Echoes of Twilight--Dawn of Alaska 4

Chapter One
Stikine River Wilderness, Alaska; October 1888

They were all going to die. The only question was how long it would take.

Bryony Wetherby dipped the wooden spoon into the pot over the fire and stirred the soup, trying not to think of how it steamed and swirled against the air that grew colder with each passing day. Trying not to think of how her fingertips were so cold they ached and the big toe on her left foot was numb.

And it was only October. Not November or December or January. Just October, and she was fighting frostbite.

“Bryony, come here and look at this.” Her father’s voice filled the campsite. “I think I found a new lichen.”

Bryony looked up at where her father and Dr. Ottingford both crouched on the ground near a boulder on the outskirts of the camp. Behind the boulder, a glacial lake filled the valley, it’s water a creamy turquoise color.

“I think it’s a member of the Stereocaulon family.” Her father studied the lichen through his magnifying glass. “But I’ve never seen one before with a gray hue.”

“Yes, I agree. It’s definitely part of the Stereocaulon family.” Dr. Ottingford, her father’s research associate, said from where he kneeled on the ground beside her father.

“Hurry and grab that journal.” Her father looked over at her, his brow furrowed into lines that showed his impatience. “Roger here will collect a sample to take back to Washington DC.”

She almost asked her father what the point of recording anything about the lichen was, when it seemed more and more likely they would die in the Alaskan wilderness, surrounded by towering mountains and rocky valleys that didn’t contain enough soil to grow any vegetation they could eat.

Six weeks. That’s how long they’d gone on like this after their guide had died in a bear attack. At first they hadn’t been worried. Her father and Dr. Ottingford had decided to collect samples for a few more days after they’d buried their guide. The Department of the Interior had commissioned their study on the flora and fauna of Southeast Alaska, and her father had wanted a chance to conclude the findings he’d been working on in the higher elevations near the Stikine Icefield.

But that was when they assumed they’d be able to find their way back to the river. Or to a stream. Or to anything that might lead them to the place they’d beached their canoes on the banks of the mighty Stikine River and headed inland.

“Bryony?” her father called. “Didn’t you hear me? I need the journal.”

“Come eat and I’ll record the surroundings after dinner.” Not that she could call the three handfuls of edible roots she’d thrown in the stew pot for dinner. It was flavored broth, at best, and not enough to sustain them through the night and into the morning. But it was the only thing they had.

“Get the journal.” Her father’s voice took on a stubborn edge. “This is too important to wait.”

She sighed, then left the spoon in the simmering pot, grabbed the current book she was using to sketch her findings, and headed toward where her father and Dr. Ottingford were both crouched on the ground, studying the snow lichen with small, grayish-white leaves that covered a series of smaller rocks beside the boulder.

“Note how dense the coverage is, and that the leaves are more gray than white.” Her father reached out and brushed one of the leaves with his finger. Then he continued to rattle off a list of observations about the size and shape of the leaves, how it grew in both sunny and shaded areas, and the density of the coverage.

Bryony held the pencil to the paper and recorded every detail he listed, then asked about the vegetation growing around it before finally sketching a picture.

“Create a more defined edge on the leaves. They look too feathery.” Her father peered over her shoulder. “Don’t you think the leaves need to be more defined, Roger?”

Dr. Ottingford carefully scraped a small sample of the lichen off the boulder and pressed it between parchment paper before straightening and looking at the journal. “Yes, make them a bit more distinct if you could, Miss Wetherby.”

Bryony did as asked, waiting until both men nodded their approval and read over her notes before closing the journal. “Now can we eat dinner?”

Her father blinked, as though just now remembering that they needed to eat at least a few bites of food if they wanted to keep from starving. He got like this when he was focused on something, almost as though eating and drinking and not dying of hypothermia were all somehow secondary to studying vegetation.

“Right. Yes. Let’s eat dinner.” He scratched the side of his head. “What did you prepare?”

