"Exciting good or exciting terrifying?"
"Either. Both."
"Exciting good was the first time I looked into my pan and saw gold."
"On your claim?"
"Yes. Fifty feet of mud and rock and ice—when I first staked it, the stream was frozen. I had to thaw out the ground with a fire before I could get at the mud. But there was gold in it. Amazing stuff, gold," he mused, looking down at the ring on his finger and rubbing it thoughtfully. "Soft and useless, but its sparkle gets right into a man's bones. 'Gold fever' is a good name, because that's what it's like, burning you and eating you up."
"And the exciting bad?"
"The sheer terror. Had a handful of those, like pieces of peppercorn scattered through a plate of tasteless stew. Most of the work in the fields was dull slog—you were uncomfortable all the time, awake or asleep, always hungry, never clean, never warm except in summer when the mosquitos ate you alive, your feet and hands were always wet and bruised. Lord, the boredom. And then a charge you'd set wouldn't go off and you'd get the thrill of going up to it, knowing it might decide to explode in your face. Or a tunnel you'd poked into the hillside would start to collapse, between you and daylight. But the most exciting moment? Let's see. That would either be when the dogsled went over a ledge into Soda Creek, or the avalanche at the Scales."
The last name tickled a vague memory. "I've heard of the Scales. Wasn't that the name for a hill?"
"A hill," he said with a pitying smile. "A hell more like it, if you'll pardon my French. Chilkoot Pass, four miles straight up. Seemed like it anyway, even in summer when you could go back and forth, but in the winter, twelve hundred steps cut into the ice, the last mile was like climbing a ladder. And you had a year's worth of supplies to shift to the top—the Mounties checked to make sure; they didn't want a countryside of starving men—so you couldn't just climb it once unless you could afford to pay the freight cable to take your load up for you. There you were, in a mile-long line of freezing, exhausted men, so tight packed it was left, right, left, together all the way, your lungs aching and your head pounding in the altitude, and just when you think you can't lift your foot one more time, that you're going to drop in your tracks and die, you're at the top, falling into the snow with the crate on your back. And when you've got your breath back you take the ropes off that crate, sit on your shovel, and slide down the iced track to the bottom, where you put another crate on your shoulders and line up to start again. After twenty, twenty-five times you have your supplies at the top of the hill, and you're ready to start on your way to the fields. Lot of men stood in Sheep Camp at the bottom of the Scales, saw what they were up against, and their hearts just gave up on them. Sold their supplies for ten cents on the dollar and went home."
"But you didn't."
"Didn't have the sense to, no. It was winter, but the weather was still uncertain, and I'd only shifted half my load when the snow turned warm. Six, eight feet of wet snow in a couple of days. The Indians were smart—they cleared out back to town—but stubborn us.
"I knew it was going to get dangerous, so I started climbing early, still night in fact. I nearly made it, had my last load on my back and was halfway up when the cliffs gave way. The whole hill, a mile of snow and ice, just moved out from under our feet, a mile-long line of hundreds of men, their equipment, their dogs, everything just bundled up and swept down into Sheep Camp in a heap of snow. Seventy, eighty men died, my partner one of them. I was locked in, upside down, though I didn't know it—couldn't tell, it was dark and I couldn't move anything but my right hand. It was like being caught in set cement. My boot was sticking out, and that's what saved me, when they found it and dug me out."
"Good…heavens," I said weakly. I did not have to manufacture a response; the claustrophobic horror of his experience made me feel a bit lightheaded.
Ketteridge put down the glass that he had been nursing all during his narrative and looked at me with concern. "I'm so sorry, Mrs Holmes, have I upset you?"
"No no, just the idea of that sort of suffocation. It's pretty horrific."
"At the time, you know, I wasn't even frightened. Angry at first, if you can credit it—the thought that I'd have to carry everything up all over again just made me furious. I know, funny that should be the first thing on my mind. And then I was worried about my partner, who'd been just behind me, and then I was uncomfortable, all squashed and cold. But then that passed, and I began to feel warm; my wrenched leg didn't even hurt. Running out of air, I suppose, but it wouldn't have been a bad way to die, you know. Compared to some."
He smiled. "Shall we take coffee in the library, Tuptree? The car ought to be back soon."
This last was to me, and I folded my table napkin and stood up.
"May we walk through the dining hall?" I asked, gently reminding him of his promise.
"Certainly, if you like. The lighting in there isn't very good, I'm afraid. For some reason Baskerville never had that room wired for electricity. It's better during the day."
Ketteridge took up a candelabra and lit the tapers with the cigar lighter he carried in his pocket, and we went through into the great, dim banqueting hall. It was like walking into a cavern, empty and full of shadows—although in times past the entire manor had gathered here for meals, the family on its raised dais, the servants at long tables in the rest of the room. A minstrel's gallery looked down from the far end, silent and abandoned by all except the painted Baskervilles, a cheerless substitute indeed for the music the spot was intended to house. We strolled in near complete silence ourselves, down one side and up the end. He held the light up for me to see the portraits.
"The Baskervilles seem a varied lot," I commented.
"The last owner took all the good ones with her," he said ruefully. "She did leave these tapestries, though," he added, and carried the candles over to the interior wall to show me the dusty, faded figures that had once blazed with colour and movement. We examined them critically. "They're prettier in the daylight," he said, and I allowed him to escort me out of the room and down a long and infinitely more cheery corridor.
As a working library the room we entered left something to be desired, but as a masculine retreat that used books as a decorative backdrop for deep leather chairs and a square card table, it was more comfortable than the draughty reaches of the hall or dining room. Heavy draperies covered the windows and Tuptree, bearing a tray of coffee, followed us in the door.
"It's a pity you haven't been to the house in daylight, Mrs Holmes. It's quite a sight—these windows here look up onto the moor, and there are six tors sitting there, looking like you could reach out and touch them. On a clear day, that is. You must try to come back during the day—you and your husband, of course."
"I'd like that, thank you. I was so enjoying my ride out on the moor today, I hadn't realised how late it had got. I do apologise for keeping you up."
"This isn't late, Mrs Holmes, by no means, and I was charmed to have you drop in on me, for whatever reason. Were you just out for a ride, then?"
I had offered him that ride in case he wondered what on earth the good Mrs Holmes might have been doing in his deserted stretch of countryside. Whatever he was hiding from me, whomever he had spirited out from under my nose, might be as simple as a socially unacceptable buyer for Baskerville Hall or as embarrassing as an improper visitor of the female persuasion. In any case he could hardly suspect me of arranging the mishap that had delivered Red and myself here in such a state. I merely thought to divert his curiosity before it took hold in his mind.
"Yes, and what a place for it! I rode down to look at the Fox Tor mires and Childe's Tomb, and Wistman's Wood, and then the stone row near Merrivale, and I was aiming for Fur Tor, to get around the river, you see, when Red spooked and fell."