"For ten days, been on this mountain." "I feel like that Greek king, the one pushing that boulder up the hill for eternity, what's his name," "Syphilis?" "Sisyphus." "The difference is, we chose to be here." "For him it was punishment." "Sure as shit feels like punishment." "Eugh!" "Shh." "You hear that?" "Up, up, hold on, give me your hand!" "You're looking at a rich man." "I wasn't that once." "And your entire lives are before you." "What will you be?" "What will you do?" "Only you can ask that question." "Got an idea, but hope to hell I'm wrong." "So in facing your future," "I encourage you to follow Emerson's immortal words "Do not follow where the path may lead"..." "Sorry." "..."go instead where there is no path "and leave a trail."" "Shh." "My nip." "I'll buy the twist." "Double it, double it." "Its, uh, two o'clock, you know?" "Oh, I missed it, didn't I?" "Was it a good ceremony?" "There wasn't a version of things where this could have waited?" "Well, you know me, I just sort of follow myself wherever I go." "I think maybe you better run." "We're leaving today." "You pay." "You pay?" "Uh... yeah, here." "No-no-no those are our train tickets, we saved for those." "Plan on going somewhere?" "Uh, no, not, no nothing." "Yeah, west." "Why west?" "Uh, it's a white man thing." "It's just where you go, seek a fortune." "You go nowhere." "You owe 12 domino." "Why do I get the sense that a domino is worth a lot more than a domino?" "Because it's worth 50 bucks." "You don't have the money, do you, Mr. Epstein?" "You cleared me out, man." "Got nothing in my pocket." "Must have something, my friend." "Head full of hope." "Nothing in your pocket, but a head full of hope?" "Nice to be young, isn't it?" "Give me the knife, please." "We're not really doing this, are we?" "I think we are, Bill." "Ahh!" "Go, go!" "Go, go, go!" "Come on!" "Jackson City..." "Quit looking over your shoulder, they're not coming." "They saw the train tickets." "They know how to put together where we're going." "If you get me killed on the first day of the rest of my life, I'm gonna be seriously pissed off." "What the hell was that game any how?" "Fan-tan." "Game I thought I understood." "You even got the money to do this anymore?" "Of course I do, man doesn't head off into the world seeking his future without capital." "It looked to me like you gave to all away back there." "You never give away all your money." "That's all of it, 450, every cent I got for graduation." "300 from me." "750, it ain't much of a nest egg." "Makes the story all the more beautiful, though." "When we're millionaires, we can say we started with nothing." "Question is, what are we going to do?" "Mmm... and where?" "If only we'd known." "All we wanted was to get away and find our own thing." "Something that was real, bare-boned." "A place to set up shop, carve out a future with our own two hands." "In that moment we were one of the most potent and foolish forces in the world." "Two men with nothing in their pocket, but a head full of hope." "Looking for cow herds." "We don't know the first thing about animals." "Railroad men?" "We could have done it back home." "Can we get two more of these?" "Thanks." "We could be soldiers." "Go to the Philippines." "Got no interest in dying." "The point is, brother, I got on the train to get away from all that." "You know, life of toil." "The whole point is skip to the head of the class not fall for the lie that you can rise through ranks." "You gotta start on top, huh?" "You gotta be an entrepreneur." "What do I owe you?" "The old man down there is buying drinks until closing time." "I want to thank you for your generosity." "Ah, it's only generous if it hurts." "Buying drinks, that don't hurt me at all." "Well, thanks anyway." "If you want to, take a couple of bottles with you when you go." "Mind us asking what sort of business you in?" "Colorado, that's right." "I've been reading about this in the papers, miners been pulling all sorts of gold out of the ground." "Well, if it's in the newspapers, it's over." "Colorado's panned out, just like Black Hills, just like California before that." "Then where were you?" "It's just like anything else, what you want to be is the trailblazer." "You go as far as everyone else does and then you just keep going." "And that takes you where exactly?" "To the Yukon." "There's plaster fields that are locked beneath the permafrost there for thousands of years and only now is people starting to figure it out." "But you got to get there before the newspapers get there." "You forgot something, boss." "No." "Where else in the world could a man with basically no capital turn into a million bucks?" "That's some shit ass hard work, though." "You want to be an entrepreneur?" "Be just us, get out on the land, see what we can do?" "No boss, no time clock, just us?" "Do you have any idea how far that is?" "It's probably better we don't, otherwise we'll never get there." "It was 4,650 miles to be exact, of