The Promise by Bill Gallaher

Author:Bill Gallaher [Gallaher, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchwood Editions
Published: 2008-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Well before daylight on January 31, 1863, we pulled a sled to the door of the cabin that held Sophia’s remains. Our breath puffed out as ice clouds in the still, morning air that felt as fragile as crystal. We had to lean our shoulders into the door because it had frozen shut. It suddenly sprang open and scraped over the rough plank floor with a sound that might have wakened the dead. The coffin sat forlornly in the gloom and Cameron paused beside it, a gloved hand resting on top. I gave him a moment, then together we carried it outside, placed it on the sled and covered it with a canvas tarpaulin before securing it with ropes. Then we eased the awkward load down the short slope to the flat road bisecting the town. From Cameron’s cabin we fetched the gold poke, a two-gallon keg of good quality Hudson’s Bay rum, several blankets we would need for sleeping, sundry supplies that included an axe and as much grub as we could manage, and lashed it all on the top of the coffin. Lastly, we attached a long lead rope to the front. Altogether, it was a preposterously top-heavy load, for the sled’s runners were only 14 inches apart. Yet somehow we had to haul that cumbersome thing several hundred miles through the mountains to the coast.

The first obstacle we faced was right at our front door: a mountain of no small size. Cameron and I could not get that load up there by ourselves, but several of the miners had offered to help us get to the other side, at least as far as Tom Maloney’s roadhouse, in a small valley below Bald Mountain. A few others said they would go as far as Beaver Lake, at which point Cameron and I would be on our own. That was where the smallpox was waging war against the Indians.

We all wore snowshoes, for there were two feet of freshly fallen snow on top of six feet of old, compacted snow that had accumulated over the winter. The going was tough the moment we stepped outside the camp, and stretching up before us was the mountain, the lower reaches stripped of trees, the upper thickly forested.

We zigzagged up the steep slope along a switchback trail that was barely visible in the snow, 26 of us in a line, pulling on the long rope attached to the sled. Several times the load tipped over and slid down to the last traverse and we’d have to start again. Finally, we stationed men on the sides and behind and with considerable effort and perseverance, reached the trees where the snow wasn’t as deep. As the trail rose along the mountainside it became more difficult to follow, and higher up it petered out altogether. By noon we had managed to cover only a scant three and a half miles and it became evident that if we did not pick up our pace we would be unlikely to reach the safety and shelter of Maloney’s roadhouse.

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