Gold Dust (33 page)

Beside her, Camilla put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my.”

“We’ll be fine,” Patrick assured her blithely. “Look. There’s the first boat going through right now.”

The boat was a three-man craft. One man steered the boat with the rudder and the other two aided the steering by paddling
according to the rudderman’s orders. They slipped down the chute—the smooth tongue of water that rushed from the upper lip
of the rapids—and into the white water.

“That man at the rudder knows what he’s doing,” Jonah commented.

The little craft deftly dodged rocks and a dead tree that reached out into the current like a skeletal arm reaching for passing
boats.

“Hell,” Patrick said. “The run isn’t that hard. They’re getting through just fine.”

Katy was silent. She couldn’t share Patrick’s casual attitude about the torrent. The roar of the water seemed to shake the
very walls of the valley.

“They’re in trouble,” Camilla gasped.

The boat plunged toward a huge hole in the river created by the downthrust of water over a submerged rock. Katy could see
the rudderman shout as he attempted to veer away. Caught in an eddy of current, the boat spun in a circle. The oarsmen paddled
frantically. The boat stopped spinning, then plunged into the hole stern first. For endless moments it disappeared from view.
Katy heard the collective intake of breath of all those on the bank watching. Fully a dozen Klondikers waited for something
to reappear—a boat or splinters of a boat. After
what seemed an eternity the game little craft shot out of the hole, bow pointed toward the sky. It flew clear of the water
and for a breathless moment hovered in the air. Then the water reached out and grabbed it. The oarsmen put their muscles into
their paddling. The boat straightened and surged forward, heading toward calmer water. Katy watched them until they disappeared
downstream amid the spray and foam. They had perhaps another half mile of rough water to endure, but for them, the worst was
over. They would pull to shore downstream and wait for the other boats, standing guard over the mouth of the rapids to snatch
people and goods from the river if the need arose.

The second boat negotiated the rapids without excitement or incident. The third bounced off a rock or two, but held together
and was still upright when it disappeared downstream.

Camilla gripped Katy’s hand when it came their turn to brave the passage. “It’ll be fine,” Katy told her, hoping it was true.
The other rapids they had bounced through had been fun, not frightening; the other rapids had been mere riffles compared to
Whitehorse.

Patrick was at the rudder as they drifted toward the dropoff that was the chute into the rapid. With the roar of the water
deafening her ears and uneasiness clutching her stomach, Katy would have felt more confident with Jonah steering, but it was
Patrick’s turn, and the Irishman was loudly confident of his ability to get them through safely. Jonah sat in the bow, oar
in hand, and Andy sat opposite him. Camilla and Katy crouched amidships, hands gripping the tie-down ropes, arms linked. Camilla
was as pale as ash, and Andy didn’t look much better. Jonah’s face was impassive except for the ever so slight wink he sent
in Katy’s direction—or was that simply her imagination.

Hunter had declined to join them in the adventure. He trotted along the bank as they floated downstream, then, when the gently
sloping valley tightened to a steep-walled gorge, he
easily loped to the top of the cliffs and watched their passage as they had watched others.

Katy had a bad feeling about Hunter’s temporary desertion. Maybe the wolf had more sense than they did. She gripped Camilla
tightly as the boat rushed down the chute, suddenly wishing that she had given in to the urge to kiss Jonah one more time
the night before. All night long her dreams had been haunted by that step she hadn’t taken, that one step where her courage
had failed her. Suddenly, as the roar of the water and the cold slap of the river in her face drowned all other sensations,
that one missed kiss seemed very important.

Their run started well. Patrick deftly avoided the hole that had captured the first boat. Their boat bucked, plunged, and
wallowed, but it remained under control with its bow pointed downstream. Then an errant twist of current sent them against
a rock. They merely nudged it and bounced off, but the nudge slapped the rudder from Patrick’s hands. Before the Irishman
could regain control, their one effective steering device was split and splintered. Jonah lurched to the stern to use his
oar as a rudder, but the river had them and wouldn’t let go. Katy screamed as the boat upended. The river reached up and grabbed
her.

