Gold Dust (37 page)

This was it, Katy told herself as she slogged through the mud toward Jonah’s lair. For three days, ever since she had learned
that Jonah was staying in the snug little log cabin just east of town, Katy had debated confronting him. But hell! Why should
she go looking for him? He was the one who’d been so hot to tie the knot. He’d been the one so confident that she couldn’t
live without him. He’d been the one spouting all that nonsense about love and marriage until he had her almost liking the
idea. Good thing she’d not taken his cajoling seriously, for now that Jonah was back in civilization—or at least what passed
for civilization up here—his burning desire to make her his wife had cooled mighty quickly.

And that was just fine with her, Katy told herself. She didn’t itch to see him. He didn’t fill her dreams at night. She didn’t
turn her head at every tall, broad-shouldered fellow she met on the street to discover if it was Jonah. Nope. Pigs would sing
before Katy O’Connell spent time mooning over a man. She was going to pay a call to do him a favor. For old times’ sake. He
might not realize it, but he still needed her know-how.

Just as she lifted her fist to knock, the door swung open. Jonah smiled down at her.

“Well look who’s here! If it isn’t Katy O’Connell!”

For a moment Katy was dumbstruck. The last time she’d been alone with that face it had been covered with a coarse brown beard
and was red from an icy plunge in the Yukon River. It had also hovered scant inches above hers while the rest of his body,
bound tightly to hers by blankets, had managed to make her lose control of her senses. Something in Jonah’s grin told her
that the same scene was running through his mind as well.

“Hi, Jonah.” The rain and cold made her voice shake, Katy told herself. Nothing else. “You shaved.”

“It itched.”

“I liked the beard.” What a stupid thing to say. This was not going the way she had planned. Her heart was racing in her chest,
and her mind was at a standstill, able to come up with only inane, stilted comments. Where was her courage? Where was her
grit? “Uh… can I come in?”

“Please do. Hunter, too. You both look like drowned rats.”

“Yeah. Well, this whole town is a drowned rathole.” Katy wiped her soggy boots before stepping onto the clean-swept plank
floor. Hunter didn’t bother. He slipped into the cabin behind her and gave a mighty shake, spraying mud and water in a cold
fountain that hissed on the stove and spattered against the log walls.

Jonah laughed. “Thanks, Hunter. Make yourself at home.”

Katy had forgotten Jonah was so tall, that he filled a room so with his presence.

“I wondered when you would get around to visiting,” Jonah said.

“Really?” His confident tone got Katy’s back up. Did he think she had nothing to think about but him, nothing to do but search
him out? “I’ve been sort of busy. I see you’ve been busy, too. You’ve got yourself nicely set up here.” She looked around
at the camp stove, the cots, the pinewood table with its stacked tins of flour, sugar, and salt. In the corner was a container
of lamp oil—a truly precious commodity that was in short supply in Dawson. “A very nice place.”

“It’s not the Waldorf, but it’s comfortable enough.”

“Considering almost half of the folks around here are still living in tents, I’d say it’s a miracle you could get this place.”

“Another journalist—a fellow from the
San Francisco Chronicle,
was leaving just as I got into town. He offered it to me cheap. So I moved in along with the Bunyan brothers—”

“Who?”

“The three lumberjacks who gave me a ride down the river.”

“They’re brothers?”

“In profession as well as blood. Haven’t you heard of Paul Bunyan?”

“Of course I’ve heard of… oh. You were being funny.”

“Apparently not.”

“You look like you inherited more than a cabin.” She glanced at the new parka that hung on a peg by the door and gave an approving
once-over to his wool trousers and heavy flannel shirt—all new. What was there about flannel shirts that made a man’s shoulders
seen so broad, his chest so inviting a spot to rest her head? Maybe it wasn’t the flannel. Maybe it was just Jonah. To curb
the temptation, Katy took off her hat, sailed it to catch upon a peg by the door, took off her coat, and plunked herself down
on a wooden stool by the stove. “Last time I saw you we didn’t have a nickel between us and your knees were showing through
your britches.”

