Gold Dust (28 page)

Camilla laughed quietly. “Katy dear. Women were meant to follow a man’s lead. A man without a wife is like a boat without
an anchor. And a woman without a man…” She thought a moment, then smiled. “A woman without a man is like an empty vessel waiting
to be filled.”

Katy’s cheeks grew hotter. If she told Camilla that her vessel had been good and filled just the night before, what would
the gentle Irishwoman think? “I can live without being filled,” she said almost pugnaciously. “I’m going to be independent.”

“Independence will not keep you warm at night nor give you children,” Camilla reminded her gently.

A good crackling campfire would do for warmth, Katy told herself, and as for children—well, if little Liam was an example,
then she’d been away shooting squirrels when God parceled out the maternal instinct, because the poor little tyke had been
squirming and fussing ever since she’d taken him.

As if in full agreement with her assessment, Liam suddenly signaled his dissatisfaction with a louder than normal wail.

“I’d better take him,” Camilla said. “Poor baby. Poor boy.” She transferred the sling to herself and cuddled the infant. “Where’s
Mama’s sweet angel, eh?”

Liam quieted from frantic to merely fussy. Momentarily, Katy pictured herself with Jonah Armstrong’s child in her arms—a child
conceived with Jonah’s body fused to hers, a child born of tender kisses, intimate laughter, loving words, a child with Jonah’s
wicked smile and Katy’s green eyes.

Katy sighed, then scolded herself. That was the road to trouble.

Secure against his mother’s breast, little Liam produced a noise that sounded remarkably like a raspberry. Katy laughed,
and Camilla joined in.
Out of the mouths of babes
… Katy mused with a strange sadness.

They climbed down through the windswept, treeless valley that led from Chilkoot Pass. The packers carrying the Burkes’ outfit
and the two that Katy had taken accompanied them at their own pace, some behind, some ahead. Camilla and Katy took turns carrying
Liam, and even Patrick once assumed the burden of his son, though when the baby messed, he promptly landed back in his mother’s
custody.

The trail was crowded, though not as packed as on the other side of the pass. Slowed by Liam and a tiring Camilla, they often
were passed by faster parties, much to Patrick’s freely expressed disgust. One of the parties that went around them on the
trail was Jonah and Andy. Andy skipped and waved. Jonah touched the brim of his hat, but his mouth was set and grim, his eyes
hooded beneath lowered brows.

A knife twisted in Katy’s gut. What had she expected? she asked herself—a hug and a kiss?

At the midday break they were entertained by watching the daring few who sped their trip down the trail by sliding down the
snowfields that formed dirty white chutes on the steep slopes. Everything from boards to oilskin slickers were used as sleds
for both prospectors and goods. Amid whoops, hollers, and shrieks, many made fast and successful trips to a point far below
where they could have walked in several hours. A few came to grief on the rocks at the foot of the snowfields.

“Fools,” Camilla remarked.

Patrick gave Camilla a look that made Katy suspect that if not for his wife and infant child, Patrick would be taking his
chances on the snow with the rest of the fools.

The first night down from the pass they camped at Crater Lake, which sat like a jewel in the cup of an ancient glacial basin
and reflected with perfect clarity the rocky heights that rose above them. Katy tended Liam while Camilla fixed supper. Patrick
coaxed a lilting Irish folk tune out of his fiddle
and filled the little valley with music. People in camps all around the lake clapped and whooped in approval.

Crater Lake was the first in a string of lakes and waterfalls that cascaded downslope toward Lake Bennett. The high mountain
valleys through which the Klondikers trekked were the birthplace of the mighty Yukon River. Katy marveled that the place still
seemed so wild and untouched even with a parade of goldseekers trampling its dignity. More than once her eyes caught the graceful
soar of an eagle overhead. Marmots sat atop rocks and squeaked their loud indignation. Picas occasionally added their comments
to the chorus. Hunter brought Katy two of the rodents who weren’t fast enough to duck into their holes when he passed by.
She took them with proper thanks, then tossed them back into his jaws for him to snack upon. She doubted very much if Patrick
and Camilla Burke would appreciate a pot of pica stew.

