Part 4: Morning on the Yukon
The wind was quieter by dawn.
Outside Arthur’s cabin, the snow gleamed under a pink-gray sky, untouched and endless, like a world waiting to be written on. The Yukon lay beyond the ridge—a silver serpent beneath a veil of mist, silent and unmoving, yet full of stories.
Walter was already awake when Ruby stirred. He stood at the window in his long wool coat, hands in his pockets, watching the breath of the land.
“She’s still frozen,” Arthur said behind him, pouring coffee into two tin mugs.
“She ever thaw?” Walter asked.
Arthur smiled. “Once a year, but never when you expect.”
Ruby helped Huck up. The old dog had slept hard, and when he stood, his back legs trembled. Ruby steadied him with both hands.
“We can carry him,” she said softly, but Huck moved forward, determined as ever, tail low but wagging once with purpose.
Walter took his father’s harmonica from his satchel. He hadn’t played it in years, but he slid it into his coat pocket anyway. Some things belonged at rivers.
They set out just after sunrise.
The path was narrow, crusted with ice, lined with birch trees whose white trunks stood like silent witnesses. Ruby’s boots crunched ahead. Walter followed close behind, Huck padding between them, his breath leaving soft clouds behind him.
Arthur didn’t join them. He said nothing when they left, just stood on the porch with his arms crossed and the wind tugging at the fringe of his coat.
Halfway down the ridge, Walter paused to rest. He turned and looked out over the horizon.
The sun had begun its slow crawl up the sky, casting golden light on the snow. The air was sharp, clean, and still. In the distance, a crow called once—then silence.
“You think he really meant for us to come here?” Walter asked.
Ruby didn’t answer right away. She was watching Huck, who had paused at the edge of the riverbank and sat, ears forward, tail curled around his paws.
“I think he wanted you to finish something,” she said. “Or maybe he wanted to be forgiven.”
Walter nodded. “I spent so long trying to live a life that would’ve made him proud. And now I find out… maybe he didn’t know how to be proud of himself.”
“Maybe he did,” Ruby said. “But in his own way.”
They reached the frozen riverbank.
The Yukon stretched wide and still, covered in glassy ice, its bends curving out of sight. A silence lived there that could hush even the deepest ache.
Walter knelt beside Huck. The old dog looked up at him, eyes cloudy but full of understanding.
“This is it, boy,” Walter whispered. “The place he never made it back to.”
He pulled the harmonica from his pocket, sat on a flat rock near the river’s edge, and closed his eyes.
The first notes were shaky. Rusted.
But then the sound found its shape—clear, trembling, alive.
It wasn’t a song anyone else would recognize. Just a string of memories turned into wind. Notes pulled from laughter, pain, forgiveness. It rose into the sky like smoke.
Ruby knelt beside him. She didn’t cry. Not yet.
When Walter finished, he let the harmonica rest in his lap.
Huck slowly laid down beside them, his body pressed against Walter’s knee.
The wind stirred, soft and slow, moving across the ice like a hand brushing old photographs.
Walter took a long breath.
“He’s with us,” he said.
Ruby nodded. “And he always was.”
They sat in silence. Time stopped. Or maybe it simply remembered.
Then Huck let out a quiet, low whimper—not of pain, but of release.
Ruby leaned over him. Walter placed a hand on the dog’s head.
Huck looked up once more, blinked slowly, and exhaled.
A long breath.
Then stillness.
Walter’s throat closed.
Ruby reached for his hand.
And the Yukon, unmoved by human grief, shimmered beneath the morning sun, carrying the moment into its deep, eternal memory.