This is a short story entitled Upriver, a western about gold miners battling robbers in Alaska.
Matt McElhinney
Upriver
June 18th, 1877
About two weeks ride from Fairbanks, Alaska there was a place called Big Delta where unnamed rivers converged and fed the great, snaking, Tanana River. The Tanana was surrounded by an army of gargantuan pine trees that stretched on and on to ends of the Earth. In the spring, the Tanana would reach into the green ranks, rip out the forest’s front lines, and scatter their giant bodies all over her black sandy shores. On the edge of the forest, there was a solid pillar of smoke rising from a camp filled with carts and canvas tents. Next to the fire, old man Marvin sat on a stump wearing faded red long johns. His left foot was over his right knee. He massaged the ball of his foot, splaying out his toes, as he stared into the roaring campfire. The logs were arranged in a 3-foot-tall teepee and were charring white. A hunk of ember fell off a log and sent a plume of white ash and sparks up into the air.
“Wake up, old man,” a voice said. Marvin looked up to see a lanky, freckled, red headed, young man. He was ladling stew out of a large pot boiling over the fire and he said, “You need to eat something.”
The young man walked over and handed Marvin a steaming tin pan full of golden chunky stew. Marvin put his foot down onto the cold dirt and took the pan. He leaned over to his side, dug around in an old leather satchel, and produced a wooden spoon whittled expertly from pine. He dipped into the pan and scooped up a hunk of potato and beef. He puckered his lips and blew steam off the spoon. He closed his eyes and put the spoon in his mouth. He breathed out little jets of steam into the Alaskan air as he chewed. His face looked almost in pain with satisfaction as he swallowed.
“Mmm!” the old man let out.
“Tell me something, Jr.,” Marvin said as he pushed the stew around in his pan looking for a carrot. “Your ma teach you to cook like this?”
Connor’s smile shone through his bushy red beard as he ladled stew into his own pan. He sat down on a log across from the Marvin and said, “And my pa. My family owned the finest restaurant in Oneida county before the war, I reckon.”
“hwatchyall’ cook in there?”
“Brisket, mainly. That with biscuits and a corn chowder that could grow back a limb.”
“Biscuits mmm, mmm, mmm. You think’n you could whip up them biscuits here at camp?”
“No buttermilk.”
“Oh, come on, now! You can’t make them thangs without it?”
“I could, but I’d rather eat roof shingles.”
The old man slapped his knee and cackled, “Ya lettin’ me down, son. If you made them thangs right now, I’d have you bare foot and with child for the night let out!” They laughed. Marvin appraised the young man scarfing down the stew. He was running his fingers through his bushy white beard as he said, “Boy you turnin’ out alright. Yar little green on the prospecting and the panning, but you ain’t done half as bad as them Miller boys.”
The Miller brothers Thomas and Jack, along with Lennox Wetherbee’s party, still hadn’t come back from upriver and it was nearing sundown. They had been struggling to find anything other than moose scat, new arguments, and new ways to rehash old arguments. The brothers had left the camp situated on the north bank of the Tanana river a couple days ago with a small party. They hadn’t seen anything of them.
“Relax, old man. It hasn’t rained and the snow is at least a month off. Worst case scenario is these damn skeeters might have picked them up and flew off with them.”
“Yeah, I spose they ain’t to much reason for concern.”
“Besides, they said four days and it hasn’t even reached the end of the 3rd.”
“I spose’ that’s true too.”
As Connor yammered on, Marvin ran his eyes over the roaring water line upriver toward Little Delta and hoped that the rocky shores would reveal a bobbing caravan heading in his direction. But they did not. Marvin was startled by the smacking noise of the boy walloping the side of his neck with an open hand.
“Would ya look at the size of that bastard?” he said as he held out his hand to Marvin. There was a huge striped mosquito as wide as his hand smushed flat with a jet of blood, Connor’s blood, across his fingers. “These things are damned devil up here,” Connor said.
“I told ya dress up in that pine tar. Lord knows we got a months’ worth in the cart. Stinks to high hell, but that damn things haven’t even been near the cart in the time we been here. Listen, boy. If they ain’t here tomorrow I’m fixin’ on headin’ up there and seeing what’s going on. I got a bad feelin’ ‘bout this. Sunt-um ain’t right.”