Midafternoon of the second day from the summit they saw trees for the first time since leaving Sheep Camp. At Lake Lindeman,
a long, narrow finger of water that stretched for several miles above Lake Bennett, scraggly spruce struggled to survive the
arcticlike environment. Klondikers impatient to take to the water chose Lake Lindeman to stop and build the boats that would
transport them down the Yukon to Dawson, but most hiked on to Lake Bennett, where the timber grew taller and thicker and a
sawmill sat on the lakeshore to provide lumber.

Katy and the Burkes planned to go on to Lake Bennett, but Katy surreptitiously inspected every tent they passed on the shore
of Lake Lindeman to discover if Jonah and Andy might have stopped. Their familiar tent was nowhere to be seen, however.

They reached Lake Bennett and the little tent town that had sprouted along its shore with almost an hour of daylight to spare.
Anxious to make arrangements for continuing the journey, Patrick left to negotiate for a boat at the sawmill as soon as they’d
chosen a campsite. Katy made Camilla sit down
with the baby while she pitched the tent, built the fire, and started beans and salt pork to heating.

Patrick returned with bad news.

“The sawmill isn’t taking any more contracts for boats,” he told them. With an impatient grimace, he poured himself a mug
of coffee from the pot heating over the fire. “I’ll have to build one.”

“Oh, Patrick,” Camilla said with a sigh. “What do you know about boat building?”

He grinned and raised his cup to her in salute. “I’ll learn, my love. How hard could it be? After all, we’re simply floating
down a river, not crossing the briny deep. Be a good lass, now, and shovel me up a plate of those beans.”

Patrick had talked with Messrs. Markus and Rocco, the carpenters who owned the sawmill, and arranged to cut timber in exchange
for a portion of the trees being sawed into lumber. He was optimistic about the length of time required to earn enough lumber
for a boat. They had to wait for the rest of their outfit to be packed over the pass from the Scales in any case, for Patrick
had not been able to replace the Indian packers who had deserted him, leaving them with only two. Katy wasn’t surprised that
more packers had refused to hire on with the Irishman, for he treated the Indians more like horses or mules than people. Katy
wouldn’t have treated a horse with the casual contempt Patrick reserved for the packers. His attitude had earned him a delay
at Lake Bennett while the two packers who had stuck with him shuttled their goods across the pass in three or four trips.
Even had the sawmill been able to give them lumber right away, they could not have left until all their outfit had arrived.

Musing on Patrick’s deficiencies brought to mind Jonah’s contrasting behavior, for he had gotten on surprisingly well with
the Indian men and women who had hired on to carry their provisions to Lake Bennett. She wondered how he would react to her
uncle, Crooked Stick, the Blackfoot warrior who refused to stay on the reservation when there were
more interesting things to do and see elsewhere, or to her grandmother Squirrel Woman, who was a very powerful medicine woman.
He would never meet them, Katy reminded her-self sharply, so she would never know.

If the mill was accepting no more contracts for boats, then Jonah was subject to the same delay that she and the Burkes were,
Katy realized. She wondered what the greenhorn knew of boat building. Probably nothing, and Katy would have been little help
to him in that if she’d been with him, for she’d been a landlubber all her life.

Patrick and Jonah were not the only amateurs who would be building their own boats. Exploring the tent town with Hunter by
the evening’s last light, Katy saw many a boatbuilding operation going on. Most of the Klondikers followed the same design.
Some whipsawed their own lumber. Others had purchased lumber from the mill in exchange for labor in cutting trees. The knotty
green spruce boards were hardly the ideal sort of material to make into a boat, Katy guessed, but the goldseekers weren’t
about to let that stand in their way. The shoreline resembled a shipyard with boats in all stages of completion—sharp pointed
little vessels with wide sterns and flat bottoms to negotiate the shallows of the river. The boats were caulked with oakum
and heavily pitched—some not nearly enough, as Katy discovered when she watched the maiden launch of a just-completed boat.
The boat wasted no time in sinking. The sodden captain swam back to shore, warming himself and all the campsites within earshot
with his curses.

When darkness fell, Katy was loath to return to the Burkes’ camp, Liam’s constant fussing, and Patrick’s sharp mood, for in
spite of the Irishman’s rationalization that they would soon be on their way, he still chafed with the necessary delay. She
wandered randomly around the tent town, looking at boats, saying hello to a few acquaintances from the trail. Before much
time passed she found herself looking at a battered tent
that was as familiar as the Thunder Creek ranch house back home—Jonah’s tent.

