Free Journey by James A. Michener

“His proper name, Kozlowkowicz, but when we marry I find that no one can spell it or say it, so I made him change it to Kozlok. Now everybody can spell my name.”
    “But you…and your brother?” Philip asked, and she replied almost teasingly: “You would never guess,” and he said: “Well, you do have light hair. His is even lighter. Swedes?” Again she laughed: “Everyone says that. No, we come from a place you never heard of. Estonia.”
    “Ah! But I have heard of it,” he cried like a child who has solved a puzzle. “It’s part of Russia.”
    Her smile vanished. “It’s Estonia, a part of nothing else. Just Estonia.” Then, afraid that she had seemed harsh, she said brightly:“Men, I want you to tell this nice young Englishman who’s thinking about risking the land route what it would be like.”
    As soon as she said this, her three companions stepped close to Philip, all speaking at once, and from the jumble of their words, he knew he was receiving just the kind of information Lord Luton sought: “Murderous…they should shoot the son-of-a-bitch sent us that way…no marked trail…you wouldn’t believe how many dead horses rotting in the sun…and you got to ford a dozen streams…snow comes, everyone on that trail freeze to death.”
    The young woman stemmed the flood of complaints: “They’re telling only half.”
    “You people actually tried the trail?”
    “We did,” Steno said, and his brother added: “But we smart enough to turn back.” Irina broke in: “If your team even thinks about going that way, stop them now.”
    “If we’d’a tried to push on,” Steno said, “we’d’a been snowed in, proper, all winter.”
    “And without heavy clothes or food,” his wife added.
    “What now?” Philip asked. “Back to North Dakota?”
    “Hell no!” the three men said almost together. “We came for gold. We gonna get it.”
    “How?”
    “Only sensible way. Right down the Mackenzie, haul our boat over the Divide, and into Dawson.”
    At this firm point, Irina grasped Philip’s hands again and stared deep into his eyes as she said softly: “I’m so glad you stopped me…asked me those questions. Please, please, listen to them. Don’t take that route. If you do, you’ll die.”
    This was said with such gravity that Philip was momentarily struck silent. Then he said, with a slight bow to each of his informants: “I hope you reach the gold fields, you kind and helpful people from North Dakota,” and Irina spoke for all when she replied: “We intend to.” Then in a gesture of the brotherhood that linked all gold-seekers that summer in Edmonton, she astonished him by gripping his hand tightly, smiling at him briefly, and repeating in a voice as cold as steel exposed in winter: “Do not go the overland route. You’re much too young to die,” whereupon she reached up and kissed him.
    Half expecting her husband to come flying at him, Philip instead heard Steno saying: “Listen to her, young fellow. We do,” and the four trailed off to start their journey to the Mackenzie. As theydisappeared in the lingering twilight, Philip, still dazed by that farewell kiss, thought: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a wife like that, so daring, so quick to laugh, so generous toward other people? I wonder if all women in America are like that?
    When Lord Luton’s four investigators reassembled to report their findings, he listened firm-lipped to their distressing news and interrogated each: “Did you reach the conclusion by yourself?” and each told him of the shocking facts that had become so apparent under questioning. Satisfied that they had been honest in their seeking and in their decision that any version of overland travel was insane, he rose abruptly, nodded, and stalked from the room: “I’ve got to hear this for myself,” and into the warm night air he disappeared.
    Tall, thin, carefully dressed, with his aquiline nose slightly lifted as if he wished to avoid the smell of the