“They said four days though.”
“I know what they said, but they ain’t no reason they shouldn’t have come back a little early. Weathers fine, waters low, and Lennox Wetherbee ain’t never been nobody to terry around about getting back to town, what with his new Misses and all.”
“What do you want to do then?” Connor said as he threw his arms out. “You wanna run up there looking for them and leave me here with the camp?”
“Naw, we’d pack up and head up together, I’d reckon.”
“They took the other horses. We ain’t got enough to haul both carts up there. We’re gonna have to leave one of them and lord knows Lennox will lose his damn mind if we leave one of his here. Besides we got to wait for that merchant barge to come down from Fairbanks so we can resupply in the morning. We’re damn near out of everything.”
“I spose we could take a wheel off his cart and take it with us, so as no one steals it.”
“Or we could just wait until tomorrow like they told us too.”
“Either way, keep that fire fed real good. We can’t have that Merchant barge miss us.”
Marvin sat down and stared up toward Little Delta again said nothing for a long while.
June 15th
Thomas and Jack Miller we’re from Vermont near the Canadian border in a town called High Gate. They were both tall with long dark long hair. They looked so similar some thought they were twins, but they were about three years apart and somewhere in their early thirties. The only real way to tell them apart was Jack had a long-curled mustache and Thomas regularly shaved. Both were union soldiers in the Vermont 9th infantry regiment during the war. They were decent soldiers, but terrible gold panners. About the only thing they were any good at in the Alaskan wilderness was shooting game and sustaining blow after blow from the land and its fickle nature. Their first run up the Tanana was a spectacular failure that nearly lost Jack all the toes on his left foot. The snow came on much faster than they had expected. August seemed balmy enough on the night of his birthday on the 18th, but by the 20th the banks were a foot thick and Jack’s boots were a little worse for the wear. Their hope this time was to link up with Lennox and his small company so they could have enough back up to mitigate the surprises that Alaska was full of. Things had been going pretty well since they left the main camp with Lennox and a small contingent. Thomas had beaned a big old Grizzly bear with his fancy new Henry rifle. A photographer had followed with them on the trip and had taken a glorious portrait of Thomas with his foot posted up on the bear’s carcass. He couldn’t wait to get back to Fairbanks and see the magical image come to life.
The Millers hadn’t really been meshing with the boys from Lennox’s party. A few of them were rebel ilk and there had been immediate words when they saw the old army issue satchels the Millers used.
“Well, well, well, look at the proud yankees and their nice little yankee purses,” Clemmons said pointing at the side of Thomas’ horse. The three other southerners snickered as they unloaded their own camp supplies and set up several yards away from the Miller’s and Lennox’s men.
“This little purse carried shot all over dixie,” Thomas said.
“Oh yeah? What’d ya buy it off some feller?” and with that, the southerners began that awful hooting and hollering the Millers had heard on the opposite side of plenty of battle fields.
The Millers were atop their horses, they towered over Clemmons and his friends. Jack spurred his horse toward Clemmons sending him stumbling back over a rock where he fell ass first in a mud pie. His Stetson hat flipped off revealing a big bald spot in the middle of his red hair. His overalls were caked in mud now.
“Aww, you bastard,” Clemmons hissed.
Clemmons stared up at Jack with murder in his eyes. The other southerners stopped their commotion all together and unholstered their pistols. They started forming a semi-circle round the Miller brothers.
“Careful. Maybe it’s not such a good idea for you whelps to pick a fight with northerners. Doesn’t ever seem to work out for you people, does it, boy?” Jack said.
One of the dixie boys named Huger snorted and heaved forward, spitting a snotty bomb onto the hoof of Jack’s horse.
“You’re gonna get over there and scrub that off, boy.”
“That right?” Huger said.
“Oh, I think so,” Jack said.
“I think not.” Huger said.
“Jack, relax,” Thomas said as he ran his eyes over the four other men.
“If you don’t get over here and use that dam neckerchief round your neck to wipe off that hoof, I’ll have to use this Colt Army to blast out what teeth you got left in that idiot head of yours. Maybe there’s some gold in there I could get at,” said Jack.
“God damnit Jack, shut up!” Thomas said.