“A stew made primarily with roots.” It was the only thing they could eat on the cusp of winter. The wild blueberries had ripened and died months ago, the fireweed stalks that could be eaten as young shoots were now brown and tough. And the glacier lilies, who’s bulbs could be eaten, had also died. The only way to find food was to dig up the roots of various plants. Either that or hunt it, but that had been their guide’s job, and they’d struggled to find food ever since he’d died.

“That’s it? Root stew?” Her father raised a bushy white eyebrow. “I’m rather hungry tonight. Didn’t we skip lunch?”

“Yes.” And breakfast had been the same roots, only she’d fried in a pan over the fire rather than boiled them in a stew.

“Can’t you make something with the jerky or pemmican? Maybe cook up some biscuits and fry it over the fire for sandwiches?”

She tried not to clench her jaw and tense her shoulders. Tried not to let the heat pricking the backs of her eyes turn into actual tears. Tried not to let the panic bubbling in her stomach creep into her voice.

But when she turned her gaze onto her father, she wasn’t sure she succeeded in any of those things. “We ran out of pemmican two days ago and we sent the last of the jerky with Heath and Stuart when they went to find help.”

“What about biscuits?” Dr. Ottingford’s voice, which was normally dry and monotone, held a hopeful sound.

She sighed. “We ran out of that last week too. I told you.”

“You did?” Father blinked again, his eyes large behind his spectacles. I could have sworn we had enough supplies to last us when Stuart and Heath left.”

“We did, but we also assumed they’d be gone for about a week. It’s been three.”

“There, there, bug. Don’t fret.” He reached out and took her hand, then patted it as he’d done when she was a child. “I’m sure Stuart and Heath have found the river by now. Maybe they even went to one of those Indian villages to ask for help. It will all work out. You’ll see.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” Bryony tugged her hand away from her father. “What if they slipped while trying to make it down a mountain? Or what if a grizzly bear attacked them too? What if snow comes tonight and makes passage out of the valley impassible?”

At this point, the only thing she could assume was that her brother and his best friend had perished in the wilderness right along with their guide. They should have been back well over a week ago.

And any number of things might have happened to them in this vast, beautiful, untamed land.

Why couldn’t her father see it? How could he be so smart when it came to science, and so utterly clueless about everything else?

“We’ll be fine.” Her father reached out and patted her hand again. “This isn’t my first expedition where something’s gone awry. Roger, remember the time when we were in the Southwest studying the vegetation in the desert?”

Dr. Ottingford rubbed the bald spot on the top of his head, his eyes wide behind his own pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “Yes, I remember. We were able to find water before running out. It wasn’t nearly as dire of a situation as our guide first thought.”

That wasn’t how she remembered it. It had seemed beyond dire, as though they’d been hours away from dying. She’d been accompanying her father on his expeditions since the ripe old age of eight—after her mother died. Before that, she’d assisted him by taking notes in the hothouse and sketching plants. But even though that expedition to Texas had been six years ago, she could still recall the terror she’d felt when their guide realized the creek they’d been planning to get water from was dry, and they had to look for another water source.

That had taken them four hours to find another creek.

But here they’d been lost in the wilderness for six weeks. Surely that had to be more serious than a four hour delay in finding water. Why couldn’t her father see that?

“Your brother and Stuart made it back to the river. I’m sure they did. Help will be here any day.” Her father turned toward the pot with steaming broth hanging over the fire. “I know a meal of boiled roots doesn’t seem like much, but we’ll be eating fish aplenty soon enough.”

But what if Heath and Stuart got lost? Or what if they were dead?

“I know we said we’d stay here and wait for them to return with a rescue expedition, but I think we should leave in the morning.” She followed her father back to the fire.

“No.” Her father picked up one of the tin bowls beside the fire, then stirred the broth in the pot. “We said we’d stay here and study the vegetation until they returned. The last thing we need to do is move locations. That will make it impossible for them to find us.”

“That assumes they’re alive and well enough to lead an expedition back to us. And we don’t know that they are.”

Her father dropped the spoon back into the pot, his light blue eyes piercing beneath his bushy white eyebrows. “Do you truly think your brother is dead, Bryony?”

