Klondike Page #17

COUNT:

God is not willing, Father. This is

prime real estate. Right in the

middle of Dawson. Many others have

had their eye on it. I am a

Lutheran, friend.

23.

FATHER JUDGE:

We are not friends.

COUNT:

(stares him down)

During my lifetime, I will not have

a papal atrocity built in my back

yard. My future sins will attest to

that.

Father Judge stares him down.

FATHER JUDGE:

You intend to burn down my church

and murder me in it.

COUNT:

So you see, my mortal soul is at

stake.

(beat)

You have a day to vacate.

The Count heads toward the doorway... then pauses.

COUNT (CONT’D)

(slow smile)

Aren’t you going to offer

penance... for my future sins.

Father Judge’s eyes are red. Old Testament eyes.

FATHER JUDGE:

Your penance is being who you are.

The Count stares back. Eyes take in the water pouring down

through the sieve of a roof.

COUNT:

Your roof is leaking, Father.

Stares intently at father Judge. Making his last words sound

personal.

COUNT (CONT’D)

Too many leaks to be fixed.

And he heads off into the rain, sleek as a seal.

ON FATHER JUDGE:

returning to his “church,” lost in thought, eyes harrowed.

Alone (very much alone) Father Judge goes back to work ,

smashing in the broken-down counter of the former Dry Goods

Store with an axe.

24.

Hard labor making him sweat. He removes his vestments

revealing...

A VERTICAL SCAR:

It goes down his chest from neck to navel. Like he was

gutted... and it didn’t take.

ON FATHER JUDGE:

Rage in his eyes now... SLAMMING the axe harder and harder

against the old splintering wood of the former store counter.

Grey hair wild. Scar reddening.

A different kind of priest.

CUT TO:

ANGLE ON HEAVY BOOTS

sloshing through mud. Soaked through and through. The owner

of the boots may as well be barefoot.

ON BILL:

heading toward his claim through visible sheets of rain...

eyes alert now. Every part of him alert.

OUR VIEW passes along the mining encampments along the

swollen Klondike. Everywhere, miners are bustling about,

putting up sandbags, reenforcing their structures.

Almost everyone looks up as Bill passes. Pause in their work

to stare. It’s unnerving.

ONE MAN (standing just outside his structure)

regards Bill with an extra challenge in his gaze. OUR VIEW

drifts down to his feet.

He is wearing Epstein’s boots. (We recognize the embossed

cowboy with the lasso).

A charge comes into Bill’s eyes. He starts to move toward

this man as...

... THE MAN’S BROTHERS emerge from the tent, cold eyes on

him. One is whittling a piece of wood with a large knife.

Two boys have also emerged from the tent and are clinging to

the men’s pants. Big, curious... unfriendly eyes.

BILL:

(to booted miner; growls it out)

We’ll talk alone sometime.

25.

Continues on, glaring back at the man with Epstein’s boots.

ON BILL:

arriving at his claim.

Meekor is in the midst of tying forked sticks on the base of

his structure with triple wrapped bark. He smokes his corn

cob pipe as he works. Glances at Bill.

MEKOR:

Oughta move your structure to

higher ground.

Bill is in no mood for Meekor. He’s just seen a man wearing

his dead friend’s boots.

Bill storms toward him (Meekor remains standing and smoking;

has a kind of Zen quality). Bill has to shout above the rain.

BILL:

This is the way it’s gonna work. You

stay in your area, I stay in mine!

You don’t say anything to me, you

don’t make small talk, you don’t give

me advice! Far as I’m concerned,

you’re part of the mountain.

MEEKOR:

Which part?

Bill stares at him in disbelief. Did he really ask that?

BILL:

The part that’s quiet and don’t

move!

Bill storms toward his tent.

MEEKOR:

Not all parts like that.

Bill turns... is about to let Meekor have it, but pauses at

the image of the mining camp spread out before him. Bill and

Meekor’s quarrel had been louder than Bill thought.

A HUNDRED HOSTILE EYES

are fixed on him, one of them probably a murderer.

Bill pulls out a pistol, puts it into his pants for ready

use. He stares right back at the miners, ready for anything.

He goes back into his tent.

CUT TO:

26.

INT. BILL’S TENT - NIGHT

Bill is in his tent. A single candle is burning. It sounds

like a thousand thumb tacks are hitting the canvas of his

tent. The rain. With each gust of wind the canvas of the tent

billows and shifts, threatens to blow over.

Pen in hand, Bill is writing a letter to, yes... his mother.

OUR VIEW moves through the detritus of the mining settlement

past gaunt, tired faces, and rugged nature (spruce trees,

lashed by wind and rain, growing out of cracks in rocks), as

we hear Bill’s voice.

BILL (V.O.)

Dear Mother, I find myself a

stranger in a strange but beautiful

land. This is a place they say

where the gold fairly sticks out of

the dirt. I saw a man recently

carrying a nugget the size of an

apple. Like one of those on our

trees out back....But sadness has

followed us. Epstein is dead.

Murdered by a savage, and cowardly

man. I know not who. I know not

how. The Klondike seems hardly real

without him. “To Go for the Moon

whether we get there or not”-

that’s what we promised each other.

An optimists’s giddy plan or a

fool’s journey? I fear the latter

now. All is rendered hollow as I

write this. I expect to see you

soon. As soon as I can lay my

friend to God’s care, and bring the

perpetrator to justice, if there is

justice to be had up here where no

law has yet reached. Your face

brings me comfort. In my mind. And

soon in my sight.

He hesitates, then writes the last words.

BILL (V.O.) (CONT’D)

... I will be home soon.

A BOOMING CRASH OF THUNDER

breaks the silence.

THROUGH A GAP IN THE TENT FLAPS

we see the top of the denuded mountain BLEACHED in a flash of

lightning. A single spruce tree stands on the summit like a

flag.

27.

ANOTHER FLASH OF LIGHTNING

makes instant daylight out of the mountain peak. The spruce

tree is no longer at the summit. It is several yards down the

slope now.

It’s like the mountain is moving.

Suddenly, there’s A TERRIBLE RUMBLING. This can’t be good.

Beneath the sound, we hear the TINY SHOUTS of other miners.

Bill exits his tent just in time to see...

THE MOUNTAIN:

slide away from itself... rushing inexorably downward. Bill

grabs at his tent as A TSUNAMI OF MUD hits...

...carrying him, the tent, everything in its path down the

slope with the force of a hundred freight trains.

ON BILL:

struggling in the fast-moving mud as it pulls him down the

slope. He goes down, sunk in it.

The mud settles a bit... and miraculously, Bill rises--mud

covered, pounds and pounds of mud cloaking him. He stares at

the slope above him and sees the horrific sight of...

MINERS:

scattering as another SEA OF MUD slams down off the mountain.

We glimpse the horror of a mother clutching her seven year

old’s hand hardly having the time to react as the mud

engulfs, making them part of the earth.

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote