Page 63 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

“Where?” Maggie cried, but of course she already knew.

“Word’s come there’s gold fields up in the Klondike. We’re going to head up there and see what’s what.” Her father spoke airily, as if that frozen wasteland was no more than an easy stroll away.

“I heard about that,” Maggie murmured. She realized she should have expected something like this to happen, but she’d thought her father had let go of his dreams of striking it rich. Clearly he hadn’t, and neither had Danny. “But it’s so far,” she told them. “And isn’t it dangerous? Five hundred miles down the Yukon River?—”

Danny rocked back on his heels. “We can manage it. They say there’s nuggets as big as yourfist, Maggie.”

Oh, she didn’t doubt that’s what they said. Prospectors liked to tell tales as tall as her father did. By next week, the nuggets would be as big as dinner plates.

“When are you going?” she asked. There was a dull pain in her chest, an ache that made her feel weighed down inside. If they went all that way… they’d be gone for months, maybe even years.

Maybe they’d never come back.

“Tomorrow morning,” her father said with a slightly shamefaced smile. “I know it’s soon, but there’s a steamer heading to Mooresville, and we need to get to the Yukon before it freezes over. We’ve only got a couple of weeks to make it, ifthat. Otherwise, we’ll be spending the winter in Mooresville, and there’s not much there.”

“And when you get there, wherever there is?” Maggie asked, trying not to give in to despair. “What, then?”

“Then we buy a stake on Bonanza Creek and start panning for gold!” Danny crowed. He made it sound so simple, when Maggie knew it was anything but. She’d seen prospectors stumble into town, half-starved, often missing a finger or toe thanks to frostbite, and with nothing but a handful of yellow dust that wouldn’t pay for the outfit they’d just bought to show for it.

And those miners were prospecting much closer to home. The trip her father and brother intended to make would be terribly treacherous, unimaginably dangerous. Five hundred miles down the Yukon River on a boat they’d likely have to build themselves? It was madness, and yet that’s what had gripped them—gold fever, a potentially deadly disease.

“We’ll write,” her father promised, and Maggie stared at him in disbelief.

“Write? And how on earth will a letter get to me?” she demanded.

“There’s a town up there,” her father said, his tone placating. “Dawson, it’s called. I imagine they’ll get a post office one of these days, as more miners come in?—”

“But we need to get ahead of the game,” Danny interjected. “If we don’t, all the good stakes will be snapped up.”

Maggie shook her head slowly. “You seem like you’ve thought it all out,” she said. She knew there was no point trying to dissuade them. They’d come to Alaska for this, and she’d been foolish to let herself believe that they’d remain content working for a wage at the Treadwell mine.

But it meant, Maggie thought disconsolately, that she would be alone—again. At least now she had Sheetka, she consoledherself, but fear twisted her insides as she thought about managing life here on her own.

As if reading her thoughts, her father rustled through one of the boxes and then handed Maggie a small, nickel-plated pistol.

“I got you this,” he told her. “Since you’ll be on your own here. Just in case.”

Maggie curled her fingers around the cold metal. She didn’t even know how to use such a thing.

“And we’ll come back,” her da promised, just as he had all those years ago, back in Ireland. “One day, we’ll come back.”

Back in Ulster, Maggie had believed him. This time she wasn’t sure she could.

CHAPTER 33

October 1896

The few weeks after Danny and her da had left passed quietly, the evenings long and lonely as winter drew in. Maggie hadn’t realized just how much she’d enjoyed her father’s company—the tunes on the harmonica, the ridiculously tall tales, his easy way with Sheetka, as well as the cheerful way he approached just about everything—until he was gone, and she and Sheetka both felt his absence very keenly.

As the nights got colder and darker, Sheetka crept into her bed and they slept with their arms wrapped around each other, both for warmth and for comfort. Maggie kept the pistol by the side of the bed. Just in case, like her father had said, but she was glad she had had no call to use it… yet.

Just a few days after Danny and her da had left on a steamer for Mooresville, there was a knock on the cabin door. It was evening, the sun having already set, and Maggie had hid the pistol in her skirts, her fingers trembling on the trigger, as she’d gone to crack the door open an inch.

“Brendan!” She’d sagged with relief, and then had put the pistol down on the table, while he’d raised an eyebrow.

“Expecting trouble?” he’d asked as he’d stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“No,” Maggie had replied shakily. “But prepared for it, as a woman on her own.” She’d glanced toward the bedroom, where Sheetka had been sleeping, and he’d nodded in understanding.