In the last part Ben and Beth are thanked and rewarded for saving the ship. Ben meets a founder of Skagway, as well as the bad man of Alaska. He builds a house and agrees to work at a livery stable part time.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

“Lord, show me your purpose for our being here. Show me the ministry you have for me.” Since their first arrival, the moment that God told them this was the place, Ben prayed for specificity.

Nothing came. Though the town had no church, building one was not God’s plan for Ben. He knew it as well as he knew anything. As for street preaching, there was hardly a time when more than a few occupied the same vicinity, everyone generally about their business of survival.

Ben witnessed as the Holy Spirit led, but generally simply made friends, and in so doing, though certainly not the goal, gained the trust of everyone he met.

Ben broached the subject of an absence of a ministry with Beth.

“Oh, honey. I’ve been praying the same thing, but it’s like there’s a ceiling. My prayers can’t get through a cloud barrier, or something.”

Ben thought a moment. “You’re on to something. I haven’t put my finger on it. There’s a spirit of fear and foreboding. I think we both sense it. A blanket of evil. But it isn’t like Bordello Row in Chicago, or Opium Alley in San Francisco. It’s more like we’ve landed in Satan’s drawing room, though he has yet to greet us.”

“I’m not in a hurry for such a meeting,” Beth confided.

Ben nodded an understanding smile.

“But that just might be our mission, our reason for the call to Alaska.”

A nearly overwhelming heaviness came over Beth. She stumbled to a chair, landing awkwardly, steadied by Ben. With every ounce of will she possessed, Beth stood into Ben’s arms. “Never leave me, Ben. I couldn’t stand it. Never leave me. Promise.”

“Beth, I will always love you. Always.” Ben knew the difference between what Beth asked, and what he offered.

Their next walk through Skagway gave enlightenment. Soapy Smith had an aura that they could both see. Exiting a saloon, Soapy counted a handful of dollar bills, a smirk on his face. Two men about to enter gave him wide birth, as if avoiding the aura visible only to Ben and Beth. They looked at one another, comprehending.

Soapy Smith was the ultimate bully. Without escort or hired thugs, though his gang was fierce, he drove terror and fear into the hearts of strong men in his presence. He was an evil force no one was willing to confront. Neither Ben nor Beth had seen such. They could not imagine loving husbands allowing him his way with their own wives, and that the wives willingly allowed such abuse. But opposing the devil incarnate was beyond them. Such was everyone’s fear.

Where and when possible, people avoided him. Fortunately, Soapy Smith’s time was divided among the various settlements, where his intimidating persona dominated throughout.

Ben and Beth were immune to Soapy’s affect. Except for the initial meeting when Ben refused to pay Soapy his due, Soapy acted as if he didn’t even see them. On occasion, Ben saw him actually snap his head aside in order to divert his attention away.

Ben wondered whether he would prefer another direct opposition. Another, possibly more sinister thought coursed through his mind: what if the townsmen considered Soapy Smith their lion, an evil lion, but theirs to appease out of whatever led them there to begin with. Ben was put in mind of the Tombstone, Arizona, incident between the Clanton gang and Wyatt Earp and his bunch where the Earps and Clantons shot it out at the Okay Corral. It turned out that the townspeople tolerated the abuse of the Clantons, figuring that the Clantons were responsible for whatever success the town enjoyed.

Here, though, it was different. What Ben and Beth experienced was more akin to circus animals cowering before a man with a whip, accepting his abuse as normal.

Ben thought it might be a tiny picture of hell, where the devil tormented his subjects, those who knowingly rejected a savior. Soapy Smith was just such an influence over the Alaskans.

+++

“Let’s go to Juneau on the next steamer,” Ben suggested. “Get whatever we think we might need before winter sets in full.”

Beth was game.

In Juneau, they witnessed the same. People nearly bowed in Soapy Smith’s presence, skirting him when they could. Acquiescing when they couldn’t avoid him. And again, Soapy acted as if he and Beth didn’t exist, dodging contact.

“Beth,” Ben began once they were homebound. “You ever play with magnets?”

She hadn’t, but she knew what they were.

“They have opposite ends. Two will attract.”

“Like you and I,” Beth inserted, smiling.

“Ben returned her smile. “And the other ends repel.”

“Like you and Soapy.” Beth chuckled. “I don’t want you to try just for fun, but I’d like to see you bump him around in the middle of the street, walking your aura against his.”

Ben smiled. “No, you’re right. That’s not something to toy with.”

With the supplies purchased in Juneau, Beth baked biscuits and bread. Soon everyone else quit trying to make their own, and bought Beth’s wares to help them weather the winter. The most difficulty the couple had was the same as most everyone else, acclimating to the perpetual darkness, only moderately lighter during daytime hours. They deemed it tolerable when they considered the weather and the darkness as accommodating their incentive to find time for prayer.

And then Billy Moore’s predictions came true. Gold was discovered on the Klondike. And the trail that Moore blazed leading to a pass through the mountain being the quickest and easiest route made Skagway the portal to vast wealth, or so thought prospectors by the thousands.

Beth switched to hard tack, though the very idea seemed like so much wasted flour. But she understood the necessity of nutritious grain food that would not quickly spoil.

Another switch was that Soapy Smith moved his headquarters to Skagway, building another saloon.

Mason Salinger of Colorado, as evil as he was, had to have a gang to exert his influence. Diamond Jim and Mushmouth of Chicago had virtual armies of soldiers supporting their levels of evil. Soapy Smith, though, was like a devil, a force even righteous men declined to face. His gang was more a matter of hangers-on than a force.

Ben began a campaign of street corner preaching once miners started filling the town, putting together the grubstake required by the Canadian government: 2,000 pounds of foodstuffs before allowed entry. His sermons and sermonettes mostly concerned resisting the evil one, sprinkled in with calls to salvation.

Ben also began talking with residents of Skagway, men who were loathe to hire a sheriff, many of them on the outside of the law themselves but attempting to live in peace. An alternative Ben suggested was a militia, men like themselves willing to join together in the common quest for peaceful living. Neither of them considered that the ultimate goal might be Soapy Smith and the evil that surrounded him.