Northern Lights Trilogy (134 page)

His first inclination was to celebrate with the men, to toss them each another nugget of gold and dance around the campfire. But there was no joy in his heart at beating Soren that day, and it came as a cruel surprise. He immediately walked deep into the woods to examine what he was feeling. Following the deer path that Kaatje had once followed, he hiked to where the forest canopy high overhead was so dense that the light grew dim and the shafts of sunlight all the more intense.

He leaned against an old pine, then sat down amongst the moss and peat and pine cones, cross-legged, near a column of sunlight. He stared as it slowly moved closer to him over a half-hour period, content to think of something other than himself, Soren, and Kaatje. First the column illuminated a tight green pine cone—most likely dropped by a squirrel—then brilliant, yellow-green moss on a log, then an
intricate spider web strung between the roots of the tree against which he sat… The shaft came closer and closer, showing him different details of the forest floor as though God was showing him different parts of his own heart.

James sighed and leaned forward as the sunlight touched his shoulder and then climbed his neck until he could feel the subtle heat of it on his head. “I have sinned, Father.”

His Lord knew that already.

“I wanted to protect Kaatje, but more than that, I wanted to beat Soren. I wanted to hurt him.”

He knew that, too.

“I wanted him to fall, Father, to know defeat. I wished him ill, and it is not my place to wish such things. I wanted him to feel pain, because I feel it. Because I couldn’t have his wife. I wanted her more than life itself. Forgive me.”

The sunlight moved off his head and to his left shoulder. He watched through bleary eyes as it moved on, mourning the loss of Kaatje and the fact that hating Soren would not bring her to him. He swallowed hard. “I will leave her, Lord. Leave her in your hands.”

James felt the indistinguishable desire suddenly to go home. To Juneau? It was as close to a home as any since he had left his wife’s graveside in Minnesota. But that took him back to Kaatje. “How can that be, God? How can I be close to her when…?”

Home. He was to go home.

Now.
It was so clear to him it was as if God had audibly spoken.

But he had just promised to leave her. To stay away from her. Why was he to go home? Why now? Instinctively he knew—Kaatje was in danger. He leapt to his feet and started walking quickly to camp, then padded to a jog, then to a full run.

Something was wrong, desperately wrong. The respite of the forest floor and the gentle sun was pushed away like an Arctic wind on a warm eve, and inside, James shuddered. All he could think of now were Soren’s cold, cold eyes.

He ran until his lungs burned. When he reached the claim, the men looked up at him in confusion and concern. One spilled his tin cup of steaming coffee, swearing, but James had more on his mind than a man’s mild burn. “I need to get back to Juneau. Right away.”

Kaatje brought a mug of coffee to Elsa, who sat sketching one of the totems on Ketchikan’s seaward banks. It was a cold, drizzly day, but Elsa had insisted on going out to sketch. “I’m going mad,” she explained. It had been a long month of convalescing as she let her sprained ankle heal.

It had been Kaatje who had come up with the idea of sailing to Ketchikan for a holiday, of sorts. Her girls were eager for a break too. So they all went south on Karl’s small steamer. He had left them there while he took a trip to Seattle on the
Fair Alaska
to pick up his first group of tourists. They would arrive in two weeks for the grand opening of the Storm Roadhouse of Ketchikan. Kaatje could tell that Elsa was itching to see him, could tell that she was restless, so restless that she had even insisted on going out on such a dismal day.

Bradford sat beside her on a huge, sea-grayed log, stripped of any bark or moss by the driving wind and rain of the region. He held an umbrella above them both, silently watching as Elsa sketched the eagle, bear, and salmon on the giant totem pole before them. Beyond them, in the trees, Christina and Jessica were chasing Elsa’s children and the Bresleys’ little boy with joyful shouts and screeches, oblivious to the fact that they were getting soaked. They had been as fidgety as Elsa to get outside, regardless of the weather.

Kaatje sat down on the other side of Elsa, taking the umbrella from Bradford, who immediately left to join a game of tag with the children. There was so much moisture in the air that Elsa’s paper curled at the edges, but she ignored it, seeming to be in another world as she sketched madly, as if the totem would fall any minute and her opportunity would be lost forever.

“How do you do that?” Kaatje asked in a hushed tone.

“What?”

“That. Sketch so well. Did you always know you would be an artist?”

“Not always.” Gradually, a bear’s paw took shape at the top of the pole on her paper. “I simply started. You never know what you can do until you start.”

Kaatje smiled. She’d come to know that too. From crossing the Atlantic to America, to farming the land by herself, to co-managing a roadhouse, Kaatje had surprised herself at what she could accomplish if she simply began the process.

Elsa completed her sketch and sat back, looking from totem to pad, then shifted her swollen, wrapped ankle a bit.

“You miss him, don’t you?” Kaatje asked gently.

“Horribly.”

“What happened in Glacier Bay? I mean, beyond the accident.”

Elsa smiled and shot her a quick look. Then, gazing out to sea as if hoping his
Fair Alaska
might emerge from the mists, she said, “He told me he loved me.”

“Finally.”

“Finally?”

“You two have been in love all year. What gave him the courage to tell you?”

Her grin grew more broad. “I told him I loved him first.” Kaatje giggled. “Brazen girl!” she chided. “You never are one to wait, are you?”