Heart beating rapidly, she slipped into concealment behind a spruce tree and hissed for Hunter to join her. Andy squatted
beside the campfire, drinking from a tin mug. The smell of coffee was pungent in the cold air. No sound or movement revealed
Jonah’s presence. He wasn’t there.

Katy’s heart slowed a bit. She told herself it was from relief. She had nothing to say to Jonah, after all. Nothing at all.
But a quick hello to Andy would only be polite.

“Andy,” she greeted him as she left the cover of the tree. “Hi there.”

“Miss Katy!”

“How’s it going?”

“Good! Hey, I caught some fish for dinner. There’s some left over. Want some?”

“Sure.”

Andy presented her with a plate of whitefish and beans.

“What did you catch them with?” Katy asked.

“Bacon. It was easy. Some of the folks around here are putting out gill nets, though. I’m going to try that.”

“I’ll show you how to smoke fish so you won’t have to waste the leftovers.”

“Gee, thanks. Jonah should be back in a while.”

Katy was almost afraid to ask where he was. She’d passed Maude’s group doing a good business two hundred yards down the shore,
and those ladies weren’t the only band of entrepreneurial sporting women who were camped at the lake.

“Jonah’s up talking to the sawmill owners,” Andy said without Katy asking.

“About lumber for a boat?”

“No. Well, maybe that, too. But he’s writing about them for his paper. You know, everyone Mr. Jonah talks to is hell-bent
to get written about for that paper of his. You’d think it was some big honor, or something.”

Katy grinned. “Keeps him busy and out of trouble.”

“Yeah.”

“Things going okay with you two?”

Andy gave Katy a speculative look. “I guess. But Jonah’s about as cranky as an ol’ bear who’s had his balls shot off.”

Katy suffered a pang of guilt. Jonah would get over it, she told herself. And, of course, she didn’t have anything to get
over.

“You ain’t really Jonah’s sister, are you?”

“Hell no.” She had told Jonah that that particular dodge would never work.

“Yeah. I figured. A fellow don’t act like someone’s twisted his trousers over a fight with his sister.”

“We didn’t fight. Not exactly.”

“Yeah. Right.” He looked at her from under his lashes with an expression that might have been envy. “So, you gonna go to Dawson
alone?”

“I’m tagging along with the Burkes—helping Mrs. Burke a bit.”

“Gonna dig for gold on your own?”

“Yeah.”

Andy sighed. “Me too.” He grinned. “We’re both gonna be rich, I guess.”

“More’n likely.” Something moved behind the tent, and Katy jumped. She didn’t want Jonah to find her here. It wasn’t as if
she was checking up on him, after all. She’d just wandered over to this familiar tent by accident. “Gotta go, Andy. Thanks
for the fish. Me and the Burkes are camped over in that little bay. Come by and I’ll show you how to smoke the fish.”

“But don’t bring Jonah, right?”

She gave the grinning boy a quelling look. “Jonah can do whatever he wants. You take care, now.”

Cheeky little devil, Katy mused to herself as she left. He reminded her of herself a few years back.

At the Burkes’ camp, Patrick was playing his fiddle and relaxing with a bottle of whiskey. He offered Katy a cup of the brew
when she sat down by the fire.

“No thanks,” she said. The whiskey was a temptation after the last few days, but she wouldn’t be fit to spit in the morning.

“Katy, is that you?” called Camilla from inside the tent. Her voice was sharp with worry.

“Liam’s still fussing,” Patrick explained. “Kid ain’t a good traveler.”

Katy got to her feet and went into the tent. Camilla was sitting among the bedrolls and spare blankets, cuddling the baby
to her breast. Her face was pinched and weary in the harsh lantern light.

“He won’t nurse,” Camilla told Katy.

She couldn’t help there, Katy mused. “Maybe he’s too tired. You look all done in yourself, Camilla. Why don’t you let me hold
him for a while and you can lie down and rest?”

Camilla looked doubtfully at Katy, then at the fussing baby. Sighing, she gave Liam to Katy. “Lord forgive me, but sometimes
I wish Patrick had never heard of the Klondike gold. Our little rooms back in Boston weren’t much, but they were cosy and
warm. They weren’t made from canvas that flapped and billowed in the wind, and I could walk down to the market and buy fresh
greens and fruit. My mother lived just half a block away. She had nine children and never lost a one of them to sickness or
puniness. I wish she were here now so I could ask her if Liam’s sick.”