The man stopped and looked down at her. “I’m sorry, miss, but were you there?”
Addie heard the condescension in his tone. “As a matter of fact, I was. I climbed the ice staircase with my father and brothers. How about you? Were you there?”
The man flushed and stammered. “Well, uh, no. Not exactly.”
She smiled. “They were mostly Tlingit, with a few Haida and Athabaskans. Good people. Most of the prospectors would have died without them.” The people around her turned toward her, ignoring the man onstage.
A woman nearest her asked about Addie’s experience. “Did you haul packs of goods up and over that mountain with all the others?”
“No, I guarded our goods as they collected on the Canadian side. So I only made one trip up the mountain, but that was enough. I carried a pack with about thirty pounds of gear, and it was nearly too much.”
“Did your father and brothers hire the natives to help?”
Addie remembered her brothers robbing and gambling to get enough money for a few packers and to pay the Canadian duty charges. “They did hire a couple of men,” she told the woman. “However, my father and brothers were large men who were quite capable of carrying big packs—some probably weighing close to one hundred pounds.”
The woman gasped, as did a few other people. Addie remembered them complaining with each trip they made, and she was always to have refreshments or a meal available to them when they reached the top.
“How did you, a little girl, guard your supplies?” a man asked, sounding doubtful.
“A little girl is well respected when holding a large gun. I had a pistol in my pocket and a rifle slung over my shoulder.Besides, most of the people were accommodating and used the honor system. There were also the Canadian police and government men. For the most part, people didn’t want to get caught doing anything wrong because they wanted to get to the Yukon, where they were confident they could pick gold up off the ground without having to work for it.”
“And did they?” a woman asked. “Did they pick up gold off the ground?”
Addie shook her head. “If anyone did, they were done with that by the time we got there. Searching for gold was grueling. If you panned in the rivers and creeks, you did so with hundreds of other people. Those who got rich were more often the businessmen and women running stores and saloons.” She thought of Sam Moerman and added, “There was real money to be made in the gambling halls too.” She didn’t bother to speak about the brothel. That made even more money. “People would dig and pan and do whatever they could to find gold, then come into Dawson City to spend it, so being a store owner, you made all sorts of money and didn’t have to work nearly as hard for it.”
“Is it true that people lived in tents even when the temperature was forty below zero?” a man asked.
“It is. I experienced that myself.” Addie shrugged. “But we had a tent stove, and besides me, there were three big, burly men.” She remembered it all too well. Her father and brothers hadn’t cared whether she froze to death or not. She had counted herself lucky to be allowed to sleep inside the tent. After she was sold to Sam, she had the luxury of sleeping in a bed. However, given the price she had to pay, she would have happily taken a tent any day.
The lecturer brought the crowd’s attention back to the stage. “Folks, if you’ll look up here, we have arranged a variety of goods just like the gold rushers would have had to pack. I have an Eskimo here to show you how it was done.”
Addie turned her attention to the stage and hoped the others would too. She hadn’t meant to interrupt the man’s performance and was determined to listen to his lecture and then apologize for her interruption.
After the man had the native demonstrate how to load and carry a large pack of goods, he concluded his speech. “The gold rush was not for the weak or faint of heart. A lot of men and women lost their lives on the side of the mountain or on the rivers getting to Dawson City. We are proud to remember them and their brave feat.”
The crowd clapped and dispersed while Addie made her way to the raised platform. The man saw her and came down to greet her.
“I am sorry for interrupting your lecture, mister.”
The older man smiled. “I found myself enchanted, so no apology is needed. I was just as fascinated as the crowd to learn that you had actually gone north.”
“It certainly wasn’t my desire to have done so, but I was just fifteen, and my father made the decisions.”
“I wonder ... do you suppose you could come on Saturdays to speak to the children? We have a series of lectures going on all over the expo on Saturdays to further their education. There’s one lecture given on islands of the Pacific, another on our fair state, and so forth. We tried to include a wide variety to give the children and others a better understanding of various locations. Might you consider speaking about your life in the Yukon? The difficulties getting there,how it was to live on the trip north, then how it was to actually live there?”
Addie had never thought about her experiences being of interest to anyone else. “I don’t know.”
He pressed on. “You saw how fascinated the people around you were just to talk to someone who had actually been there and experienced that life. They were mesmerized and had no end of questions. Had I not redirected the gathering, you would still be answering those questions.”
“I suppose that’s true enough. You say it would take place on Saturdays?”
“Yes, you would speak three times. Once at nine, once at ten, and then eleven. We stop the lectures after noon.”
“I suppose I might be able to get permission to do that.” Addie wasn’t at all certain she wanted to remember all the details of her life up north, but she could see that the audience craved information. “I’ll speak to my employer and let you know later today.”
“I’m Jim Rigsby, by the way.” He extended his hand. “And you are?”
“Addie. Addie Bryant.”