roads, railways, and boats." "Six weeks nonstop." "Excuse me?" "What's going on?" "Well, evidently the whole pass was locked up for the last four weeks because of storms." "This is the first break in the weather they've had." "Everybody's trying to get over before the next storm hits, which by the look of things, is pretty soon now." "Thank you." "Obviously we wait." "What do you mean?" "Obviously we go." "Remember what our boy back in Colorado said, you don't get anywhere first if you die on the way." "How much it cost to kit up?" "Alright, gentlemen, 300 is going to get you a sled, provisions, shelter, clothes, that will do you for your first six months." "I'll throw in a mining manual and uh..." "You throw in them boots, you got yourself a deal." "Not done." "We got to think about this, I'm serious." "So am I. You wanna wait around here till the summer, be my guest." "I'm buying that kit today, if I got to zipper out my own money to do it." "Doing this together, that was the agreement." "Better put on your climbing shoes," "I'm going up that today." "Every miner there stakes a plot ahead of us." "First guy chooses the best claim;" "second guy, the second best claim." "All the way down until we get there." "Do we want the 100th best claim?" "The 1,000th?" "I'll take the kit." "We'll take half the kit for 150." "Now's not the time to be saving money." "Full kit's gonna slow us down." "You wanna go up that?" "We have to hustle our ass." "Less time we're on the mountain, more chance we have of actually living." "Fine, half." "Plus them boots." "Goddamn it, I don't believe this." "Alright." "You're a son of a bitch." "You know that?" "You'd be sitting behind some desk somewhere selling stocks, getting old and cynical before you even lived." "If it weren't for me, you'd be pulling that crap up the mountain." "Sitting ducks for the storms." "Come on, entrepreneur." "Every hour we move, an hour sooner we're off this mountain." "You alright there?" "You hear that?" "Hear what?" "Nothing." "That's what you want to hear on Chilkoot, nothing." "As soon as you hear a rumble, you got about ten seconds to live." "The mountain will eat you." "Goddamn a half kit, we could have had real blankets, pillows." "You were the guy that wanted to get there first." "I say on that front we're doing a pretty good job." "Better get after it." "Don't like how that ridge is looking." "For ten days, been on this mountain, feel like that Greek king, the one pushing that boulder up the hill for eternity, what's his name," "Syphilis?" "Sisyphus." "The difference is, we chose to be here." "For him it was punishment." "Sure as shit feels like punishment." "Shh." "You hear that?" "Hear what?" "Run!" "Not down, not down!" "Up, up!" "Give me your hand!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "It's alright Ep!" "Come on!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "Eugh!" "Ep!" "It's alright." "Not thinking about quitting, are you?" "Bill?" "They're going to bring them back." "Go easy, brother." "Maybe we ought to slow it down." "I told you, sometimes it takes just a little bit of toil to get there." "It's going to take us a few days to walk down." "Toil is exactly the wrong way to go, brother." "Man, am I tired of walking." "Yeah." "You on?" "One, two, three." "Uh... hey, uh, ma'am." "Hello, gents." "Reckon we've got two more headed for Dawson City," "Paris of the North." "Uh..." "Bill, Bill." "Bill Haskell." "Sabine." "Lady, you're either a dream or a mirage, either way I'm going with it." "Byron Epstein." "If you don't mind me saying, miss, I," "I wouldn't have expected to find someone so cultivated this far north." "Oh, I'm just as derelict as the rest of you, trust me." "Come this ridiculous far away to make a whole bunch of money in a short while." "It was nice meeting you, gents." "Don't go getting that look." "How in the hell are we going to build a boat?" "Just like everything else I suppose." "Start, don't stop until we're done." "Gentlemen." "Enchanted to make your acquaintance." "S. Rochester Smith." "Now I'm not a mincer of words and as such I'll get to the point." "It is a feeding frenzy up there in the" "Paris of the North when it comes to land." "Fortunately, I'm with the only company currently certified to offer genuine claims to millionaire making mining concerns up there." "I think you might mean Dawson City here, boss." "Well, the lack of day, that's a grade a head scratcher, you're really lucky there ain't a woodshed around here, because there were, my partner and I take you around back, give you an ass whooping." "It's, it's just a game, that's all." "That's how it is up here." "I don't see nothing about this is a game." "Well then, son, you don't know people." "Up here the mask is off." "You either getting or you're getting got." "Try to screw us again, I'll build that woodshed myself." "Hey, hey, yeah we're, we're boys now, huh?" "We're boys." "Huh?" "We understand each other, right?" "Yeah we