Hunter’s warm tongue persuaded Katy to regain her senses. It slithered wetly over her cheek and ear. A cold nose snuffled
through her hair, and then the tongue returned, licking insistently. She slitted her eyes open to see a very close-up view
of river sand and small bits of waterworn driftwood.

The cold nose landed on the nape of her neck.

“Aaaargh! Enough!”

She rolled into a little ball, shivering. Gradually she became aware that the roar battering her ears was the river. Dim memories
of being in the water teased her groggy mind. The fight to stay afloat. The gritty taste of the water, the quick numbing of
her body. She’d scarcely felt the pain of being pummeled upon the rocks like a piece of tough steak being pounded by a butcher.
Someone had grabbed at her—Jonah? They had clung together for only a moment before the current ripped them apart. Jonah. Where
was he?

Panic shot a bolt of energy through her quaking limbs. She sprang up, only to land on her backside once again as a wave of
dizziness swamped her. “Jonah!” she groaned.

Hunter growled softly, then trotted a few paces upstream. Katy turned painfully to look. Twenty feet away, a body was draped
loosely over the sand and cobbles. Katy crawled on
hands and knees toward it, terrified. She recognized the khaki-colored parka that covered those broad shoulders. She recognized
the rich brown hair plastered to the back of that head.

With great effort she turned him over. His face was full of sand. A gash over his eye spilled crimson down his cheek.

“Jonah! Don’t you dare be dead, you ignorant, miserable greenhorn!” She shook him, slapped his face. He breathed out a liquid
gurgle. Katy pushed and shoved until he lay on his belly, then pounded on his broad back until he coughed up what seemed a
bucketful of water. He arched up beneath her pounding and groaned.

“Goddamn!” He spewed up another fountain of water, then succumbed to another bout of coughing.

“Jonah!”

“Katy!” He rolled over and caught her by the arms. “Katy!” Gasping for breath, he dug his fingers into her arms as if to keep
the river from snatching them apart once again.

Katy surrendered to her dizziness and bent over until her head rested on his chest. He threaded his fingers through her hair.

“Goddamn!” he croaked. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.”

She half giggled, half wept into the soggy front of his shirt. Her head pounded, every muscle screamed in pain, and she felt
as though she had swallowed half the stinking Yukon River.

Hunter stuck his nose against Katy’s face and huffed.

“You knew, you old wolf you,” Jonah said. “You had better sense than all of us.” He massaged Katy’s neck, her shoulders, her
back, pressing her into the solid comfort of his chest. “Are you all right, Katydid?”

“Yeah.” She reluctantly pushed herself away from him. “You?”

“Unnnh!” He groaned as he sat up, flexed his arms, moved his legs. “Everything seems in working order, more or less. The others?”

“I don’t know.”

When she had come to her senses, Katy’s mind had been filled with Jonah, but now the rest of the world impinged on her awareness.
Other Klondikers were scrambling down the steep cliffs toward them. Not far from where the river had spit Katy out upon the
sand were two wooden boxes. One had splintered and spewed its contents of cooking utensils upon the ground; the other was
intact. Of the boat there was no sign, nor of the other three passengers. An awful dread closed its cold hand around Katy’s
stomach.

“There’s Camilla!” Jonah pointed toward the opposite bank, where a man was helping a sodden woman to her feet. Katy squinted
for a closer look, but the man didn’t look like Patrick. He had to be a rescuer from one of the other boats. The man waved
his arm at them, signaling that Camilla was all right.

They searched for ten minutes before coming upon Andy. He was wedged between two rocks in the shallow water, limply hanging
there with his legs and hips submerged in the freezing river. Jonah waded out to fetch the boy in.

“He’s alive,” he called back, then hesitated. “What the hell?”

“What’s wrong?” Katy yelled.

“Well goddamn me for a stupid blind idiot.” Jonah gave a great bark of laughter. “Twice fooled in as many months!”