Jonah swung a stool under his backside and sat down beside her. “Hell, Katy, of all people, you ought to know that being broke
is only a temporary state. I’m surprised you haven’t cleaned out some poor sucker’s pockets in a poker game yet.”

She sniffed indignantly. “I don’t clean out suckers. Besides, you can’t even get into a game in this town without a pouch
full of gold dust.”

“So you did try!” he conclued with a grin. “That’s my Katy.”

Lordy he was annoying when he wanted to be!
His
Katy indeed! Still, the possessive tone in his voice gave her a curious satisfaction she didn’t want to admit. “How did
you
get money?” she asked, almost resentfully.

“Easy.” He grinned wickedly. “You trailblazers of the Old West might know how to snare a rabbit and follow the dirty end of
a cow, but there’s nobody beats a big-city slicker at wrangling money.”

“Is that so? What’d you do? Rob the bank?”

“Close. I just flashed my credentials and the bank gave me a loan on an IOU from the
Record.

Katy sighed. “Not nearly as exciting as winning big in a poker game.”

“Not nearly,” he agreed.

“Not nearly as exciting as making a big strike out there in the gold diggings.”

A slow smile curved his mouth. “That’s probably true.”

Katy tried to keep her eyes off the curled corner of his lips. They were firm and masculine, mobile, molded cleanly enough
to belong to a woman. No man should have lips like that. It was immoral.

“But then,” he continued, “maybe my idea of treasure is different than those who dig it out of the ground.” His eyes glittered
with warmth as he looked at her. “Katydid, you look like you could use some hot coffee.”

“What I need is money.” She was tired of the preliminaries. Katy had never been one to dance around a point. “And you well
know it, Jonah Armstrong.”

“Ah.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and interlaced his fingers. “Money.”

Katy’s pride stung. She was doing him a favor, she reminded herself. It wasn’t a handout she wanted. “Yeah. I need money.
And since we’re… well, you know… friends, I thought I’d give you an opportunity to make an investment in the goldfields.”

“I’m honored.”

She ignored his smug tone and plunged ahead. “I need fifteen dollars for the filing fee and maybe fifty dollars for provisions
while Andy and I are settling on a claim. Just until the gold starts coming in. Then we can support ourselves. For that measly
amount of cash I’ll give you… say… five percent of the claim.”

“An investment, eh?” He sounded doubtful.

“It’s a sure thing, Jonah. You’ll get your money back and a bunch more. Didn’t I deliver when I took your stake in Skaguay?
Did I lead you wrong then?”

He looked at her and grinned. “You delivered, Katydid.”

The glitter in his eyes brought a rush of heat to her face. “Don’t be snide, Jonah. Sixty-five dollars is what I need from
you. That’s all. If you’re not interested in a share of the claim, then make it a loan. I’ll pay you back with interest in
a few weeks.”

The smile slowly curving his mouth had a cat-that-ate-thecream look that made Katy feel as if she was somehow walking into
a trap.

“If there’s one thing you learn from life in the big city,” Jonah told her, “it’s that personal loans aren’t a good idea.
Especially between friends. Fastest way in the world to spoil a nice, amiable friendship.”

“Jonah!”

“It’s true. I loaned fifty dollars once to my second cousin, Wilbur. He sold shoes—went all up and down the Eastern seaboard
for a big company in Chicago. Never saw him or my fifty dollars again.”

Katy made a rude sound.

“And five percent—that’s hardly worth the trouble.”

“This is ridiculous!” Katy marched toward the door and grabbed her hat from the peg. “Come on, Hunter!”

“I might consider a full partnership, though.”

Jonah’s words stopped Katy with her hand on the door latch.

“This gold fever is contagious,” he admitted. “Like a plague.”

“A partnership? For sixty-five measly dollars?”

“Not for sixty-five dollars. I finance the whole claim. You work it.”

“Andy and I work the claim.”

“All right. You and Andy work the claim. You ladies get half, and I get half.”

Katy smiled at the image of her and Andy as ladies.