do." "I guess that's it for me." "Telling me she's seaworthy." "Maybe we'll see each other up there." "Hope so." "The price is 100." "You think I'm going north of 80, you're a shithouse loon. 80." "You put 80 us in my hand right now, we're Dutch." "Oars, oars, give me oars." "Oars." "What's that look for?" "We got a boat, we're in the game." "You got to stop pissing our money away." "We are in the middle of the Yukon." "We run out of money, we are dead." "I want it, the money, I'm treasurer now." "Pft." "Fine." "Is that all of it?" "Yes." "Ep?" "Huh?" "Indians." "We got to portage." "Uh-huh." "We got to portage to the shore." "Whoa-ho!" "Agh!" "Whoa oh, oh." "Bill!" "Bill!" "Bill!" "Bill!" "Agh." "Ah." "Ugh!" "I heard a boat went over." "You were lucky I got through." "What's the matter boy, wolf got your tongue?" "Just don't know if I'm more shocked to be alive or seeing a man of the cloth with a gun." "Well, I wouldn't agree with Mr. Darwin on many things, but there is a certain credence to the idea of survival of the fittest." "You don't negotiate with nature, you either best it or it bests you." "However that may be." "Son of a bitch!" "You made it!" "Sorry, father!" "How are you, you old half-ass?" "Huh?" "I don't know how to repay you." "Well, you can pay me a visit to my chapel, next time you're in Dawson." "You have a chapel in Dawson?" "Well, not yet, but I'm fixing to." "Every man's got to have a dream, right?" "Otherwise, what in God's name are we all doing up here?" "Safe travels." "I thought I'd lost you." "We've got problems." "I lost the money." "Righteous son of a bitch, acting like I wasn't reliable enough" "I couldn't have known I'd go over." "Made me feel bad, like I'm completely untrustworthy." "I know." "Well, I'm glad you were right." "Aha!" "God bless me for it." "God bless both of us." "You sneaky son of a bitch." "I told you never give away all your money." "Be a shame to come all this way just to die." "You ain't dying." "You know why?" "You're too damn responsible." "How's that figure into things?" "Let's see, if you die then it's just me out here." "A million miles from home." "I got no clue how to mine for gold." "No clue how to get back to the states." "The Bill Haskell I know, he wouldn't screw a man like that." "Hang around long enough, I just might." "Ah, you ain't dying." "What you need is a nice warm bath." "Now you're just being an asshole." "Nope, pretty sure that says bath." "This here is some prime real estate..." "You will have no more concerns." "It used to be a dry goods store, but can be whatever you want..." "Hey, check that out." "Come see the show, ladies and gentlemen." "Not only that, it's next to a whore house." "No way." "Look at all the girls." "Oh, she is fine." "Oh." "Oh, they've got to be kidding." "Don't think they are, Ep." "Room and a bath." "No Jew boys." "You want a room?" "Go tent up with the darkies outside of town." "Go on now, get out of here." "How about Jewish money?" "Huh?" "Oh, is that okay for you?" "My friend here wants a bath." "He's a God fearing catholic," "I'm pretty sure he won't sell the old artist." "You're freezing, brother." "Get warm, get dry." "I'll be in the saloon." "What's it take for a loan?" "Collateral." "♪ Klondike in Alaska, has a hold of me. ♪" "♪ I read the papers day and night, ♪" "♪ 'til I can barely see." "Klondike... ♪" "Hey, Bill." "Hey, what happened to you?" "Oh barbershop, cleaned up for the ladies." "I'm not going to let some anti-semite piss on this parade." "Hey, Bill, I want you to meet my new buddy." "What's your name again?" " London." " Right, like the city." "First name's Jack, last name's London and I recommend you putting that away in your memory." "A fair number of men are going to walk out of here rich, but a handful are going to be remembered." "Right on, you nut." "Go ahead and give it a chuckle if you want to, but what you're looking at here is a walking, talking novel." "A shelf full of novels, you take Pit right over there." "He's dumber than a crate of turnips." "He goes on a drunken bender upriver 40 mile." "Sobers up a week later and he's the stake holder of the hottest claim in El Dorado Creek." "No idea how he got it." "But he's sitting on a half a million in nuggets and it hasn't even been the first month yet." "El Dorado Creek?" "That's the place then?" "Yeah, sure, that's the place if you don't wanna get rich." "El Dorado Creek's already panned out." "Already panned out?" "Yeah it's staked anyhow, so you know, unless you're planning on jumping somebody." "I don't suggest you getting any mud on those boots heading up that way." "She's giving me a love eye." "That right there, that's a love eye." "Now you take the count over there, he's English aristocracy, though nobody can prove it." "He's got all the men, all the gear and he's been pulling nothing but mud out of the ground for the last six months." "It just goes to show you, that the Yukon is the only place in the world where a dumb