Page 10 of Untamed Coast

A flat-black RIB—rigid inflatable boat—zipped by at high speed across the other end of the small channel. Ants crept up Marco’s spine. He grabbed the binoculars.

It looked like only the driver was onboard, wearing camouflage foulies and a neon orange stocking cap. Marco couldn’t make out a boat name or registration stickers. The transom sported two huge black Mercury outboards. The thing would probably make fifty knots or better.

Radar and AIS showed no signs of the boat, and it was the first vessel Marco had seen in two days. It moved like a dark ghost on the water. The flat black made Marco think military—but the bright cap didn’t support that. It definitely was not one of the usual Coast Guard search and rescue skiffs. Something about the RIB wasn’t right.

Radio Flyer exited the narrow strait into the main channel. The black RIB had vanished like a phantom. Marco eased his grip on the wheel but couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling.

The snow globe at the helm stirred as the chop intensified. Marco bumped up the throttle to smooth out the ride. Michelle had always insisted they carry a well-equipped ditch bag on the boat—a waterproof neon-yellow floating drybag with a first-aid kit, bottled water, energy bars, space blanket, an emergency locator transmitter, and other survival stuff. They’d never been in a situation to use it, but if Michelle had ever gone overboard, she would have made herself easy to find—assuming she’d had enough time to grab the ditch bag.

Marco decided to anchor for the night in Klag Bay—the site of the old Hirst-Chichagof mine, the mining operation Joe Baxter must have visited every few days from Radioville in his wooden rowboat. The rusted ruins of a stamp mill and an old staircase sluice box used to separate gold from gravel cluttered the shore, towering above the rotting pilings and pieces of old heavy equipment strewn about the beach.

They say you could hear a stamp mill more than a mile away. The noise must have been deafening as the large steam-powered contraptions crushed ore with heavy steel stamps the size of boat anchors, breaking the rock into fine gravel. Marco wondered how the early miners maintained their sanity with the nonstop pounding day and night.

Radioville had to be within rowing range of this mine if Joe Baxter had made the trip regularly by rowboat eighty years ago. That gave Marco a decent chance of locating it. He dropped the anchor and made sure the boat was secure. The last hints of orange faded to purple as the sky darkened over Chichagof Island. He connected his digital recorder to the SSB radio so he could capture any broadcast that came in overnight. He climbed into his bunk and pulled the cool linen sheets up to his neck, stacking two pillows under his head. The static on the radio in the pilothouse above was barely audible.

He counted his breaths. Slowly. One. two. three…

The arm underneath him went numb. He rolled onto his other side. The sheets stuck to his chest, clammy with sweat.

Fifty-five, fifty-six…

Michelle’s voice surfaced in a whisper through the radio static. “Come get me, Marco.”

Marco lost count again, threw off the blanket, dragged himself out of bed, and climbed up to the pilothouse.

A crescent moon was just rising above the shoreline as a river of low clouds flowed silently overhead, illuminated by the soft moonglow. A loon called out into the night. A faint reply from its distant partner echoed across the water.

She’s gone, Marco. Michelle is gone.

He fast-forwarded through the last hour of recording, volume on high.

Nothing but endless static hiss.

Chapter 8

-.-. --- -- -- ..- -. .. -.-. .- - .. --- -.

Radioville Island, AK

1938—Joe Baxter

The warm, smoky embrace of bourbon slid down Joe’s throat, a burned banana taste lingering, a liquid fire clearing the fog in his head. Settling into his worn chair, he savored the burn.

Hair of the dog.

He opened a new, blank journal, turned to the first page, and wrote out the outgoing messages from the previous day, best he could recall. He would send as many as he could, hoping to make everything seem normal to the mining company folks back in Sitka. No one could know he’d lost the logbook, and he figured he could remember most of the messages—close enough, at least.

He started with the personal stuff. Watkins wanted to wish his son back in Illinois a happy birthday. Josh? John? What was the kid’s name? Easy enough to cover. “J WATKINS HAPPY BD LOVE DAD STOP” Even though Morse code had included punctuation since the late 1800s, Joe continued to use STOP instead of periods, as he’d been trained in the Signal Corps.

Nettle Jones had caught a barn-door halibut right off the dock at the mine. He was bragging to the folks back home. He’d given Joe a nice fillet, but Joe had lost it when the rowboat flipped.

Boris Petrov had asked Joe to send a wildly exaggerated story about the brown bear that had broken into the bunkhouse. Joe toned it down a little closer to the truth. “BEAR BROKE INTO OUR SLEEPER THE OTHER NIGHT BUT I CHASED HIM OFF STOP” Boris was the only man Joe could think of who wasn’t sending money home to his family. His kids couldn’t survive eating fancy made-up yarns about Boris braving the wilderness like some Alaskan Davy Crockett.

Mal Burnside wanted his oldest son to come to Alaska Territory to join him working in the mine. They had been back and forth about it for months. The kid didn’t want to come and was clearly needed back home to take care of his mom and younger siblings struggling through the Depression. Joe decided to pull it back a bit. “UNDERSTAND IF YOU CANT MAKE IT OUT HERE STOP MIGHTY GRATEFUL FOR ALL YOU DO BACK HOME AS MAN OF THE HOUSE STOP”

It took another inch of the cheap bourbon to get through the rest of the personal messages he could remember from the miners and managers.

He’d saved one that was problematic.