“Maybe we could do old Billy Sherman a favor and burn their tent down tonight, Thomas,” Jack said. “It’s a shame they don’t have any cotton fields to torch or railroad sections to bow tie up. We could have had a real good time up here. Nostalgic and all that.”
“That is e-nough!” shouted Lennox Wetherbee.
He stormed over the rocky bank toward the rowdy half of his gold mining operation. Lennox Wetherbee was a blonde, thin built, fair-skinned, man with quite a degree of money from his New York aristocrat parents. He had built this group with the leftover men in Fairbanks that hadn’t been picked for the season by the other more experienced parties. He was beginning to regret the southern detachment. The Miller’s on the other hand, he had taken a liking to for their shooting prowess. There had been worse things than bears attacking camps in the past few years, such as several raids on miners by an unknown gang. One report had reached all the way to New York with gruesome details of a massacre of eight men. Lennox’s father had implored him through a telegraph to come home. Ultimately, Lennox settled his father by employing the Miller brothers.
Lennox stood between the men and said, “Now I don’t expect you men to like each other, but there will be a degree of functionality in this party, do you understand me? We have enough to worry about with the Alaskan wilderness attempting its damnedest to prevent us from extracting its gold. I will not be heading back to New York City to tell my father that I lead an expedition whose only accomplishment was a second civil war. Now Jack and Thomas you get off those horses and you can set up your camp next to ours. Clemmons you take this area over here and maybe the space between us will keep some peace. Tomorrow will be splitting up into smaller groups and heading up the tributaries separately. All I’m asking of you gentlemen is to make it through tonight without committing the act of murder, please and thank you.”
The men did as they were told and began setting up camp in their respective places for the night. Since they had left the main camp at Big Delta and ventured up to the unexplored tributaries there hadn’t been much in the way of any good panning. Lennox’s hope was these unmapped areas hadn’t been picked clean or even discovered yet. They were going to spread out into four parties and head up the four tributaries to scout out the best one. Then they would reconvene back at the main camp, gather up Marvin and the supplies, and head up as a whole party to the “promised land” as Lennox called it. The Miller’s spent the night silently laying out on bed rolls, passing around a bottle of horrible whisky with the other guys, all the while trading glares across to the southerners.
In the morning they packed up their horses and split into four groups. Lennox and three men, The Millers and the portly photographer named Mr. Walton. Another group of four headed by Lennox’s friend Mr. Billings, and the southerners. They met up at the Little Delta and Lennox circled them up for parting words.
“Alright now,” Lennox said. “We’ll head up our respective ways and meet back here in two days. If anyone finds anything of any worth, we’ll head back, gather up Marvin and the wagon train and head on up there. Any questions?” Nobody said anything. “Alright then. We’ll see you in two days, gentlemen.”
As each party split up and began parting off toward their perspective tributaries, Clemmons hollered out to the Millers,
“Y’all have a splendid trip, now.” The dixie boys snickered and chortled. “We’ll see you in twooooo days,” and as he waved goodbye to them the other dixie boys cackled. The Millers peeled off on the most eastern tributary. For the next hour as they plotted along, they could hear the dixie boys hooting and hollering off to the west until the forest between them became far too thick to hear much of anything accept the birds and roiling waters.
June 19th
Marvin and Connor woke in the early sunlight and began building a large fire on the shore of the Tanana to signal the paddle steamer better. They lopped down a couple dead and dry pines and fed them in long sections into the fire. When the fire began to roar, Marvin gathered up moss off a nearby log, and tossed it onto the fire. The smoke turned from pristine white to a dark black and Connor began choking and waving it away as he made his way back to the tents.
“Good lord, if we don’t get their attention maybe we’ll just kill them with this horrid smoke and take their wares,” Connor said.
“Well, I talked to Roy Skirski a’fore we left town and he said he would be here at Big Delta come noon today. He ain’t never been late in all the years I been tradin’ with him. If we miss him it’s our own damned fault. We cain’t not have them supplies now. We got nothing left in the way of salt and hard tack.”