shit can be a king and a king can be a dumb shit." "If it's not El Dorado Creek, then where is it?" "It's Bonanza." "Oh, Bonanza's easy, you just follow the cloud of smoke." "No." "Come on." "Swift Water Bill's here." "Swift Water Bill, he's the richest prospector in all of North America." "Spends it quicker than he can make it and they're telling me he's got a girl upstairs." "Not in a tub of champagne, there's not." "Wait, what do you mean by a girl?" "A courtesan, a whore, a hooker, one who hooks." "Enjoy, enjoy!" "There's more where that come from!" "There you are." "There you are." "There we go, gentlemen, drink up!" "Drink up, before the bubbles disappear!" "Right now, listen up, listen up!" "Champagne is like a beautiful woman." "First she'll tickle your nose, then your lips." "Wah!" "Hahaha!" "Hahahaaa!" "Are you going to make a move on tub girl?" "Nah." "Why not?" "Not if you have to pay for her." "Who says you have to pay for it?" "Think I'm going to do some prospecting of my own." "Dawson City, where naivety comes to die." "Joe, pour the man another." "Man's tongue's still too tight." "Bill Haskell." "Belinda Mulroney." "You labor or management, Haskell?" "How's that?" "Only two types come up here, the guy with the shovel, the guy with a business plan." "Shovel guys are welcome." "One thing Yukon's not short on is dirt." "Guys with the business plan on the other hand, we got more middleman hucksters than we know what to do with." "Shovel guy." "Good." "Even though there is no money in gold." "How much of the gold being pulled from the mountains you think ends up in their pockets?" "Gold's a whore, Haskell, just like her up there." "You can't take your eyes off of her." "You may lust after them, may even think you love them, but you don't need them." "This on the other hand, you need, wood." "And up here, if you need something, there's nothing you won't do to get it, no price you won't pay." "Without wood, there's no Dawson." "And you're telling me this why?" "I own the mill, Haskell." "Everything in Dawson comes through me, don't it, Joe?" "So you stay out of the wood business and I'll stay out of your sandbox." "How's that strike you?" "Strikes me fine." "Then you and me, we might be copasetic yet." "Just so you know, I can't pay." "It's okay." "For the ones I like, I'll go gratis." "I must really like you because I don't even give it to my boyfriend for free." "Well, you got a boyfriend?" "Oh, sort of yes." "Sort of no." "There's no sort of, it's one or the other." "Say I want to stake up at Bonanza?" "How do I go about doing that?" "Well, you just go up there and do it." "Drop a few bucks in the recorder's office and you're official." "A word of warning though... there's no law up there." "Get a bunch of men together, there's money involved, suddenly they ain't men no more." "Think I jumped someone else's claim." "You best get him out of here." "What's going on?" "!" "Ah!" "Watch it!" "Had to get into it, didn't you?" "I didn't know." "Hey!" "Go easy, brother..." "He put that in the sky when he could have put it in your back." "He's trying to scare you." "He's doing a hell of a job." "I kill you once and then I kill you again, you son of a bitch." "Proceed, please." "God looks after you, does he?" "But even God one day looks elsewhere." "And then you'll be in God's blind spot, my friend." "God's blind spot." "That's twice you've saved us." "Well, saving a man's hide isn't saving him." "What did he mean by that?" ""Saving a man's hide's not saving him."" "We'll get the rest of our kit once we've staked." "It's best we put Dawson in our wake, get on with the business we came here for." "Just look for the cloud of smoke." "Look for alluvia, there's natural dams." "Gold is exactly 19 times heavier than water, you know that?" "Nope." "Basically, it's supposed to settle at the bottom be left alone, settle in some calm little spot." "That's all we're looking for, brother, a calm little spot." "If you've come here to do some vulturing on my claim, you ain't welcome." "Trust me, we respect the sanctity of your claim which lies, if I'm not mistaken, everywhere within this finely expressed bit of string you got here." "But here, but here now is no man's land." "It's staked by no one and thus available." "Well have at it." "There's no creek left, unless you want to haul up 100 tons of equipment and do some load mining up in them hills." "Why don't you do everybody a favor and go back to the outside, you jack holes." "See the shape of the land here." "Creek dead ends back there." "Flows out of the hillside, right?" "What, under there?" "If there's flow under these rocks and we can get to it, we'd be up river from everyone else." "God knows how much unexposed creek bed waiting for us." "If we can get to it." "We'd need a locomotive to move all that." "Well figure, 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, there's a landslide, covers the creek up here." "And water's been pulling gold out of