William Johnstone - Winter Kill

“Grab all the supplies you have and let’s go,” Frank told them. “By nightfall you should all be warm and dry and have some hot food in your bellies.”

They all exclaimed with joy at hearing that.

It took an hour to herd everyone up the beach to the camp. Conway had started feeding branches and pine needles into the fire as soon as he and his companions got there, so by the time Frank and the others arrived, the blaze was roaring again, throwing off waves of welcome heat. Everyone gathered around it.

Frank studied the survivors as they basked in the warmth. There were seventeen of them in all, counting him. The Montclair had carried between forty and fifty passengers and had a crew of more than twenty men. That meant there had been about seventy souls on board. At least fifty of them had died in the wreck. It was a sobering thought.

But no more sobering than the fact that the ones who had survived were still in great danger, despite the incredible good fortune that had brought them this far. They had supplies, guns, and ammunition, but they were a long way from any outposts of civilization, faced with an overland trek through some of the most hostile country in the world. And if another storm blew up, they would be in even worse shape.

Frank knew all that…but he had to smile anyway. They had a fighting chance.

That was all he had ever asked for in life.

Chapter 15

The next morning brought a grim discovery. Frank became aware of it when he heard one of the young women screaming. He was hunkered by the fire, cooking more of the salt pork. He handed the stick to a startled Fiona and stood quickly, reaching for the Winchester on the sand beside him.

“I’ll go see what’s wrong,” he said. “Pete, come with me. Neville, you and the other boys stay here and keep an eye on things.”

The cheechakos were all armed with pistols now, as were Fiona, Meg, and several other of the women. That was one of the first things Frank had seen to the day before.

With no blankets, they had all been forced to huddle together, close to the fire, during the night; otherwise some of them might have frozen to death as the temperature plummeted. This morning, the women had wanted some privacy to tend to their needs, so Frank had been letting them go down the beach to the rocks. That was where the screams were coming from now.

He had been sending the women to the rocks two at a time, and one of them had to have a pistol and keep watch while the other took care of her business. Lucy Calvert and Maureen Kincaid were down there now, he recalled.

“What do you reckon’s wrong?” Conway asked as they trotted along the beach.

“I don’t know,” Frank said, “but at least there hasn’t been any shooting so far.”

They reached the rocks, ducked among them, and came out on the other side to see Lucy and Maureen cringing back against one of the boulders and clinging to each other. A few yards away, a man’s body lay facedown on the sand, rising as the waves came in, then sinking as they went back out.

The man wore the blue uniform of one of the ship’s officers. Frank wasn’t particularly surprised to see the corpse. Not all the bodies would float in to shore, but he’d been certain that some of them would.

“Ladies, go on back to the others,” he told Lucy and Maureen. “Pete and I will tend to this.”

“Is…is he dead?” Lucy asked.

Frank looked at how the body was already beginning to bloat and nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.”

“How terrible,” Maureen muttered.

She and Lucy started back up the beach. Frank handed his rifle to Conway, went over to the corpse, and reached down to grab hold of the uniform jacket and haul the body completely out of the water. He rolled the man onto his back.

The bloating distorted the man’s features, and fish had been at him, too. Frank was still able to recognize the first mate from the Montclair. He had heard the man’s name but was unable to recall it, and he felt bad about that. Nobody ought to die without someone knowing who he was. Unfortunately, that was often the case.

“Frank…” Conway said.

Frank looked up. Conway was staring along the beach with a bleak expression on his face. Frank followed the direction of the young man’s gaze and saw three more corpses bobbing in the water just offshore. As he watched, the waves brought those bodies in and deposited them partially on the sand as well.

“This fella might’ve been the first, but I knew he wouldn’t be the last,” Frank said.

By midday, in fact, a dozen more bodies had washed ashore, including those of Captain Rudolph Hoffman, Gertrude Nevins, and Constance Wilson. It was a horrible thing for the young women to see the bodies of their former companions, Frank thought, but at least they had the certainty of knowing that Gertrude and Constance were gone. It would have been harder for them to leave this place if they had harbored even the faintest hope that the two young women might still be alive.

And leaving was exactly what Frank had in mind—the sooner, the better. Winter was making its inexorable way down from the Arctic Circle, and if they didn’t reach some sort of haven before it arrived in its full fury, they wouldn’t stand a chance. He was willing to let them have this day to rest and recover from the ordeal, but no longer.

Frank and Conway explored into the trees and found a ravine about a quarter of a mile inland. They took the bodies there and lowered them into the defile, then rolled rocks down on top of them. It was a poor excuse for a burial but the best they could do under the circumstances. If more bodies washed ashore, they could bring them here later.

When they returned to the beach, Frank gathered everyone around and told them what he and Conway had done. Some of the women weeped for Gertrude and Constance. Frank let them grieve for a while, then said, “Everyone needs to get a good night’s sleep tonight, because we’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”

Neville looked up in surprise. “Leaving? But we have wood here for the fire and plenty of supplies.”

“We don’t have enough supplies to last until next spring,” Frank said. “We don’t have a shelter to protect us during the winter, either.”

“Maybe we could build a cabin,” one of the men suggested. “We have axes, and there are plenty of trees. There are wild animals around here, too. You said you saw a bear yesterday. We could hunt for fresh meat.”

Frank nodded. “All those things are true. But I still think our chances for survival are better if we make it to Skagway or some other settlement.”

“Do you have any idea how far we are from Skagway?” Fiona asked.

“Nope.” Frank waved a hand toward the sea. “That may be Glacier Bay out there. If it is, we can follow the shoreline north along the inlet that leads to Skagway. It may not be more than fifty or sixty miles to the settlement.”

“You want us to walk fifty or sixty miles, in cold weather like this?” Marie asked, sounding like she could hardly believe it.

Frank smiled. “It’s liable to get a lot colder before it gets warmer again, Miss Boulieu. Anyway, we have a couple of horses. You ladies can take turns riding, so you won’t have to walk the whole way.”

“I think Frank’s right,” Fiona said. “Besides, have you forgotten that there are husbands waiting for you once you get to Whitehorse?”

“We’re still going to Whitehorse?” Meg asked.

“Why not? If we can make it to Skagway, we can buy more supplies and carry on just as we planned. We’ve just been delayed a little, that’s all.”

“And there are two less of us,” Jessica pointed out.

“And that’s a shame, but the rest of us are still alive.” Fiona’s hoarse voice took on a determined tone as she went on. “I don’t intend to give up just because we’ve had some bad luck along the way.”