Read Online Gold Dust by Emily Krokosz - Free Book Online

could be easily assembled into a sturdy craft that would take him into Dawson. Others crossing White or Chilkoot passes would
     need to stop at Lake Bennett, which was the head of the Yukon River, to build boats to take them downriver to the confluence
     with the Klondike at Dawson. Farsighted fellow, Jonah mused. Worth mentioning in an article. Others also were worthy of mention.
     One lady, clearly a modest, proper woman, was accompanyingher husband on his gold adventure. Mrs. Burke was young, Jonah guessed, though careworn in appearance, which might be accounted
     for by the young babe in arms she had with her. Her husband was a strapping Irishman with a ready grin and a fiddle he played
     at the merest hint of a request. What would possess a man to take a young wife and infant on such a hazardous journey? Jonah
     wondered. Though she never said a word of complaint, Mrs. Burke did not look happy with the prospect of the toils that lay
     before them.
    Jonah’s eyes focused on the doodles that covered the page. He chuckled wryly, tore the page from the book, and wadded it into
     a ball. In spite of his minimal artistic ability, the doodles had coalesced into an unmistakable rendition of Katy O’Connell’s
     perfect oval face.
    “Might as well give in,” he muttered as he wrote a new title on a clean page: “Faces of the Old West.”
    The Old West is dead,
he scrawled,
but the deceased has left a few survivors, pariahs who, whether nobly or foolishly
—
the reader must decide
—
cling to the anarchy and unchecked freedoms that characterize the frontier. They obey no rules but their own and chafe restlessly
     in the peace that a new millennium promises to this once-rowdy land.
    One of these colorful remnants of Chaos came to the aid of your most intrepid correspondent when he was in mortal danger of
     having his teeth shoved down his throat by two bullies of the sort who inhabit drinking establishments wherever they are found.
     This bantamweight little cockerel evened the odds by firing a pistol at the ceiling, bringing down splinters of the rafters
     along with my assailants’ hopes of the rousing entertainment of beating me to a pulp.
    A smile spread across Jonah’s face as he planned out his narration of the little adventure that followed. He would endthe story with Katy’s neat disposal of both of the Hacketts, and then reveal that his savior was a woman, of all things. His
     readers would be delighted at the twist—much more delighted than he had been. To hell with the proper ladies who might be
     shocked. Most of his readers were men, anyway.
    Morning cast a whole new light on their journey. The sun blazed down from a bright blue sky; the breeze was warm and fragrant
     with the tang of seawater and verdant forests of fir. The northern tip of Vancouver Island was a hump of green rising off
     their stern, and from the port rail of the steamer to forever, it seemed, stretched the sea, deep green fading to blue in
     the distance. Sea blended into sky without a perceptible line. Not a cloud relieved the bright expanse of the heavens; not
     a wisp of fog shadowed the sea.
    Jonah wished he had a camera that could do the scene justice, but no camera could do that. How could his readers understand
     the vast beauty of this changeable land without seeing it for themselves? His words would not be enough.
    In the dining room, Jonah found his cabin mates and sat at their table.
    “I heard you moving about last night,” Toby Walsh, a farm laborer from one of the Carolinas, told him. “Was you sick?”
    “No. I got an inspiration in the middle of the night to finish an article I had started, so I got dressed and came up here
     to work. Sorry if I woke you.”
    “Didn’t bother me much,” Toby said. “Went right back to sleep.”
    “Writers sometimes keep odd hours. I’ll try to be more quiet.”
    “You find a good claim in the goldfields,” Alan Smith said, “and you won’t need to work in the middle of the