the hillside." "These obstructions would be the first stop for a lot of it." "Gold, it'd sit right here in this calm little spot, waiting for a couple of half-asses like us to come around and show it the light of day." "You're just guessing." "We're all just guessing." "Yeah, ain't exactly a convention of academics, is it?" "Which means?" "Couple of half-asses like us, we might just have a chance." "Get that shovel." "Alluvia." "We may just have a creek bed down there, brother." "Looks like I'm in business." "So am I." "You bought it." "Yeah, got thoroughly cheated, too." "Well, we come with different yearnings." "But perhaps we're equally foolish in our ambition." "Have you seen my friend anywhere?" "No." "See you around, father." "Yeah, good luck." "Hey, Bill." "We need a locomotive." "It's official, means you're official now." "You say that like it's a bad thing." "It's not necessarily." "People know where to find you, that's all." "We don't need a gun." "Your friend here bought it." "After the things I've seen, I'm not taking chances." "Buy it with my money or our money, either way I'm buying it." "50." "Suppose you're going to tell me it's grand larceny?" "It is." "Not if it saves your life, it's not." "Come on, loco." "Good luck." "That'll do it." "Yeah, it's enough for this one." "Come on, loco." "Good girl." "Tell me why you came here again?" "I told you." "Just trying to find a piece of something that's mine." "Carve out my future with my own hands." "I got a different take." "I think you did it for me." "I'm the half-ass here, we both know it." "Man of no prospects." "You, for you, the sky's the limit." "And you knew a guy like me, only way he's going to make something of his life out this way is if you went with him." "I like my theory better." "Thanks all the same, brother." "To having nothing in our pockets." "But a head full of hope." "We'd arrived." "Not just from a journey, but in a life." "This stake was our own small piece of the world." "Down in the center of the earth we'd earned it, but with it came a sense of potentiality that was as vast as the sky itself." "If you could do this, what else could you do?" "And perhaps in that was the real wealth to be gained." "A sense that nothing in the world could stop us." "Ep?" "What?" "You got to see this." "Ep?" "Ep?" "!" "Jesus Christ!" "Ep!" "You're all right, man." "I got you." "Ep!" "Ep!" "Ep!" "What happened?" "Gah..." "Jesus!" "Ep!" "Men come here to seek their fortune, which is another word for luck." "Men stick their spade in frozen dirt and ask," ""Am I lucky?"" "And mostly the answer comes in the form of goldless mud." "But they keep digging." "Question is what they're digging." "A mine or a grave." "Yep." "See you later." "See you in the morning." "Where could I find the law?" "Ain't no law around here." "You're in the town hall." "Cemetery ain't open either." "Animals are going to get to him, you leave him outside." "Don't need a cemetery, I intend to take him home." "Don't look like he got a lot of walk left in him." "You make jokes about funny things." "You're supposed to make jokes about funny things." "Hey, hey, hey." "Hey." "Don't let him in." "Just don't let him in." "Your brain's been mixing in with the sawdust." "Give my friend here a drink." "Not that seed of bark shite, the good stuff." "Only the good stuff for my friend here." "You can pay me back later, huh?" "When's the next boat out of here?" "Well, I'll, I'll answer you straight, boat comes in two days." "But your friend won't be on it." "And why's that, grifter?" "Give my friend another drink." "Why won't he be on the boat?" "Well, , because he's dead." "Death brings death." "I for one try to stay away from it lest I catch what it's got." "Now boat captains think like I do." "All of us here and, and I include you in my arithmetic, we won't be leaving here when we're healthy." "We're going to be buried here and that's a fact." "You might look hearty now, but no one can speak to the future." "Take the scenic route to get where you're going, don't you?" "Well, let's hear your pitch, grifter." "Well, here's how it is, brother, just because your partner is going to be buried in this cold hard clay doesn't mean a man such as you with other options got to." "And what other options?" "Your claim." "It ain't even been dug on yet, it might yield nothing." "You used a great word there." "Might." "Might be something, might be nothing." "That's the beauty of a claim such as yours staked up in the hill there." "Only one of it's kind so far." "Might be anything." "Folks around here they're hungry for gold." "They dream about it in their sleep." "A good deal of money will be invested in ignorance, when the need for delusion is deep." "What you got in your claim is a beautiful delusion." "And right now, it's unexamined, as you say, undug." "And you want to be the middleman for my delusion?" "Sell it when it's hot?" "Well, my proposition is this, and the deal's off the moment your