The morning rolled by uneventfully and when the sun had reached its zenith, they spotted the paddle steamer. It was a giant, red, white, and black box looking thing with two 30-foot stacks spewing out the blackest smoke you ever saw. The boat was named the Beluga and it was often carrying rich folks from Anchorage up to Junction, so they could watch the bears feed. The river was straight for miles before the Big Delta, but it seemed to take the steamer only a matter of minutes to reach them. As the boat neared shore, the rails on the top deck began clamoring with people in expensive clothes. They were watching as a loaded down flat barge unlashed from the side of the paddle boat and made its way across the water to the shore. The barge was wide and had three men it, two poling against the riverbed with long poles, and one standing on the bow waving to Connor and Marvin. As the barge mushed up against the shore, Connor and Melvin grabbed the bow and pulled it in. Connor was distracted by a young woman with a parasol and a lovely blue lace dress, like the one in that magazine he saw back at the trading post in Fairbanks. He could make out the shape of her waist and he wondered what it was like to be that corset.
“Pull harder, fool! For we lose this damn thing,” Marvin said.
Connor blushed. The other men hopped off the boat and slogged through the water to shore and threw a rope around a tree and synched it tight. The man who had been standing on the bow was a Mr. Roy Skirski. He was a six-foot-five behemoth, with a curly black and grey beard, a bulbous nose, and sun wrinkles that made his smiling face look like a beat-up leather glove.
“Marvin, Marvin, Marvin! What in the hell are you doing way up here? You are too damn old to be this far up Tanana.”
“We’re going further yet. Maybe sooner rather than later…”
“How’s that?” he said putting a giant paw on Marvin’s shoulder and walking him toward the barge.
“Wetherbee’s late.”
“How late?”
“sposed to be here this mornin.”
“Is that right?” Mr. Roy said. He studied Marvin a little closer and saw the undercurrent of worry in his slumped shoulders. His smile left his face as he said, “Any sign of anything strange?” he leaned in and said quietly, “nothing come floating down from Little Delta now did it?”
“No, no, no, but it’s just that Mr. Wetherbee’s got that Manhattan “punctionality” and honestly, on time is late for him.”
“Yes. So, I’ve heard. Listen we’ll do our deal here and get you your supplies. If he
doesn’t come running up by the time we’re done here, we’ll talk a little further about the matter. He did leave you a purse to do business with right?”
“Mhhmm. I got it right it here,” Marvin said tapping the purse tied to his belt.”
An hour or so passed as Marvin and Mr. Roy haggled back and forth over things like a small barrel of molasses, 10 sacks of flour, 100 eggs, five sacks of sugar, and few other particulars that Mr. Roy just couldn’t help laboring over with respect to price. If it had merely been Marvin he was dealing with, the deal would have been over half an hour ago, but the jingle of Mr. Wetherbee’s purse was all too much for Mr. Roy’s ears. They loaded up the various wares into the carts and shook hands after a slightly rapacious price had been met. Before Mr. Roy got back on the barge, he pulled Marvin aside.
“Look, Marvin. We’ll be back here in two days. If somethings wrong and you’ve gone looking for them, leave a cairn pile on the shore and we’ll offload some men and come looking too. If they show up, just carry on as you would, and we’ll float on by.”
“Thank ye, Roy. I hate sayin’ it, but I’m affeered I’m having a premission that you’ll be seeing a cairn here come Tuesday.”
Mr. Roy threw his leg over the bow of the barge and said, “Marvin, Marvin, Marvin, don’t say that! All will be well.” As Mr. Roy started waving goodbye to Marvin and Connor the two men behind him pressed the long poles into the shore and the barge scraped off toward the paddle boat. Connor saw the girl with the parasol again and she twinkled her white gloved fingers at him, and he blushed. After several minutes, the paddles on the great big wheel began slapping against the water and soon the boat rounded the bend and the smoke column disappeared. Marvin began pacing on the shore and mumbling under his breath. He ran toward the big bend trying to catch a glimpse of the boat. He turned back and started running toward Connor. He pointed to a boulder and said,
“Start piling rocks on top of that there boulder, boy. We’re headin’ up, damnit.”
