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had since they had left San Francisco. There was still much ahead of them, and perhaps Sabine would discover more about herself from the wood spirit Lesya. But for now she seemed content, and almost happy.
    "You don't fear him?" Jack asked.
    "I think I'll always fear him. Memories like that, of the things I have seen, are hard to shake. But with you and the others around, I feel safe. There is something changed about him. And I think without him even knowing, it's made him weaker."
    I'm not sure about that , Jack thought. " You will need me, Jack London ," Ghost had said. And Jack was struck with the awful fear that the captain might be right.
     

 
Chapter Three - T he Void
     
    The train labored up the mountain toward White Pass, hissing steam and clanking over narrow gauge tracks as it climbed the last of its three thousand foot ascent. Jack looked out the window at the wild terrain and the shadows amidst the trees, and he felt welcome. His visit to San Francisco had been brief and had not felt at all like a homecoming. That had troubled him a little, and made him wonder if his constant wanderlust had finally erased any sense of belonging that might have given him some contentment at returning to his mother's house. Now he knew that wasn't the case at all. It was not that he had come unmoored from the world, only that his mooring had changed.
    This place was where he now belonged. He understood that for the rest of his life, no matter where he wandered, in his heart this would always be home. Here in the wild.
    Yet still he felt unsettled, his thoughts filled with memories from the last time he had made the treacherous trek to Dawson. The ship had landed at Dyea then, and the climb — by foot or horseback — to the Chilkoot Pass had been so treacherous that many men turned back, surrendering their dreams of gold before they'd even made it beyond the mountain range. Packs and supplies had been abandoned beside the trail. Horses had died and men had collapsed alongside them. And after the horrors of the Chilkoot Pass there had been the rush to get up-river before the Yukon froze. The winter ice had come early that year, trapping Jack and his friends Merritt and Jim in a ramshackle traders' cabin until spring. Scurvy and starvation had threatened to extinguish their lives, but somehow they had survived. And when the river had melted that spring, they had made it to Dawson at last, many months after they had set out from Dyea.
    Jack now knew that while he and his friends were struggling to survive that long, hungry winter in the great white silence, Sir Thomas Tancrede and Michael Heaney put men to work building the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad. In a miracle of determination, the railroad men had beaten the rugged terrain into submission with dynamite and sheer force of will, constructing bridges, blasting tunnels, and bolting down trestles that curved along the faces of mountain cliffs. One hundred and ten miles from Skagway to Whitehorse, and they had done it all in the space of two years.
    Of course, even if the brand new rail line had been in operation two years earlier, when Jack had first come north, he wouldn't have been able to afford a ticket. Prospectors didn't travel to the Yukon Territory by rail — they trekked the Chilkoot Trail or went up through White Pass on foot. Or, if they had a little money, they traveled by ship all the way to the Yukon delta up north and sailed southward from there. Perhaps in the months to come the train would be more affordable and be seen by stampeders as an investment toward fulfilling their dreams, but at the moment — only weeks after its completion — it was still the province of the well-off.
    Jack glanced around the carriage at the people travelling with them. These were not rich men. Rich men stayed at home and sent their minions into the frozen north to do their bidding. But by their dress and demeanor, it was clear they were men of some means, headed north not to