The pier in front of them was alive with movement. Longshoremen in work-worn coats hauled crates from incoming vessels. Merchants haggled over shipments of goods, and dock hands rolled barrels down the gangways. There were even ahandful of cranes removing cargo from ships by hoisting crates high into the air, then swinging them onto the wharf and slowly lowering them.
Just past the wharf, a sprawling maze of warehouses lined the harbor, followed by a glut of factories. Houses and hotels and other buildings occupied space on the hillside farther away from the water, and the city’s bright energy hummed in the air.
Hopefully it would be infectious. Hopefully it would pull his mind away from how he’d failed Rosalind.
Alexei had certainly given him enough things to keep himself busy in San Francisco. His first order of business was to procure three shipping contracts. Alexei had been writing to factory owners, and it seemed as though three of them were ready to sign two-year contracts to have the Sitka Trading Company ship their goods from California to Japan and China. Hopefully getting the contracts signed wouldn’t be too hard.
And then there was the barge. Made of iron and steel, it had been badly damaged in a storm, and Alexei was trying to buy it at a good price, hoping that the cost of the ship plus repairs would be less than the price of a seaworthy ship. It was currently at the Farnsworth Shipyard, and Yuri was supposed to make an offer on it.
Yuri wiped his slick palms on the legs of his trousers as theAllianceslid into its space alongside the wharf.
When he’d volunteered to come down to San Francisco, he’d expected Alexei to tell him no, just like he’d told him last fall when they’d needed to send someone to Ketchikan.
But he hadn’t.
Yuri glanced at the wharf again and the city rising on the hill beyond it. Three shipping contracts and a damaged barge. He could do this. He wasn’t about to fail his brother.
Klawock,Alaska; Two Days Later
“Why are you packing? I don’t understand.” Alexei stood on the beach in the small Tlingit village of Klawock, which sat on Prince of Wales Island, one island south of Baranoff Island where Sitka was located. His gaze swept over the shoreline where dozens of people were busy packing their belongings and loading them into canoes. Everywhere he looked, people were moving. Women packed woven baskets with clothing, blankets, and household goods. Men disassembled wooden drying racks and carried supplies toward the beach, and children gathered what they could, their small hands clutching toys or tools.
“Are you leaving?” he asked, even though the answer was obvious. “Now? Fishing season will be underway in a few months.”
Tlákwsháa, the oldest elder of the clan, knelt on a mat that contained a ceremonial rattle, several Chilkat blankets, and various other items. He didn’t look up as he picked up a worn raven headdress and wrapped it in a piece of deerskin, then tucked it into a cedar box.
“The soldiers said we need to leave.”
So the rumor was true. He had a hundred things to do in Sitka, but when word had reached him that the people of Klawock were uprooting their village, he’d wanted to come check for himself.
“What soldiers are you talking about?”
“The ones who came here with the governor.” Tlákwsháa reached for a sprig of dried hemlock gum, placed it between his teeth, and began to chew slowly.
“Soldiers came here with the governor?” He hadn’t heard anything about that, just that the clan was moving to a different location.
The elder merely nodded. “Navy men. On boats. We need to leave before summer.”
Alexei’s fingers curled at his sides. “But why?”
“The government needs this land.” The elder’s words were muffled slightly by the gum, but his tone remained even as he wrapped a strip of leather cord around the box and cinched it tight.
It didn’t make sense. The government had plenty of land. More than they knew what to do with. Alexei’s gaze flickered to the nearest totem pole. Its carvings told the story of the clan’s lineage, and it had stood there long before any American official had set foot in Alaska. And somehow Simon Caldwell thought he had the right to take this land?
“I find it hard to believe that they need this land right here when there is so much other land.” Land that didn’t have totem poles or longhouses. Land that hadn’t been home to a clan of people for several centuries.
“It’s the island they want.” Tlákwsháa reached for the Chilkat blanket. “The governor asked the village of Kasaan to leave too.”
He had? It had been over a year since Alexei had visited the small Haida village on the opposite side of Prince of Wales Island. He’d had no idea any of this was going on. “Why do they want the village?”
The old man shrugged. “Do you think the new governor told us anything? If I had to guess, it’s the cannery. I think they want to expand it and increase the number of fish they take out of the bays and streams every summer, but I do not know for certain.”
Alexei looked around again, at the longhouses with their sturdy walls and elaborately carved beams, each one of which had taken over a year to build. Smoke still curled from theroofs, but fishing nets hung where they had been left to dry, and wooden racks that held salmon during salmon season didn’t even hold a single fish.
He didn’t like any of this. This was the very island Preston Caldwell had been trying to get his hands on last summer. The former governor, Milton Trent, had been only minutes away from signing an order leasing the island to the Alaska Commercial Company. Had the secretary of the interior and two senators not barged into that meeting, the Caldwells’ company would have had full control of the island.
And now that Preston’s brother, Simon, was the governor, they were trying once again to remove all natives from the island? Even though Secretary Gray had told them no? Had they found some way to bring the secretary of the interior on board with their plan?
And was it really to expand their fishing operations? Or was there something more going on?