Mr. Lennox wasn’t a bad prospector by any means, but by any experienced man’s account, it was not expected of him to ever make history in Alaskan gold. It happened in about as laughable a scenario as the universe was capable of producing. There was a long day of hard travel over the rocky shorelines with occasional stops to slosh about in the river and pan for gold. One of his men had found a few flakes on the second morning, but nothing of any serious promise. At nightfall, he and his men set up camp on the little river he dubbed the “Liza” after his new wife. The small campfire they had was heating a pot of broth while one of his men cut some carrots into it. Lennox was stoking the little fire underneath and quietly wondering to himself if the other men had found anything or whether they would lie to him about it if they had. He poked one of the round river stones underneath the coals. He pushed it out of the way and started poking around at the rocks beneath it when one caught his eye. It was covered in soot, but it was an odd shape. It wasn’t smooth, it was shaped like a small, gnarled, fist or something. He prodded it, then the glimmer hit his eye. He shot up to his feet, grabbed the pot of broth and splashed it onto the fire.
“What’d ya do that for?” the cook screamed as he jumped back away from the steam plume.
Lennox kicked over the logs and sparks and steam flew everywhere. He waved away the cloud with his hand and got on his knees. He saw the glimmer again and reached in and snatched it out.
“Ah!” he screamed as he dropped the soot covered rock and clutched his hand. “Idiot,” he muttered under his breath. He bent down and pulled out a cloth from his pack. He wadded it up in his hand and picked up the rock. He walked over to the river’s edge and thrust the rock into the water. It squelched as it entered the river and bubbles obscured its image for a moment. When the bubbles cleared the moonlight revealed to Lennox the largest gold nugget ever found in Alaska.
June 19th
The only thing the Miller brothers found up past Little Delta was more knowledge about photography than they had ever wanted to know. The man they were with, Mr. Walton, was in his mid-forties with a graying, bushy, mustache under his fat nose and glasses. He was from Fall River, Massachusetts and he flogged the Miller brothers to death with hometown stories and a litany of unretainable information about silver nitrate. Every photograph he took of the Miller brothers panning the river was “elegant and otherworldly in its sylvan grandeur,” as Mr. Walton had said. It also captured the Miller brother’s perfect embarrassment at never finding a single flake on the river or the little creek they had detoured up. To top it all off, they were going to be late to camp for sure.
“We have to get heading back, Jack,” Thomas said.
“I know,” Jack said as he stood up. He sent his gold pan flying and clattering over the rocks. “Damnit,” he said as he placed his hands akimbo on his hips. “Alright, Mr. Walton. I know you’ve had quite the experience with all this ‘sylvan grandeur’ but you might want to start packing up that equipment of yours.”
“Right away, gentlemen!” Mr. Walton said. He quickly slapped together the tripod under the boxy part of the camera. He latched the equipment to the side of his mare and was seated in the saddle long before either brother had even finished packing.
“You move pretty quick there, Mr. Walton,” Thomas said.
“Oh, you have to be quick in my business,” Mr. Walton said.
“Ours too,” said Jack tapping his holstered pistol.
They all laughed. Ten minutes later they were all set up and heading back to Little Delta. A few hours later they arrived. They didn’t hear or see anyone at first, this gave them some worry, what with them being three hours late and all. They thought at worst Lennox would holler at them, but not leave them. They crossed the shallow flat water to reach the middle sand bar where their fears of being late were immediately trivialized. All the other men were dead and splayed out over the rocks in the afternoon sun. Lennox’s body was half submerged in the delta’s water, his head was bobbing and rolling with constant little slaps dealt by the river’s waves. The blood was fresh and everywhere. The flies hadn’t even got to the men yet. They had been picked clean of purses, pistols, rifles, liquor skins, ammunition, pocket watches and all the like. Jack walked over to Lennox’s body and grabbed him by his boot and pulled him onto shore, red spilled out from a pair of holes in his chest. Jack looked Lennox’s face over, and for a moment, he was back in the muck filled trenches of Chickamauga watching the color leave Donald O’Malley’s face for the last time. A loud poof sound brought him back and he turned his head around to see Mr. Walton coming from underneath the cloth attached to his camera. Mr. Walton sighed.
“The law’s going to want this photograph,” Mr. Walton said as he removed his glasses and cleaned them.
“I suppose you’re right,” Jack said.
“This is nothing new for me or this camera. Gettysburg and all…” Mr. Walton said.
“Us neither. Chickamauga,” Jack said.
