Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [127]
‘I can hunt,’ Theo said, but his voice had lost its confidence.
‘It’s going to be tough.’ Jack looked at Sam, then at Beth and back at Theo. ‘Really tough. Like nothing we’ve ever experienced before. We’re city folk, and if we aren’t prepared, we could die on the way of cold or even starvation.’
‘People on the way will help us, won’t they?’ Sam asked, a tremor in his voice.
‘We can’t count on anything or anyone,’ Jack said sternly. ‘You saw the madness last night. In a week’s time when word has spread further, it will be even crazier, people flocking up there from everywhere. We need to book a passage on a ship to Skagway quickly — that is, if you want to go.’
‘Do you want to go, Jack?’ Beth asked. She had a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach and whether it was fear or excitement she couldn’t tell.
‘Yes, I do, more than anything,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘It’s the chance of a lifetime and I don’t want it to pass me by.’
Chapter Twenty-five
Jack was right. Within a week Gas Town was caught in the grip of complete madness. The Klondike Gold Stampede was on.
Newspapers all over the world had spread the news of the gold, and every train coming into Vancouver brought hundreds more people who were desperate to get to the Yukon. They swarmed into Gas Town, bringing chaos with them as they pushed and shoved to buy equipment, provisions and tickets on any craft that would take them to Skagway. Yet Vancouver was reported to be far less frantic than Seattle, and there were also steamers setting off from Victoria, Portland and San Francisco laden with passengers.
Beth and the boys were staggered by the speed with which entrepreneurial shopkeepers in Vancouver got equipment and food supplies stacked up for all these gold stampeders. Huge banners across the shops in Cordova Street proclaimed them to be ‘The Klondike Outfitter’. Sledge dogs were being advertised at exorbitant sums, booklets which listed everything needed for the trip were being printed and sold before the ink was dry. Gold fever was highly infectious, it seemed: bankers were walking out of their secure jobs; street car operators deserted their trams; policemen, salesmen and reporters abandoned their jobs; some farmers even walked away from crops before they were harvested.
There was no other subject for discussion. It was as if people had stopped being sick, having babies, getting married or even dying. Old or young, rich or poor, whatever nationality, everyone wanted to join the stampede.
The rich could reach the Yukon in relative comfort by steamer to St Michael on the Bering Sea, then down the river Yukon to the goldfields, but it was many more miles than the overland route from Skagway. Edmonton was advertised as the All Canadian route for the patriotic, but Jack, who had pored over maps, denounced that as unfeasible as it meant crossing two mountain ranges.
It was Jack who got their steamer tickets, and almost immediately they could have resold them for four or five times the original cost. Word got out that the Canadian Mounted Police would not allow anyone across the border from Alaska to Canada without a ton of provisions. This was because they feared a famine.
Jack and Sam rushed around getting their supplies together: beef blocks, rice, sugar, coffee and evaporated eggs. A tent, mackinaw coats, wide-brimmed hats, high boots, gloves, glasses to stop snow blindness — the list was endless, and they spent all the money they had so carefully hoarded over the past months. But smooth-talking Theo found a way to keep the funds coming, moving among the new arrivals in town with his three-card monte games and relieving them of some of their savings.
As the days passed in feverish buying and packing their supplies in waterproof oilcloth sacks, Beth played her fiddle nightly to rapturous applause, ending with a hat stuffed with money. Sam and Jack poured enough drinks to float several