spade touches soil," "I will give you 100 dollars for your claim." "And I will pay for your boat fare out of here." "Legal tender or gold, it's your choice." "Or maybe you want gold, tell the folks back home you dug it out yourself." "Be a bit of a hero." "Listen to me, and tell this to anyone who wants to know my intentions, I am not leaving Dawson until my friend gets justice." "He already got his justice." "You're the funny one, aren't you?" "Hey, hey, easy now, friend." "Easy now." "Now, now, come on now." "You're not getting rid of me that easily!" "You're not getting rid of me!" "Goddamn it!" "You took his boots!" "What kind of a man..." "Animals got him." "I'm sorry, sir, there's no way we can bury him today." "No way, no how." "There's too many passengers ahead of him." "But he'll be in the ground by week's end." "But condolences, truly, for your loss, sir." "I heard about what happened." "Came to pay my respects." "Thanks for coming." "Mint oil, for the smell." "May I ask your intentions?" "Will you be going home, back to Maine, is it?" "Vermont." "Vermont." "First state in the union to allow female suffrage." "Seemed important when I lived in the lower 45, it now seems quaint." "Voting for which man will have power over you." "This place kills." "It's not my place." "It's was what I was trying to tell you." "They'd kill over mud, would they?" "If it's the claim they're after, that's all they're killing over right now, mud." "It's what they think is under it." "Who'd do it?" "Who wouldn't?" "I worry about you." "I don't think you understand this place." "Your worry will be my good luck charm." "I'm sorry to hear about your friend." "If it's not too much trouble, father, would you conduct a ceremony over his grave?" "It would be very meaningful to his family and to me." "Well, I can't do a Christian rite for a Jew." "I understand." "But, I could perform the Jewish rite of kaddish for him." "What are you looking for?" "What are you doing?" "Do you smoke?" "No, I do not." "You should take it up, helps with the mosquitoes." "What are you looking for?" "My partner's claim." "Got it." "That mean you understood what I just said?" "Nope." "Got it." "Did you take it out of a dead man's pockets?" "No, sir, I wouldn't do that." "You stay right there." "I'm gonna give you exactly three seconds to tell me how you got a hold of that claim." "I don't know if I can do that in three seconds." "A week ago, your partner, Mr. Epstein, came into a loan shop for a loan, for supplies and such." "And the owner of that loan shop took his claim half as collateral?" "Answers come faster when the questioner helps him along," "I guess." "And you have some controlling interest in this loan shop?" "Oh, control and interest are separate things in my book." "I'm interested in fish, but I can't make them bite." "Who do you work for?" "I don't work for nobody." "I just do things on my own that people pay me for." "Who owns the loan shop?" "Well, you could have saved a lot of time if you'd ask that question to begin with." "My boss, the one who sent me out here to work this mud," "Belinda Mulroney." "She owns the loan shop?" "Meaning she's now the owner of his half of the claim?" "She's your new partner, Bill." "Nature's a transaction, rain makes a deal with the river." "Prey gives off a scent, makes a deal with the predators' noses." "And God makes a deal with death." "Turns everything into nothing." "Future's wanton, it's the present hour that counts." "Life's a transaction." "We look for 'tunities, when a 'tunity produces itself, man's smart, he pounces." "Hey, the man of the moment." "A man who can put me in liquor for a week, a few days anyway." "You know that thing don't work, it's lace." "Well, it gives us something to blame for getting wet." "Tell me which way to bet, friend." "Soapy's got a pool going." "One way says you're staying in Dawson, the other one says that you're on a boat out." "Now remember, I'm no good without my liquor." "I'm the closest thing to civilization for 10,000 miles." "Civilization depends on your answer." "Well, what are the odds?" "You're inscrutable, unguessable." "You're the most important person in this town, next to me, at least while the betting pool's on." "I ain't anything." "Just another man burning daylight and wasting gravity." "Burning daylight, burning daylight." "Sorry to keep you waiting." "I'd like to know when I'm getting a new friend." "Ah, you must have met Meekor." "I don't need Meekor." "I do." "I own half your claim, I need to protect my investment." "Convenient." "My friend dies and suddenly you own his half of the claim." "Are you accusing me of something?" "Gold's a fool's errand, honey." "I spend my time thinking about more lucrative things, like my hotel, the Fairview." "Grandest hotel Canada's ever seen, right here in Dawson." "Can you imagine?" "You should take soap's offer." "Sell your mud hole, head back to Maine." "Vermont." "You write your mother, Haskell?" "What