Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [149]
Jack stopped short, letting go of the rope on the sledge he was dragging, and looked at her with some amusement. ‘Do you see how many people are here already?’
‘Well, yes.’ She shrugged.
‘Every single day that number will grow larger,’ he said patiently. ‘They are pouring over the two trails in their thousands, and before long all the trees we see now will be chopped down. We have to start getting our wood right now as soon as we’ve made camp, or risk someone else getting it.’
Beth looked at him appraisingly. He was as dirty and bedraggled as every other man, with his bushy beard, matted long hair and his exposed skin raw from the bitter weather. But he didn’t have that intense gold lust that was in every other man’s eyes. She doubted he even dreamed of great riches the way Theo and Sam did.
‘Fair enough.’ She nodded. ‘That makes sense, but tell me, Jack Child, what drives you? I don’t think it’s the gold.’
He chuckled softly, looking back at Sam and Theo who were resting on their sledge. ‘Someone has to make sure you three get there safely.’
‘That doesn’t really answer my question,’ she retorted.
He smiled and reached out and patted her cheek. ‘I thought it did.’
By the middle of May their craft was completed, a sturdily built raft with a mast, a rudder to guide it, and slats around the sides to keep them and their kit safe in turbulent water. The boys had named it Gypsy, painting the name and the craft number, 682, on the rail across the prow. Samuel Steel, the superintendent of the Mounted Police, had decreed that all craft must be registered, and he had gone around the stampeders giving them each a number and logging down the names of everyone on each craft and their next of kin, in case of accidents on the long sail to Dawson City.
The raft sat on the ice on the edge of the shore, along with thousands of other craft, waiting for the day when the ice would break up. Many bore little resemblance to any boats Beth and the boys had ever seen; triangular shapes, round and oval ones, huge rafts big enough to take horses, scows, skiffs, catamarans, canoes, and some were little more than crude boxes.
Many were still being built, and despite the sunshine and clear blue sky, the air rang with squabbles, sawing, hammering and often curses, for those who hadn’t finished their boats were stressed and panicked, and everyone else was in a state of high expectancy.
It was estimated that there were now 20,000 people here on the shores of Lake Bennett, their tents and equipment covering the entire length of it. Every possible amenity was here, including bath tents, barber-shop tents, a church, casino and post office, along with shops selling everything from bread to gum boots. Yet because of the Mounties’ vigilance, there was none of the crime and skulduggery seen in Skagway. It was said that some of Soapy’s henchmen had come over the Pass, but had been sent back with dire warnings not to return.
The only serious trouble was between men in their saw-pits, cutting green timber into planks for their boats. They had to work in pairs either end of a six-foot-long blade. The one above on the scaffolding guided the saw along the chalk line on the lumber, while the man below had to pull it down, but as the big saw teeth bit into the wood, the one below was showered by falling sawdust. He was often convinced that his mate was not guiding the saw correctly, just as the man above claimed the lower one was holding the saw handle too tightly. Bitter arguments often exploded into bloody fights, and life-long friendships that had endured through all the trail had thrown at them were destroyed permanently.
Jack, Sam and Theo had avoided much of that because they had decided to build a raft made from whole slender trees rather than a boat of planks, but even so there had been a great deal of cursing and squabbling. Theo felt he was above manual work, and often