the main gear bounced over the rocks and slowed the plane down. Every rock and rivet made a noise inside. Bill was sure the plane would come apart before it stopped.

  The pilot stepped out. “This is where you want to be, huh?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll be back in two weeks. You got enough food and stuff to last that long?”

  Bill nodded.

  “Okay. See you in two weeks on this gravel bar. I should be here around the same time of day.”

  The plane took off and Bill lugged the barrel over to the top of the bank looking for a good campsite. His side of the river was mostly tundra, uneven and wet in the hollows, but the other side had small spruce trees and some level ground. He crossed the river without getting soaked and made camp. This would be his headquarters for prospecting up the three rivers.

  The camp was not elaborate or secure. A sheet of visqueen stretched over a center pole, the sides held down with rocks served as his tent. He threw the barrel in the back of the tent against a dwarf willow tree, then made a fire ring with river rocks close to the front of the tent. The smoke from the fire should keep the mosquitoes away. He wished he were immune to the mosquitoes like Carl—he couldn’t remember a time when Carl had scratched mosquito bites.

  Standing outside the tent, Bill looked up one of the three rivers. All three came out of the Brooks Range; two were clear and one had heavy glacial silt in it. The silted river might hold more prospects. There might be old evidence that Herb had been here. He must have camped somewhere, made a fire, something that would give him a clue.

  He picked up the gold pan and shovel and walked along the low bank where rocks protruded from the cuts made by the river at flood stages. The bottom was covered with small to medium-sized rocks. Where the bank caved off, he put some soil and water in his pan. He had never panned before but he had seen others do it.

  He swirled the dirt around the outside edge of the pan, tipped the edge a little, and let the floating dirt and debris skip out of the pan with the water. He swirled the pan again and added more water as he worked the dirt down to what he hoped would produce some color. After four pans of water there was about a tablespoon of sand on the bottom which he moved around with his finger. There was no gold. He washed the sand out, picked up, and moved further upriver.

  A caribou trail where hundreds of the animals had crossed the river had broken down the
bank on both sides. He knelt down and put a handful of the dirt in the pan. He added water and started the mix swirling, the water soaking into the dirt and breaking down the chunks as it circled inside the pan, some of it slopping out at each revolution. The silt wouldn’t settle, but that didn’t bother Bill. He knew silt was lighter than gold, and if there was any gold in the water it would go to the bottom of the pan and stay there. He got to the bottom and spread the sand with his fingers. Nothing.

  He continued up the right bank and tried another half-dozen pans with no luck. Discouraged and hungry—he hadn’t eaten since morning—he trudged back to his campsite, dropped the pan and shovel and headed back upstream to the gravel bar, where he had seen some driftwood. The bark had all been scraped off the wood when the water tore it from the bank and carried it down over the rocks, but it was good and dry now and hard as metal. It would burn long and hot. He gathered up an armload and headed back to camp.

  It would be hard to light a fire of driftwood, but if he could get it to ignite, those peeled branches would burn all night. With some twisted dry grass and spruce bark chips full of pitch as starter, the fire sprung to life. Once it was burning he laid limbs over the fire to make a real hot spot in the middle, so hot he couldn’t have put it out with a five-gallon bucket of water.

  The fire was a comfort. How many times had he wanted to build a fire during the Bulge and couldn’t? Freezing feet and hands and very little food twisted the soldiers’ minds to not caring whether the enemy saw them or not. How rum-drum they got when, sleepless, they sat day and night in freezing foxholes and argued themselves out of building a fire. They were in woods; Bill could have built a fire in five minutes if it hadn’t meant the whole squad’s getting wiped out with a well-placed cannon round.

  He stared at the fire until his eyes felt like they were going to burn out of their sockets and then he lay down in the tent, a supply of firewood close by, and tried to plan tomorrow. He had not planned anything before he fell asleep.

  Two days he spent up the Coleen River, panning for gold, looking for any signs that Herb had ever been there. He went out of his way to make trips off to the side of the river where likely campsites might have been, often several hundred yards, hoping to pick up some trace. By the end of the second day he had done nothing but make up his mind that the Coleen River was not a gold-bearing river.

  The next morning he tried Boulder Creek; clear, fastmoving but rock-bottomed like the Coleen. He would leap to a rock, get a fistful of sand from under the boulder on the downside of the current, put it in the pan, and do a quick swirl of the contents. He had heard that the down-current sides of big rocks often caught and held fine gold. If he could find some color he would at least know he had the right river. Nothing.

  There was one more river to chase down, Lake Creek. Tomorrow he would go up Lake Creek and see what it held.

  Back in camp, he opened the lid of the barrel and looked at his remaining food. It reminded him of army rations, the same thing over and over again. He pulled out some caribou jerky and dried berries and with legs crossed in front of the small fire he dined in solitude.

  He didn’t mind being alone. He had spent a good deal of his life alone. The only two people he’d ever been close to were Wayne and George, and Wayne was the only friend he’d really cared about. He wondered what Wayne and George would do out here. They’d be so lost he’d have to lead them back.

  He chuckled. “You guys lost?”

  He hadn’t spoken out loud since the pilot left.

  “Hey, you guys.” Then he yelled. “HEY, YOU GUYS!”

  He looked around. The wild place where he was camped was vacant. If he died tonight, ravens and bears would pick him clean, then the snow would cover everything, and in the spring when the floodwater came down the canyons it would wipe everything away. There would be nothing to show that Bill Williams had ever been here.

