The Bunk Bed Incident

Vladimir Moroz praised his luck at finding an abandoned cabin a few miles outside of Dawson City in the Yukon. The small wooden building was structurally sound, as comfortable as any similar edifice could be in the 30-below weather, and sufficiently isolated from the boisterous mining town. And it presented Moroz with the opportunity to murder another of his fellow prospectors, Anatoly Litvenko.
Most of the would-be miners who flocked to the frigid recesses of northwestern Canada in 1897 had fared poorly, losing their fortunes in search of greater ones, and many, their lives. Moroz had been a successful trapper, but switched vocations when news of the glittering discovery at Bonanza Creek reached his ears. He convinced another trapper, Jacques l’Enfant, to accompany him, as well as two of Moroz’s countrymen, Litvenko and Alexander Karpov. The latter had an unfortunate encounter with a Kodiak bear, who mauled Karpov to death after smelling the beef jerky that Moroz had stuffed in his slumbering comrade’s coat pockets. Even if his plan had failed, Moroz could have claimed that Karpov had been too drunk to remember hoarding the food.
Now there was one fewer companion with whom to share. The considerable yield that the four had uncovered near El Dorado Creek had prompted them to pack up and head south towards the town of Dyea, where they would take a barge to Vancouver.
Moroz was a large man, and therefore surprised when Litvenko agreed to let him take the top bunk. L'Enfant bedded on an old cot. Quickly learning that his berth was unsteady, Moroz decided on a risky plan that, if successful, would eliminate a second partner and look like an accident.
An hour after the trio had extinguished the lantern, Moroz shifted his weight back and forth, stopping momentarily upon hearing a loud creak. He waited a few minutes before beginning again. A soft cracking came, then a tremendous snap! Moroz broke into a demonic smile as he plunged five feet and landed with a thunderous boom.
His smile vanished, replaced with a grimace. He heard padded footsteps. Litvenko and L'Enfant stood over him, the former holding the lit lantern. L’Enfant looked horrified; Litvenko, calm.
“I slept on the bearskin rug near the door,” he explained to Moroz, who lay immobilized with a shattered spine. “My bunk was uncomfortable.” He then added softly in Russian, “Sasha hated beef jerky.”