“Lord, have mercy,” Mr. Walton said shaking his head.
“Jack! Them grayback’s bodies ain’t here. No horses neither,” Thomas said.
Jack turned down river and wondered if they had enough to time to get to Clemmons before they reached Marvin and the kid.
…
Several hours later, Clemmons was sitting on top of his horse and leaning backward as he took a slurp from a grain liquor skin. The other southern boys behind him were tugging along a mess of horses and passing back and forth a bottle of whiskey. They were moving slower than he would have liked, but he was feeling pretty good. He put his hand at his side and felt the hefty bulge of the pilfered gold nugget in his satchel. He couldn’t help doing it every couple of minutes, it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. The look on that Manhattan-money-boy’s face when he saw old Clemmons standing in that tree line with that rifle, well it almost made the war not feel so bad anymore. All they had to do now was trot down to the old man and that pup. They could finish them and be on their way to Brazil to see his cousin’s new plantation. Hell, he could even start one there himself. Didn’t speak a word of that damn port-a-geez but he reckoned they spoke gold. And that would get him damn far, he knew that much. He wished he’d gotten the chance to scoop that Yankee Jack Miller’s head off, but he was probably bear scat by now. He couldn’t pan for shit that much was for sure, probably couldn’t survive out here neither. They’d hopefully find a half-eaten chunk of him floating in the river at some point.
Shots rang out. One of the horses Huger was tugging along dropped and there was a cacophony of men screaming, horses braying, and pistols blasting. One of Clemmons men was reared off his horse and before he even hit the ground his skull burst open spraying gore all over the horses and men. The horses stomped all over his body making audible cracking noises. They tore themselves free and bolted across the river. Huger was retuning fire and heading off the shore and into the tree line. Clemmons slapped his reins down and his horse followed suit. A tree branch exploded next to his head and his horse reared. He held tight but was dumped to the horse’s right side. His feet hit the ground and he sprang up. He reached into the long leather rifle sleeve on the horse’s side and produced a 45-70 Henry. There was a pause in the shooting, and he made for the trunk of a great pine. He pulled the rifle up into his shoulder, looked down the sights, spotted the fat photographers chest, and shot. Mr. Walton’s body slumped over and his pistol clattered into the rocks. Another barrage of rounds cracked against the trees and his friend Collins screamed out in agony as his white shirt turned a meaty red around his shoulder. A second later another round hit him in the right cheek bone and there was no more screaming. Clemmons couldn’t see anything through the smoke-filled tree line, but he levered another round into the chamber and fired out the whole load anyway. It was quiet for a second. He strained his ears to hear anything. Then he heard shouting and an anguished moan.
Thomas was lying on the ground grunting and holding the side of his thigh. There was a deep ominous red oozing between his fingers.
“Thomas!” Jack yelled as he ran over to his brother. He knelt down and assessed the gash taken out of the side Thomas’ leg. It was a chunk for sure, but it wasn’t the worst damn thing he had ever seen. He ripped off his shirt and wrapped it around Thomas’ leg and wrenched it tight. Thomas howled. Jack stood up and blasted two rounds into the tree line. Jack looked around for horse’s, but the only horse that hadn’t run off was on its side bleeding out onto the rocks.
“We have to get you out of here,” Jack said.
“The river. I can’t walk. We’ll be too slow on shore. Get us in the water and we’ll float down,” Thomas said.
Jack holstered his pistol, grabbed Thomas under the arm pits, and began dragging him toward the water. They waded in and Thomas rolled over to his stomach and began swimming to a piece of driftwood hung up on a boulder. Jack and Thomas broke it free and clung to it as the river pulled them down stream. They heard the sound of rifle rounds exploding against boulders and splashing into the roaring water around them. The water was fast moving here and shallow enough that their feet touched. They held on to the driftwood for dear life as the river threw them forward toward Big Delta.
Marvin and Connor had ditched the carts and opted for three horses. One to haul some basic supplies and two for riding. The kid pissed and moaned the whole way, but damnit Marvin didn’t care a bit. Something was wrong. He could feel the wrongness, the way his old bones could feel a rain coming. They moved all day up toward Little Delta and didn’t even bother making a fire for the night. At first light they were moving again. All the horrors in Marvin’s imagination seemed to come alive when he spotted a Stetson hat washed up on the shore.