  Which was why he hadn’t found any trace of Herb’s camp. Tomorrow he’d go up Lake Creek and just look for gold.

  At dawn Bill headed up the right bank of Lake Creek. The river had a lot of wood trash in it, and there were driftwood piles on the gravel bars. His eye fell on something that didn’t look natural—he removed his backpack and hopped across rocks to get to it. It was a rusted tin can. It had been opened with a knife, not a can opener.

  Would Herb have carried canned stuff? Yes—with a dog team. How long had Herb been coming out here? How long did it take a can to rust away? He looked up the river, trying to reason with it to give him more evidence that he could understand.

  Then he froze. A hundred yards upstream, a female grizzly and two cubs were in the middle of the river. The sow used her front paws to dislodge rocks in the riverbed while the two cubs watched. Bill checked the wind. The cool morning air was drifting down from the mountains, putting the sow upwind from Bill. She didn’t smell him. She lumbered across the river and turned downstream, her head swinging from side to side as she walked with her nose to the ground. The sight of the bear coming straight at him increased his heart rate.

  She stopped. At thirty feet she swung her head back and forth, then stood up. Water dripped from her fur; the cubs piled into her hind legs. She pointed her snout in the air revealing her nursing nipples, and then she charged. . The noise of her snapping jaws carried over the tremendous pounding of the water. There were no trees to climb, nowhere to go. Bill stood stock still, his heart racing.

  At ten feet, he gained his voice. Noise was his only chance.

  He waved his arms over his head. “Hey, bear…HEY!”

  The sow braced all four legs and slid to a stop, her massive body splashing a wall of water that soaked him.

  “BEAR! HEY, BEAR!”

  Before he could get the water out of his eyes she had turned and bowled over one of the cubs, the whole family loping off toward Boulder Creek. At one point she stopped and looked back at Bill, standing on the gravel bank waving a rusted tin can. She spun and ran, her bouncing behind the last sight he saw as she disappeared.

  He lowered his arm while his heart rate started to return to normal. He hadn’t seen a bear in a long time, but the last bear hunt was vivid enough in his mind to recall all of the details. He focused on the rusted tin can and noticed that his hand was shaking.

  Dammit, this can could be Herb’s. He shouldered his pack board and moved upriver again. Every conceivable place was searched for old camp evidence. Nothing.

  Using a piece of driftwood, he pried two rocks from the bottom and dug a cup of sand into the pan, filled it with water and swirled it. There was no gold. At the mouth where the canyon walls faded back and the river spread out on the flats he tried another pan. Nothing. He kept trying. He kept getting nothing.

  He had panned three rivers. He was fed up with gold-hunting and the plane wouldn’t be back for over a week. Disgusted, he headed back to camp.

  Dark cumulous clouds were forming in the Northeast. They were grouping in the high passes, darkening as the edges rolled around the mountains. The fronts of the clouds blazed white where the setting sun bleached them, but the heavy bodies rolling into the canyon were dark gray tinged with black.

  No rain had fallen since he landed. At first the ominous sky didn’t bother him, and he ate his supper and got his fire ready for the night, but then the bugs became ferocious as they always did before a heavy rain and he wondered if his camp was safe if a storm hit the area. He knew fast, strong water could push trees and rocks into places they didn’t belong. This camp was near the confluence of three rivers.

  As the sky darkened he looked again and then kicked the fire apart, sending a thousand sparks into the night. He threw his belongings and the visqueen tent into the barrel. He had to get on the other side of the river into the high ground near the mountains or go up one of the canyons far enough and high enough to be above the water that might come. He was undecided.

  Why is this so difficult? It’s like battle. Decide and do it. Don’t even think about it.

&
nbsp; He grabbed the barrel by the rope, slung it over his shoulder, and headed for the other side of the Coleen. There, the dome that Herb had described, should be out of harm’s way.

  When he reached the top of the mound, he gathered firewood. He kindled a fire, erected a framework of branches to hold his plastic tent, and secured the sides with rocks.

  Then he sat down to see what would happen. He felt like he was a spectator at some game, sitting there on his high hill watching the field below. When the sky dimmed enough that he couldn’t make out individual trees on the flats, he put wood on the fire and slipped under the tent, feeling sure if the storm hit it would awaken him.

  It was louder than he expected. The rocks pounded and rumbled as they roiled in the water sounding like a convoy of trucks in the dark. Whitish tips of the waves were visible as the flood roared down the cleft, driving trees and riverbank trash and rocks and churned-up earth in its bosom.

  When the flood passed he tried to get back to sleep. Tried to let the comfort he felt being on the dome overshadow any decision he might have to make. Decisions could wait until daylight.

  In the morning he looked out at a complete sweep on the flats. The water was gone. It had leveled most of the small trees and shrubs, and those not leveled were half buried in debris. Boulders and logs were perched high on the bank, beached, looking dead and still. The earth had belched tons of water to cover his tracks and any traces of Herb’s tracks, and if there was any gold it was now buried deeper.

  His eyes wandered over the desolation below. Desolation so complete not even a bird flew over it. Whatever life had been on those flats was gone. He didn’t see how anything could have survived the torrent and wondered if the sow bear and her cubs had escaped it.

  In that instant he decided to walk out.

  Why not? It’s ninety miles—wouldn’t take but a week! No trails. I went further than that when Wayne and I left Belgium, and besides that, it was winter. Plus we didn’t have any food.