She shifted her weight on the uneven ground, her throat growing tight. She didn’t want to think that. Didn’t want to believe that what had once been a happy family of four, with two parents, one son, and one daughter, was now just a father-daughter team.

But what else was she supposed to think?

What—other than a major disaster—would possibly keep Heath from returning to them when he knew they were stranded in the wilderness?

“I don’t know what to think, that’s part of what makes me so worried. Part of what makes me think we need to leave in the morning.” And hope and pray that they’d somehow be able to find their way through the towering mountains and winding valleys that had confused them for the past six weeks. “You can tell winter is coming. I know you can.”

Almost as though confirming her statement, a brutal gust of wind blew down from one of the mountains, working its way beneath her wool coat.

“The girl does have a point, Atticus.” Dr. Ottingford looked to the north, where the tallest of the mountains surrounding them towered over the valley with its snow-capped peak.

It should have been a beautiful sight, the majestic mountain with a turquoise lake at its base and a series of smaller mountains circling the lake. It had been beautiful, weeks ago, the first time she’d seen it. Before she’d realize just how lost they were.

Now it terrified her.

“We don’t know what might have befallen Heath and Stuart, and the weather is turning.” Dr. Ottingford gestured toward the mountain to the north, then dragged his gaze along the series of peaks that surrounded them to the east and south and west. “Half the time, the peaks are too shrouded in clouds for us to see them, and when we can, the snow line is always farther and farther down. We can’t afford to be here when winter comes. The canyon we followed in here will become impassible with the first bit of snow.”

Her father sighed, his large shoulders heaving. “I really do think Heath and Stuart will return, possibly with an entire team to guide us out. If we move locations, it will only be harder for them to find us. It might even prevent them from finding us at all. Leaving should be a last resort.”

“It should, but like I said, we need to leave before the snow comes.” Dr. Ottingford met her father’s gaze. His voice was painfully calm as he spoke, not sounding worried or excited, like how he always spoke. “We don’t know enough about the wilderness to survive a winter in these mountains.”

“I think we should give it another week.” Her father dipped the ladle into the pot and dumped the watery broth into his bowl. “If Heath and Stuart still haven’t arrived, then we’ll leave.”

A week might be too long, but she wasn’t going to be able to convince her father to leave his work. So she wrapped her coat tighter around her as another gust of wind swept into the valley and simply said, “Thank you.”

Her father didn’t respond as he wordlessly spooned the stew into two more bowls.

And Bryony couldn’t help but wonder if staying an extra week meant she’d ever see home again.
 

Chapter Two
Five Days Later

No rabbit. Bryony stared at the noose she’d made with rope she’d twined together from cedar bark.

When she first decided to try snaring a rabbit, she’d realized she’d need to peel the bark off a cedar tree and soak it for a couple days until it became pliable enough to be stripped into pieces and braded.

But even after she’d made her own rope, she still hadn’t been able to she hadn’t been able to catch an animal. Not today. Not yesterday. And not any day for the past four weeks since she first got the idea.

She’d moved the snare to several different places in the valley, but no matter what she did or how many times she tried, she couldn’t catch a rabbit.

The snares that their guide, Jack Ledman, set all summer had brought in a constant stream of food. It had seemed like a simple thing to recreate to ensure that they didn’t run out of food. Sometimes Mr. Ledman had set four or five snares a night, and they would all have rabbits come morning.

But she couldn’t catch a single one.

Oh, what she’d give to go back in time to the day before Mr. Ledman had died and ask him how to snare a rabbit. Neither Heath or Stuart had known. She’d asked them both before they’d left camp to get help, and they’d looked at her as though she was daft.

They didn’t know how to catch fish either, at least, not without a proper fishing pole and bait, and they had neither of those things.

This morning the snare had been set off, which made the lack of rabbit almost worse. For the first time in a week, they’d been close to having meat. So very, very close.

She tried to ignore the heat pricking the backs of her eyes and the lump in her throat. Tried to ignore the shiver that might be due to the damp, bitter cold, or might be due to the fact her stomach felt so hungry it was trying to eat itself.

