The Floor of Heaven by Howard Blum

that they would finally make the strike that would enable them to purchase new lives. With a faith that was rooted beyond all reason, they knew that somewhere in the icy, desolate silence of this immense, unexplored land, perhaps in the bed of a frozen waterway, possibly in a rocky cave deep in the snowfields of a dark spruce forest, or in the core of some towering mountain capped by thick, glistening layers of snow and ice, lay what they had been searching for all their working lives. It would take a miracle to find their boodle; but, like all zealots, they knew in their hearts that they were individuals whose lives would in time be blessed by the miraculous. And when in 1880 hard rock gold was discovered near what quickly grew into the mining town of Juneau, there was a collective burst of feverish excitement among this resilient fraternity. This was not the mother lode, but, many were easily convinced, it was a providential sign. Their instincts and calculations had been correct. This last frontier held hidden treasure. Alaska was rich with gold.
    In California, George Carmack had heard the rumors of the fortune that was to be found in the harsh and distant north. When the Wachusett anchored amid the flotilla of tiny forested islands that dotted Sitka Harbor, George immediately stared out toward the gloomy thicket of mountains with their armor of dark ice that rose high behind the small coastal settlement like the walls of an impregnable fortress. He tried to imagine what lay beyond, out in the wild. He had arrived in Alaska in a marine’s blue uniform, but his mind and spirit were seeking another, more heartfelt occupation. Beyond Sitka, in the unexplored snowbound high north county, an empire of unknown dangers and challenges, he would at last fulfill the hopeful destiny his father had passed on to him. George Washington Carmack would strike it rich.
    SHOULD I make a run for it?
    From the moment of his arrival in Sitka, George began thinking about his escape. His daily life, the U.S. Navy made certain, was rigidly prescribed. Each morning in the numbing cold, his breath nearly freezing in the dawn air, he would turn out with his platoon for inspection. Afternoons would be spent with his fellow marines perfecting endless marching drills on the parade ground across from Sitka’s crescent-shaped beach, the late-winter wind too often howling off the Pacific like a discordant military band. And at the end of each exhausting day, tiredness clinging to his bones, he would wrap himself in scratchy U.S. Navy–issued wool blankets and lay in his cot among the rows of beds in the drafty three-story barracks and fall quickly asleep.
    Yet even while a busy marine, George remained tightly locked in his own private world. The shepherd’s lonely life had taught him how to take shelter in a castle built out of ruminations, and this discipline was once more serving him well. In his active mind, George was so deeply immersed in explorations beyond Sitka’s ring of granite mountains that it was as if he’d already fled. The prospect was very sweet.
    It would be, he told himself, so easy. Leave his uniform on his cot, walk out of the barracks, and disappear into the seamless pitch-black curtain that fell on a starless subartic night. And yet he hesitated.
    There was also—perhaps this, too, a product of his many years of youthful diligence—a practical side to this most optimistic of dreamers. George needed, he realized, to be prepared for what lay out there. If he were to make his solitary way through Alaska, he would need to know how to survive when the cold set in.
    He had arrived in Sitka in February, and a month later there were still storms raging, with pelting ice and driving snow so fierce that they shook the little collection of shacks that made up the marine base to their foundations. When storms erupted, the marines had no choice but to slam the shutters tight, stoke the wood fires, and remain inside, praying that the dark