“Are we partners?” Jonah asked with a lift of his brow.

“Partners!”

He stuck out his hand for a handshake. Katy grasped it, and a current ran through her at his touch. From the glint in his
eyes, Katy thought Jonah was not going to settle for a mere handshake. They stood there, hands clasped, eyes locked, for much
longer than necessary to seal such a simple arrangement. When he finally allowed her hand to slide out of his grip, she was
perversely disappointed.

Shakily, she jammed her hat upon her head and backed toward the door. “Got to go. A lot to do. Stuff to buy. People to talk
to.”

“Keep me posted on what you need.”

“Yeah. Sure.” She retreated out the door, then stuck her face back into the cabin. “Jonah, you won’t regret it. I’m glad you’ve
finally wised up about digging for gold.”

Jonah stood for a moment after the door closed behind her, smiling like a fox who’s found the gate to the henhouse unlatched.
“I’ve wised up, all right,” he congratulated himself. “Run, little fish, run. I knew you’d come back to be reeled in.”

A person who survived Skookum Gulch didn’t owe the devil any time in hell, Katy figured. A week digging for gold in this dog-blasted
streambed was enough to pay for a lifetime of sins. Pain needled out from her shoulders as she lifted a shovelful of gravel
from the trench and threw it over her shoulder. Her hands were numb with cold—just as well, for if they hadn’t been numb,
Katy would have felt the sting of blisters and the ache of abused tendons. Her arms were on fire. Her lower back felt as though
someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, and her feet—well, she hadn’t felt her feet in hours. She assumed they were still
attached to her ankles.

“Hey down there—yipe!” Andy had peered into the fifteenfoot-deep trench where Katy worked just in time to get a faceful of
sand from the shovel. “Hey!” She wiped the muck from her face and eyes. “Careful!”

“Warn me before you stick your face in shovel range,” Katy snapped. The look on Andy’s face made her instantly contrite for
her sharp tone. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long, useless, hell of a morning.”

“The rocker broke,” Andy told her.

“Spit! That’s just great! Give me a hand out of here.”

Katy scrambled up the steep ramp at one end of the trench,
grabbing Andy’s hand to attain the last five feet. On numb feet she stumped over to the wooden chute into which Andy had been
shoveling gravel. A steady stream of water washed through the chute to separate the lighter quartz and feldspar gravel from
the heavier magnetite and gold, which would settle in the wooden riffles that corrugated the bottom of the chute. Normally
the chute could be rocked to help separate the gravel—thus the name rocker. Right now, however, it not only didn’t move, it
canted sideways at an angle that made the bottom riffles next to useless. One of the supports had splintered.

Katy mutterçd a series of curses that would’ve made a mule-skinner proud.

“We could maybe splint it together with twine,” Andy suggested.

“That’ll never last. We’ll have to cut another support. Where’s the ax?”

“Up by the cabin.”

They headed toward the log shack at the edge of the trees. The little cabin had already been here when Katy and Andy had arrived,
and a ready-made abode was part of the reason they had decided to work this gulch rather than one of the many others that
fed into the Klondike—that and the fact that Katy liked the look of the bedrock that jutted out of the hillsides above the
gulch. Enough challenges had faced them without their having to build a cabin. They had to haul all their supplies in on their
backs, owing to a shortage of mules and horses in Dawson. Then they’d spent a day laying out the claim—five hundred feet along
the stream and wide enough to go from the base of one hillside to the base of the hillside opposite—and diverting the small
stream that ran through the gulch. Only then could they set up the rocker and start washing the gravel to separate the gold—if
there was gold here.

There would be gold, Katy told herself. They’d dug only the first trench, and she’d excavated just fifteen vertical feet so
far. She’d heard reports of thirty feet of gravel on top of the
bedrock in some gulches. Most claims had gold in only a thin zone of pay dirt—sometimes right on top of the bedrock, sometimes
shallower. Two successful prospectors she’d met in Dawson had hit gold on Bonanza Creek under twenty feet of worthless gravel.
The gold would be here, she assured herself. It had to be here.