She didn’t know and didn’t want to think about it. Just like she didn’t want to think about the fact Heath and Stuart had yet to return with help. Or that she’d woken to a light dusting of snow on her bedroll that morning.

Instead she pushed herself off the ground, and forced herself deeper into the woods where she could dig more roots.

Hopefully the meager stew would tide them over for another day.

And hopefully God would answer her prayers about her brother and Stuart returning with help before nightfall.

~.~.~.~.~

He was following the wrong tracks.

Mikhail Amos hunkered into his bearskin coat as he strode up the mountain, stepping around fallen logs and boulders, trying to follow the tracks in the soft brown earth that were growing fainter and fainter in the drizzling rain. A gust of wind swept down the mountain, and Mikhail pressed his lips together. The wind was cold enough to bring snow, and all he could do was pray that somehow, by some miracle, the snow would hold off for a day or two, until he found the party of lost botanists he was searching for.

After two weeks of heading up the Stikine River until it crossed the border with Canada and exploring the mountains north and west of the river, he’d moved his search to the southern section of the river.

He wished he could say searching a new location had led to him finding the scientists, but he was still just as lost as to where they might be as he’d been when he’d left Petersburg two weeks ago.

This wasn’t his first expedition into the uncharted Coast Mountains that ran from Seattle all the way up into the mainland of Alaska, nor was it his second or third. He’d been a guide for official government expeditions for the past eight years, leaving every April or May and returning every September.

He’d even accompanied teams of men on rescue expeditions two times before. But this was the first time he’d been charged with leaving by himself on the cusp of winter.

It was also the first time he’d gotten nowhere after two weeks of searching. It was almost as though the team of botanists had disappeared from the earth.

When he’d finally found a beached canoe and tracks on the beach, he’d been hopeful that following the tracks would lead to something helpful. The tracks were from a party of two, not six. But if the men were prospectors—most men roaming the wilds of Alaska were—and if they’d been searching the Stikine River Valley for gold the past month, they might have run into the botany expedition or at least come across some other tracks.

Following the men at least presented a chance that he might get helpful information about the lost botanists.

But he was staring to think these tracks belonged to the worst prospectors in all of history.

Any prospector who knew what he was doing would have gotten out of the mountains yesterday when the weather started to turn, knowing that snow was sure to follow.

But these men were moving deeper and deeper into the mountains. It was almost enough to make him turn around, but the tracks only looked to be a half day old at this point, meaning he’d likely overtake them by nightfall.

Hopefully they’d seen the party of botanists, because if they hadn’t…

Mikhail shook his head, not wanting to think about it. The men in the botany expedition were fathers and sons and brothers. If they didn’t come home, someone would miss them. And seeing how he’d spent the past eleven years of his life missing his own father, he couldn’t turn his back on the botanists without knowing he’d done every last thing in his power to save them.

Mikhail paused for a moment beside a creek, noticing how the boot prints on the sandy bank and mossy earth sank deeper into the ground here, indicating the men had paused. There were even two indents where packs had been set in the sand for a bit. The men he was following were definitely prospectors. They’d left similar tracks indicating they’d stopped and searched for gold at the other creek he’d crossed yesterday, and at a couple geological formations.

Mikhail squatted next to a patch of flattened moss, rubbing it between his fingers, then scanned the dense trees surrounding him. Rain drizzled through the canopy, wetting his face and dripping off the brim of his hat, the persistent patter of water mingling with the rustle of the wind through the trees.

The prospector’s tracks led him higher up the mountain toward where the falling rain would surely turn to snow, and at which point he just might lose the fading tracks.
Perhaps he was on a fool’s errand, because even if the prospectors had crossed paths with the botanists, what were the chances there would be anything left of the botanists’ tracks?

He clenched his jaw. It didn’t matter. He knew his way through the mountains in snow, and he’d been sent on a mission to find the botanists and return them safely to Sitka.

He wasn’t ready to give up just yet.