The Wild Read Free

shore a light mist seemed to hang permanently above Dyea, and the plumes of chimney smoke from the settlement only added to the gauzy veil that obscured the eastward view. They could see the outline of icy hills in the distance, but as they started along the main street, their focus remained on the town.
    On the right they passed a row of nearly identical barnlike buildings, each with a small window just below its peaked roof and with a shop entrance below. Jack glanced at the signs: YUKON TRADING POST, U.S. POST OFFICE , COUGHLIN-LANDRY HARDWARE, DUTCHER BILL’S SALOON .
    The left side of the street seemed more familiar, with a brightly painted façade on a stand-alone structure whose sign read only DANCE HALL . Beyond that stood Hayley’s Hotel, a big box of a building—clapboard like all the others—with its sign painted right on the side wall.
    â€œLooks like it’s about to fall down,” Shepard muttered.
    â€œI’ve slept in much worse,” Jack said, thinking about railroad sidings and jail cells. “It’ll be nice to have a soft bed for a night, especially since it’s going to be a long while before we encounter another. And a bath wouldn’t go amiss for either of us.”
    Shepard grunted in amusement. After eight days at sea, they both stank. “First we have to get there.”
    It was an excellent point. The entire street was a muddy mess of hoof-and boot prints, and furrows cut by wagon wheels. In some places the dirt had dried and hardened into ridges, and in others water filled the crevices.
    As they navigated the runnels and potholes, mud sucking at their boots, Shepard’s breathing grew labored under the weight of his fifty-odd-pound pack. Jack gave him a surreptitious glance and saw that rather than glowing red with exertion, his brother-in-law’s face had paled. Before long, Shepard would be unable to carry his own pack.
    â€œYou doing all right?” Jack asked.
    â€œI’ll manage,” Shepard muttered.
    They’d been amiable traveling companions all through the voyage, but now a growing tension enveloped them. In all the world there was no one Jack loved as much as his stepsister, Eliza. She had practically raised him, and against her wishes, and with full knowledge of the man’s deteriorating health, he had plotted with her husband to embark upon this adventure, knowing that Shepard was able and keen to finance the entire journey himself.
    Perhaps Jack had been selfish, but there was nothing to be done for it now. Besides, Shepard was a willing and insistent partner.
    Jack tried to assuage his guilt by considering the other purpose for this adventure: to aid his mother. On the day of their departure, Eliza had revealed to him that their mother was close to losing her home. She had relied on Jack’s income for a long time, and his recent month-long absence—a stretch in jail for vagrancy, though none of his family knew of it—had caused her to fall deeper into debt. She had even returned to conducting séances and other rituals as a spiritual medium, an absurdity that she touted as the truth and that made Jack distinctly uncomfortable. He had persuaded himself that it was nothing more than a charade and a fraud. So though the woman had little love in her heart—all the nurturing he had needed as a boy hehad found in Eliza—still she was his mother. If he found gold, she would be able to keep her home, and to abandon the charlatanry of spiritualism. Yet that seemed a distant concern right now; it was Shepard who worried him most.
    But Shepard had his own mind. He was a man, not some sickly child to be coddled, and Jack believed that every man must be master of his own fate. Nevertheless, he dreaded having to deliver the news to Eliza should calamity befall her husband.
    Eyes front, chin high, Jack marched across the muddy ruin of Dyea’s main street toward the boardwalk in front of Hayley’s Hotel.