does that got to do with anything?" "The world's divided between men who write their mothers, men who don't." "You write yours?" "I killed my ma." "She died as I exited her womb." "Left me to the vagaries of the world." "Your mother birthed you and you're birthing a hotel." "Looks like your mother has the edge." "You really don't know, do you?" "If you're staying or going?" "You got a minute, father?" "What can I do for you?" "I want to make a confession." "I apologize for the leaks, I just bought the place." "Forgive me, father, for I've sinned." "And what would you like to confess?" "Arson, murder." "When did you commit these acts?" "Oh, I haven't yet." "Would you care to be more forthright with me, sir?" "Is this watering can going to be your new church, father?" "God willing." "This is prime real estate in the center of Dawson and I among others have had my eyes on it." "So what are you going to do, burn the church down and me in it?" "You got a day to vacate." "Are you going to give me penance for my future sins?" "Your penance is being who you are." "Your roof's leaking, father." "You'll want to move your structure to firmer ground, little soft there." "This is the way it's going to work, you stay in your area, I stay in mine." "You don't talk to me, you don't give me advice." "As far as I'm concerned you're part of the mountain." "Which part?" "The part that's quiet and don't move." ""Dear mother, I find myself among wolves." ""I fear the only way to survive is to become one."" "Stay right there!" "What business you got looking at my tent?" "Show me your other hand now!" "I, I don't think I should." "You ain't the person I thought you were." "You're goddamn right I'm not." "Show me your hand." "I thought you were a hurt soul, after what happened to your friend." "I thought you could use a, a warm something in your gut." "I guess I pegged you wrong." "Hold on." "I'm sorry I, I just..." "I know, boy." "I know." "Shit on a plate." "Wolf." "I like eating critters that want to eat me." "Open that window!" "It's as warm as spit in here." "Here." "It's homemade moonshine." "It's made from spruce bark." "Special Yukon recipe." "Back home we got a word for that." "Oh, what's that?" "Turpentine." "Turpentine." "Maybe so." "Oh." "Oh, Goodman, you drunk ass." "I ain't drunk." "But I ain't an ass, I'm just an ape." "What happened?" "Well, that's what soldiering will do for you." "Serving your country, it turns you into an ape." "But as fine an ape as a man could ever know." "Condolences on your friend." "So you know, we're used to death here in the Klondike." "But not murder, not here at the claims." "Kind of makes you wonder which one of us is next." "No one hopefully, with the law coming to town." "Word is mounties are on their way, going to be here tomorrow, crack down on us sinners once and for all, huh?" "The king of fools." "You wouldn't know a gentlemen if you saw one." "I appreciate you taking the time to hear me, sir." "Killing of your friend is the talk of Dawson." "My condolences." "Mortician pulled this out of him." "It was a rifle shot, something with a lot of velocity." "Big bore." "A gun made for killing, I'm sure you're aware of it." "45/70 sharps maybe." "I've heard the local tribe up here the, the Tlingit have been trading for big animal guns for years." "Russian traders, seeders on the coast." "All we're doing is arming the enemy." "And what motivation the Tlingit have in killing a no one like my friend?" "From what I understand they used to dominate the region." "They think the land is theirs." "They've apparently got an invisible boundary beyond which folks who venture get harassed, threatened." "And it seems it's that hillside where you and your friend," "Mr. Epstein, staked your claim." "The second we staked our claim we were marked men." "Might be able to help you with your latest endeavor." "Heard you're heading to the Tlingit camp, which I'm told is just east of wolf paw trail." "It would be my pleasure to guide you." "I don't need someone to come along just to fill their notebook." "This is my battle." "It'd be a lot easier to find if you have someone with you who knows how to speak Tlingit." "So you're the new owner of the dry goods store?" "Yes, ma'am." "I'm going to be turning it into a church." "Turning nonbelievers into believers?" "You're going to need a lot more than lumber for that." "The gentleman over there on the porch, what's his story?" "Fancies himself a real estate speculator, amongst other things." "Has he got it in him to kill like he says?" "He got a lot of things in him, none of them are good." "Pardon me for saying, father, but someone should have put a bullet in him a long time ago." "You're new here, but I've experienced that man firsthand." "Should have shot him myself." "Saved the rest of us from that black shit storm he's got boiling in his head." "What are you going to do you deem the savages guilty?" "First thing is to know." "You've seen the tribe's