The Moor - Laurie R. King [76]
"You have heard of them?" he asked.
"The sightings? Yes, Baring-Gould mentioned them the other day. Why, have you seen it?"
"No. But I imagine they will be causing some uproar among my neighbours out on the moor."
"I should think so, considering the last time it was seen. Actually, I was wondering if the hound might not come here. As I remember, the Baskerville curse was the reason for its presence, but there's nothing to say whether it's Baskerville blood that attracts him, or merely ownership of the hall."
I studied him in all innocence, and saw a look of astonishment cross his face, followed by a great roar of laughter.
"Oh my," he sputtered. "Mrs Holmes, I never thought of that. Maybe I'd better start wearing garlic or something."
"A pistol seems to have been effective the last time," I noted.
His laughter faded, but the humour remained in his eyes. "But the last time it was an actual dog, painted with—phosphorus, wasn't it?"
"Yes," I said. "Of course you're right. How silly of me."
"Have you ever worked with your husband, Mrs Holmes?"
"On a case?"
"Yes."
I spread some butter on a piece of roll and ate it thoughtfully. "We did collaborate on a case, once, involving a stolen ham."
The absurdity of the thing delighted him, as I thought it might do, and he insisted I tell him about it. I did so, emphasising the ridiculous parts until the story verged on the burlesque—not, I admit, a difficult task. When we had put that story to bed and been served the next course, I played the polite guest and asked about his life.
"What about you, Mr Ketteridge? You must have had some fascinating adventures in Alaska."
"It was quite a time."
"What was your most exciting moment?"
"Exciting good or exciting terrifying?"
"Either. Both."
"Exciting good was the first time I looked into my pan and saw gold."
"On your claim?"
"Yes. Fifty feet of mud and rock and ice—when I first staked it, the stream was frozen. I had to thaw out the ground with a fire before I could get at the mud. But there was gold in it. Amazing stuff, gold," he mused, looking down at the ring on his finger and rubbing it thoughtfully. "Soft and useless, but its sparkle gets right into a man's bones. 'Gold fever' is a good name, because that's what it's like, burning you and eating you up."
"And the exciting bad?"
"The sheer terror. Had a handful of those, like pieces of peppercorn scattered through a plate of tasteless stew. Most of the work in the fields was dull slog—you were uncomfortable all the time, awake or asleep, always hungry, never clean, never warm except in summer when the mosquitos ate you alive, your feet and hands were always wet and bruised. Lord, the boredom. And then a charge you'd set wouldn't go off and you'd get the thrill of going up to it, knowing it might decide to explode in your face. Or a tunnel you'd poked into the hillside would start to collapse, between you and daylight. But the most exciting moment? Let's see. That would either be when the dogsled went over a ledge into Soda Creek, or the avalanche at the Scales."
The last name tickled a vague memory. "I've heard of the Scales. Wasn't that the name for a hill?"
"A hill," he said with a pitying smile. "A hell more like it, if you'll pardon my French. Chilkoot Pass, four miles straight up. Seemed like it anyway, even in summer when you could go back and forth, but in the winter, twelve hundred steps cut into the ice, the last mile was like climbing a ladder. And you had a year's worth of supplies to shift to the top—the Mounties checked to make sure; they didn't want a countryside of starving men—so you couldn't just climb it once unless you could afford to pay the freight cable to take your load up for you. There