MADDIE WASN'T ON THE WHARF when the S.S. Portland docked in Seattle that summer of 1897. Chester was, though. He was among the throngs down at Schwabacher's wharf to greet the newly wealthy passengers aboard the steamship from the northland. He even hired on with one of the prospectors to carry his bags of gold to the Scandinavian American Bank—the federal assaying office having not opened yet in Seattle—and was paid five dollars for his efforts. Which was good solid money, Chester told Maddie later that day, and not just some featherbrained pipedream, but good solid money! Maddie replied that she supposed it was.
The riches aboard the S.S. Portland that heralded new bounty for Seattle instilled in Maddie the exact opposite idea that it inspired in Chester. She thought they should stay in Seattle and set up shop supplying the stampede of gold-fevered prospectors racing north that was certain to follow—most of whom would stop first in the Seattle to stock up on provisions. She had a hunch that that's where the best business sense lay, and not in risking everything they had (scarce little at that) for a chance to pan a few ounces of yellow dust (if they were lucky) from an ice-clogged stream in the frigid and barren north. Besides, she had come to grow fond of Seattle in the short time that they’d been there, even if they did live below the Deadline, in one of the city’s most notorious districts. She was occasionally able to get out into the other neighborhoods, where she could imagine a better life for them eventually, if they just stayed on.
To seek their fortune, however, was why they had ventured out to Seattle in the first place, Chester reminded her. Indeed, well before the headline...