leader?" "No, but I know of him." "He's a half breed." "His white ma tossed him in the woods around the age of five once he started showing too many native characteristics." "He survived for two weeks in the cold and frost until his tribe found him." "Legend is that he survived on rage." "Rage instead of his momma's love, he grew strong on it." "And he's now their leader." "Come here, dog." "Dog!" "Are we lost, scribe?" "Dog knows." "Want one?" "You should take it up." "Helps with the mosquitoes." "Now this is sacred Tlingit hunting ground." "Abandon hope all ye who enter here, for ye are no longer in the land of your father." "Lie down on the leaves, close your eyes and you might feel the cold paws of wolves passing over you." "You're one of them here, a wild human animal." "There's no difference." "We're being tracked." "By what?" "Could be wolves, could be men." "No difference." "Have you ever seen an Indian?" "Plenty." "Their skin's like all the colors of the mountain, put them together and dripped into a jar." "They're the color of nature." "Shh." "I did not ask you here, but I welcome you." "He speaks English." "That's good because I don't speak Tlingit." "I know about your friend." "I mourn him with you." "What do you know about him?" "I know everything here." "You and your friend have what you call a claim." "We have different principles of commerce." "Why don't you buy waves in the ocean?" "Pieces of sky?" "Somewhere there is a white man who thinks he owns the moon." "Did you kill him?" "We kill only for a reason." "That's not an answer." "Are you a God-fearing man?" "Enough." "Then God is everywhere." "He's in everything." "Yes." "Your fear is misplaced here." "We didn't kill your friend." "Then who did?" "The sky killed him." "That's not good enough." "Maybe this is good enough." "If we killed your friend and thought you knew, and we now have you here where your screams would be lost to the rest of the world, you think we'd let you go?" "Savages would slit your throat." "We're patient people." "We let the white man do a lot." "But one thing we'll never let him do is turn us into savages." "You believe him?" "I don't know if it's about me believing what he said or him believing it." "Seemed like you did." "If he didn't, wolves would already be feeding on us back there." "Drink ought to put things straight." "I'm buying." "Next time." "Just make sure there is a next time." "Don't let that gun do the thinking for you." ""May his great name go exalted and sanctified."" ""In the world that he created as he willed." ""May he give reign to his kingship in your lifetime," ""and the lifetimes of the family of his root," ""swiftly and soon."" ""May his great name be blessed forever and ever."" ""May his great name be blessed for ever and ever." ""In the name of the holy one..."" "Father I've come to help with the move out." "What's going on is not your fight." "Don't." "On your way, sonny." "This is a place of worship." "This is a dry goods store." "So you hired yourself an armed man, he's not going to draw." "I won't let him." "Well, this is embarrassing." "Threatening a priest." "You stack transgression atop transgression, don't you?" "Well, I'm going to get this place one way or another, so..." "Not if you're dead you're not." "There won't be bloodshed over a piece of mud." "You see the difference between you and me is" "I don't fire bullshit warning shots." "You're scared to kill me." "You've always been scared to kill me." "See what's happening here, father, in this moment, it's not about land." "Any killing between me and Belinda is about something entirely different." "Do you want to tell him what it is?" "Holster it." "You should have shot me." "I owe you thanks, I guess." "No you don't." "You see the truth is, I've got the same designs that he does." "Dawson's a, a godless town." "You'll soon find out and when you pack up and go," "I'm the one that's going to take this lot, not him." "I hope you're wrong about that." "You got too much faith in people, father." "I think I better take that gun." "Can't do that." "Hey, I came here to yap with you." "What's going on?" "They got your boy's killers." "Tlingits?" "Somebody saw them up on the hills that night, with guns, rifles." "Look like your situation's changed." "Justice has been rightfully served." "God bless us all." "Little souvenir, in exchange for your claim." "Show the folks back home what big success you were." "100 dollars worth." "No maybe, it may be a little bit more." "Just because I'm spendthrift." "Don't do it." "Deal's over if you dig." "Yeah, life's a transaction." "But some don't realize it, they take the bait from God." "They ask themselves, "Am I the one, fortune's prince?"" "They think they can break free from life's shackles." "Then a man stops listening to his wiser side and starts thinking he can change fate." "All the while all that pride really is is a shovel." "And damn if a man won't use that shovel to dig his own grave."