“What?”

Jonah hefted Andy over one shoulder and waded back to shore.

“Is he all right?” Katy demanded. She saw nothing in the situation humorous enough to merit Jonah’s intermittent chuckles.

“Bruised. Waterlogged. Scraped. That finger looks broken,” he said as he laid Andy out upon the sand.

Katy saw immediately what inspired Jonah’s strange behavior. Andy’s parka had been torn from his body by the current, and
his shirt clung soddenly to a pair of budding,
adolescent breasts. Andy was not a he, but a she, and a clever she at that, having fooled them all during many days of living
together in rather intimate circumstances.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Katy said, shaking her head in chagrin.

Jonah grinned. “Now you know how I felt on the train that day.”

Just then Andy opened her eyes and groaned. Katy knelt beside her and brushed aside the scraggly red hair the river had plastered
over her face. Andy rolled over and coughed up river water. “Am I dead?” she groaned.

“Not yet,” Jonah answered wryly. “But you’re gonna be.”

Andy’s explanations had to wait, however, for Patrick was still missing. Katy and Jonah scoured the riverbank on one side
while two men from another party searched, the other bank. Camilla, who had been transported across the river in the calm
water above the rapids, was put in Andy’s charge near a fire the rescuers had built.

Searchers found Patrick in the midafternoon, half a mile beyond the mouth of the rapids. His battered body was tangled in
a little jetty of dead branches that sieved the calm water near the shore. The boyish face was a ghastly bluish white, and
the merry Irish eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. Patrick Burke would never see the goldfields of the Klondike.

Camilla took the news too calmly. She stood like a stone throughout Patrick’s burial, shedding not a tear as a stranger read
from the Bible over the freshly turned earth of her husband’s grave. When Katy escorted her to the tent that had been loaned
to them, Camilla allowed herself to be led along like a child. Katy didn’t know what to say in comfort. The Irishwoman had
lost her baby son and now her husband. How much could a woman bear in one lifetime?

Katy got Camilla into dry clothes—donated trousers and a wool shirt that came down to her knees—and wrapped her in a blanket.
Camilla hiccoughed out a tentative sob as Katy pulled the blanket around her. “He died… he died without
me telling him that I forgive him.” Tears welled in her eyes. “He’ll never know. Now he’ll never know. I shouldn’t have blamed
him for Liam’s death. I shouldn’t have said those horrible things to him.”

Katy patted her arm. “You had every right to be angry with him, Camilla. And he does know. I’m sure he does.”

Camilla let loose a miserable sigh and seemed to draw into the blanket as a turtle might retreat into its shell. Katy finally
persuaded her to sleep with the help of a quarter of a bottle of fine Scotch whiskey. She left her snoring gently. Some of
the color had returned to the Irishwoman’s face, and her arms clutched a wad of the blanket as if it were a baby.

Jonah and Andy sat disconsolately by the fire. Jonah raised his head as Katy sat on the ground beside him. “Camilla sleeping?”

“Like a mule kicked her in the head. The whiskey helped.”

Jonah rubbed his brow with one hand. “I could use a shot of whiskey myself.”

“I could get the bottle. Camilla doesn’t need it anymore.”

“No.” He sighed. “A hangover would just make things worse.” He eyed Andy, who sat cross-legged on the other side of the fire.
She looked every bit the boy again, hat jammed crookedly upon her head, red hair sticking out from beneath at odd angles,
shapeless clothing hiding the least hint of her form. “It’s been a hell of a day,” Jonah said.

Katy looked around the camp at the few scattered items from their outfit that the river had tossed up. Jonah’s notebooks were
intact, along with a few items of Jonah’s underwear, an extra pair of boots, and a scarf. They’d also rescued a sodden sack
of flour, three blankets, a single mitten, and Jonah’s baby-sized pistol. Camilla had lost everything, including her husband.
Andy had lost her false identity, and Katy felt as though she’d lost all the starch in her spirit.