moved to sit down on the bed, reaching to take her Bible from the nightstand. She pressed it to her heart and let the tears come. Oh, how she missed the days when her family was all together, working hard to build their own church. Since she was eight years old, when her family had arrived in San Francisco after an arduous journey by wagon from Illinois, a life of serving the Lord was all she’d known. She’d been so involved with helping first her father and then her brother that she’d never even taken time for her own life, for allowing young men to court her or attending any social functions except those involving the church. She’d taught Sunday school, helped her mother minister to sick members and then had spent months nursing her own mother until she died.
“Why, God? Haven’t I served You well? Why have You taken so much from me?”
She opened her Bible to the New Testament, always believing that wherever she opened the Gospels she would find answers to her problems. She believed it was God’s way of talking to her, leading her.
“Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit,” she read, “after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
There, as always, was her answer. She could not allow the hypocrites who’d kicked her out of this parsonage to spoil her faith.
She closed her eyes. “Lord, I believe You have a reason for the turns life hands us. Surely You mean for me to go to Dawson. I’m afraid, Lord, but I know You will be with me. And I believe there is a purpose for what has happened that You have not yet shown me. Whatever You have planned, Lord, I will accept whatever You entrust to me.”
She rose and packed the Bible into the second carpet bag, along with what was left of her clothing, such as it was. Her family had never owned many material things, and she dressed simply. She breathed deeply as she buckled the second bag, feeling more confident now. God had a purpose for her. She did not doubt it.
She walked to the dresser where she used to sit while her mother brushed her hair for her, always praising its thickness and luster—a lovely red glint to your dark tresses when the sun hits your hair just right, her mother would say. Liz sometimes felt guilty for admiring her own hair during those times, but she was proud of it, and it felt good to remember how she and her mother used to talk about so many things, and to remember how kind and loving Edna Breckenridge had been.
A lump rose in her throat at the memory. She tied on her bonnet, remembering her mother’s warning to always wear a hat with a brim to protect the beautiful, flawless skin God gave you. When the Lord blesses you with good health, you should respect your body and take care of it. That included, of course, giving her body to a man someday only out of love and through God’s divine blessing. So far she’d not met one young man who came close to giving her even the slightest feelings of desire in that respect. And the night Reverend Selby had come into her room with his hideous suggestions only made the thought of being with any man repulsive. It would be a long time before she forgot that awful night!
She forced back another urge to cry as she smoothed her plain green dress with a tiny white ruffle at the high neck. It matched her small green pill bonnet. She wore black ankle-high button shoes and looked properly prim and respectable, certainly not the harlot the Reverend Selby had tried to convince others she was.
It was midafternoon. Neither the Reverend nor Mrs. Selby were home. Good. She’d not bother telling them or anyone else goodbye. She’d go to the church graveyard and visit her father’s and mother’s graves one more time. Oh, how it would make her heart ache to leave them and Christ Church behind, but she had no choice now. They would want her to be with Peter. Steamships left every day for Alaska; and she’d pay passage on one of them and leave.
She took a last look at the room she’d occupied since she was a little girl and shared with her mother for those last months of suffering. Then she straightened, hooking the strings of her handbag on her arm, a handbag that carried all the money she possessed in the world. She picked up her carpet bags and turned, walking out the door. This was it. There was no turning back.
Chapter Three
I am a stranger in the earth; hide not Thy commandments from me.
—Psalms 119:19
August or not, it was foggy and chilly today. Elizabeth was not unaware of the stares of the hundreds of men who milled about. She could not forget the letter she’d received just this past spring from Peter, in which he’d casually stated that any women who came unescorted to Alaska were generally considered to be there for prostitution, although a very few managed to open legitimate businesses such as eateries, or to find work as seamstresses.
Elizabeth had practically memorized Peter’s letters, of which she had only two. It was not easy getting mail out of Dawson and all the way down to San Francisco. She’d received one letter over the winter after his arrival last fall, and the more recent one this spring. She’d written Peter right away about their mother’s death, and it was possible he’d not even received that letter yet, let alone the letter she’d written two nights ago.
Now she stood on the wharf waiting for passengers to disembark the Alaskan Damsel, a steamer that had made numerous trips to Seattle and on to Skagway via the Inside Passage throughout the past two summers.
As she’d suspected would be the case, not many people left the boat, yet hundreds waited, ready to board. For most who made this journey, it was a one-way trip, and like most of them, she’d purchased a one-way ticket herself. Once she found Peter, she had no intention of ever returning to San Francisco.
She shivered from the damp fog, then jumped when the high smokestacks of the Damsel billowed black smoke, accompanied by three shrill whistles, beckoning all who intended to board her. She wondered if that included the three painted, gaudily dressed women who stood not far away batting their eyes at some of the men. It made her ill to think what such women did to make their money. Not far from them stood a group of Chinese, conversing in their strange sing-song tongue. The men’s hair was worn long and braided into tails at the backs of their necks. Other Chinese as well as black men worked at the docks loading and unloading supplies.
Different. All so different. Did God actually expect his followers to love people like that? She liked to think that she could, but if she actually had to associate with them…Oh, Lord, I fall so short of Your will. I am surrounded by heathens and harlots and men whose hearts are filled with a lust for gold and painted women. How can I truly love such people? I know that I am no better than they, and yet it is so hard to think of them as equals. Teach me how to love all people.
Perhaps if her father had not been murdered by people very much like these…. The memory still brought a stabbing pain to her heart. Her father used to come home and ask the family to pray for thieves and murderers, alcoholics and drug users, harlots and men who visited them. He’d truly been a man of God, for she believed he honestly loved these people in the way God intended. He’d died serving the Lord. The same people to whom he’d ministered had turned around and murdered him for a mere three dollars. They had even stolen his clothing, leaving him naked and disgraced.
To realize God meant her to love that kind of people brought a great struggle to her soul. The congregation mourned, but they also had repeatedly warned her father not to go to such dangerous places as the Barbary Coast, a section of this dock area not so far away from here. No one else in her father’s church, most certainly not Reverend Selby and the deacons, had anywhere near the courage of her father when it came to bringing God’s Word to the lost souls of the world. The remaining members of Christ Church had decided it was best simply to serve the current congregation and the surrounding, more civilized neighborhood. If anyone on the Barbary Coast wanted to find God, they were