“That doesn’t mean anyone’s dead, old man,” Connor said.
“It don’t mean they’re live’ neither,” Marvin said.
He pushed the horses harder. Images of the great flood of 69’ flashed through his mind. Bodies and trees tossed like spears into the upper branches of great old pines. A whole camp of twenty families wiped out. He never wanted to see anything of the sort again. Then there was the Copper City massacre. He heard a Comanche Dog Warrior made a show of chopping his brother in to smaller and smaller pieces. Marvin had begged his brother not to go that deep into Kansas, but it all happened anyway. There weren’t any tribes like that up here, but the thought wouldn’t go away. His memory was interrupted by splashing in the middle of the river. Two men on a log. He stopped the horses and jumped off and rushed toward the water.
“It’s the Millers! Boy, get a branch! Then get down here and help me pull them in.”
Connor quickly grabbed a dead, ten-foot, pine tree and waded into the water. The Millers were nearing fast. Marvin and Connor lurched the tree out into the path of the Millers and the Millers abandoned the log and swam toward them. Jack was pulling Thomas who was on his back and flailing his arms wildly. Marvin tried to scream over the roar of the water to them, but it was far too loud. The Millers crashed into the tree and wrapped their arms around it. Connor and Marvin ripped them back toward shore with everything they had. As they reached the shallows Jack stood up and pulled Thomas in. As he did a stream of blood flowed from his leg. They all picked him up sopping wet and threw him into the saddle of the pack horse. Jack hopped onto the back with him.
“What in the hell happened up there?” Marvin yelled in a rattly voice.
“Clemmons’ boys ambushed everybody else and made off with everything. We were late, but we caught up with them and licked a few of them pretty good. Thomas got shot and the horses run off. We had to get in the river to escape,” Jack said.
“They’re all dead?” Marvin asked.
“Everyone cept’ that Huger and Clemmons,” Jack said.
“Well, are the coming now er what!” Marvin shouted.
“Yes, we have to move,” Thomas said through ragged gasps.
Mr. Roy Skirski loved his job. He got to take rich people, and their money, to bask in the most beautiful country the good lord had ever created. Sometimes, the rich folks were a little uppity and wanted to do stupid things like pet the grizzly cubs, but for the most part it was a dream. They had watched the bears catch huge salmon for a golden afternoon no one on that boat would ever forget. A writer from the Anchorage Bugle had been with them and he seemed happy as a clam so far, it boded well for business. On the way back though, his peacefulness was stymied by the sight of an unmissable cairn at Big Delta. He reluctantly went to the captain and explained the happenings. Captain Moore gave him a detachment of 10 men. They grabbed some rifles, supplies enough for two days, and set off on the barge for the shore. As they reached shore Mr. Roy looked back and saw the top deck railings of the ship full of passengers studying their every move and cheering them on. He was not happy to be on shore, but he wasn’t going to be the man who did nothing in whatever story unfolded in the Anchorage Bugle.
This somber moment was interrupted by the sound of gunshots in the distance. The men lined up behind a log and steadied their rifles. There were three horses riding hard. Someone was shooting backwards. He heard Marvin’s voice hoarse from screaming, he was saying his name. Now there were men behind them. One of them sent a round screaming toward shore. Marvin’s group was approaching fast, he could make out Marvin’s face now. As they came upon the camp site the rounds started pouring overhead from the two riders in pursuit. Marvin hopped off his horse and got down behind the log where the men were and started screaming.
“Shoot, you damn fools. Shoot em,” he yelled.
Jack stood up and produced his pistol and pulled the trigger. It didn’t fire, It was waterlogged. He reached down and grabbed a rifle from one of the riverboat men. He levered a round into the chamber and fired. The rest of the men opened fire too. They shot until the men and the horses they were on were a pink mist on the edge of the campsite. There was a long pause after the last shot was fired. The reports rang out for miles and miles. Mr. Roy stood there in horror at what he had witnessed. He turned to see Jack Miller on the flat barge polling toward the ship with his brother slumped against a sack of flour. Mr. Roy could hear the screams and shouting from the paddle boat and wondered if he would ever have a business again.