Elsa laughed with her. “That is true. But he needed… I don’t know, I think he needed me to be the first one to say so since we had shared so much in the past. It was as if he was terrified to speak again and be rebuffed. But all I wanted was to hear him say those words. To confirm all I was feeling.”

Kaatje looked down and kicked the fine, rounded sea gravel with the toe of her boot. “It is good that you two have found each other. It is right.”

“You think so? Really?”

“Really.”

“It relieves me to hear you say that, Kaatje. I think it’s right too, but sometimes I get a niggling doubt. That somehow I’m not honoring Peder’s memory by staying on my own without a man.”

“Peder would not have wanted that. You are a young woman. You have a whole life ahead of you. And it will be all the more rich with a companion.”

Elsa gave her another quick look. “As it would be for you.”

Kaatje scoffed at her words. “I fear I am destined to live my life as an old maid. The man who has me tends to throw me to the winds, and the man who wants me cannot have me.”

“And you? What do you want?”

Kaatje stood, suddenly uneasy. “I want…I want things to be settled, one way or another, as I have for almost seven long years.”

Soren moved more quickly toward home than he had to the mine, and James shadowed him, finding himself surprised and challenged by his pace. They traveled hard, taking risks in riding the river and walking the trails until the last vestiges of twilight faded from the sky. Fortunately, the days were slowly getting longer, the light staying with them until nine o’clock.

James sank to his bedroll one night, rubbing his aching calves and knees. It had been a hard month on the trail. He wondered if Soren—just a half-day ahead of him, judging from his last campfire—ached as much as he. Would it slow him down any? And yet part of him wanted to get on with it, to get to the conclusion of this grand puzzle they were putting together. There were still several questions that had to be resolved. How would Soren react to Kaatje when he confronted her with the facts of ownership? James had not told either of them that it was he who had changed the registration when the deed lapsed. He needed to be there when he confronted her, to tell them both the truth at the same time. He feared what the man would do to her otherwise.

And how would Kaatje react? James wished now that he had found the opportunity to tell Kaatje what he had done and why. That he’d
only wanted to protect her. But doubts about his own motive jabbed at him. Had he done it solely to beat Soren? Would it all backfire, providing Soren the means he sought to settle down and be the man Kaatje always wanted? One thing was clear to James: He would witness the resolution to all of this and then leave town. Staying near Kaatje, but unable to be with her, only tore him apart, and it had to stop. To say nothing of what it did to Kaatje as she sought to rebuild her marriage.

He would simply make sure that all was resolved, that Kaatje was safe, and then he would say his forever good-bye. James swallowed hard. He would not cry again over it. He would not.

Soren punched the wall of the Storm Roadhouse of Juneau in fury when he found out Kaatje was gone. Had she run away? Hidden herself away to enjoy his hard-earned money without sharing any with him? “Where is she?” he ground out, glaring at the shaking waif of a waitress in the roadhouse door. “Where is she?” he screamed.

Sara tried to shut the door in his face, but he shot a foot out to block its progress. He fiercely grabbed her arm, then looked down, panting, his hand throbbing, trying to get control. “Listen to me. I need to speak with her. It’s urgent. Where is she?”

“Ketchikan,” Sara whispered. “She went down there for the grand opening of the roadhouse. It’s in four days.”

He dropped her arm so suddenly, she cried out. It surprised him. Did she think he was going to strike her? He was not a violent man. Ordinarily.

“Thank you,” he muttered, turning and wiping a hand over his sweaty upper lip. He winced. Had he broken some fingers pounding on the door? The pain only fed his fury.

Slowly he pulled out his pocket watch. Four o’clock. There was a ferry leaving in the morning to Ketchikan, as there was each morning. And he aimed to be on it.

When Sara related to James what had transpired, he did not wait for the morning’s ferry. He went directly to the docks and hired a decrepit
old steamer south. He wanted to be in Ketchikan, with Kaatje, when Soren arrived. If he could beat the ferry.

It would take them three days to reach Ketchikan, if they hit the tides right. The old ferryman insisted upon going down Stephen’s Passage and hugging the western shoreline, rather than going out to sea. “I must beat the morning’s ferry to Ketchikan. You’re sure you can beat it?” James asked for the fourth time.

“As sure as mosquitoes,” the man drawled.

James sighed. What were his options? He could do little but trust that the Lord had put him in this place, at this time, for his purpose.

But the next day, he cradled his head in his hands as the old man worked on the broken-down boiler. He had spent a difficult night in the tiny, cramped cabin with the pilot, who snored incessantly. And now he was growing frustrated and frantic. James paced back and forth. “You swore to me you’d get me there ahead of the ferry! Hurry, man! It’s important!”

“I’m doin’ all I can. You just settle your drawers on that seat over there and leave me be.” He gave James a sour look and ceased working, chewing on a wad of tobacco, until James did as he bid. By noon, James was ready to start running along the coastline toward Ketchikan, as mad as it sounded. Anything was better than languishing there, with the old man.

It was then the engine started.

“Hurry, man. Give it all she’s got. We’ll have to run past dark.”

“We’ll do no such thing! These shoals would be the death of us!”

James leaned closer. “I waited for you to get the engine started. It will not idle until I tell you it should do so.”

And as it happened, after their delay, long days among the islands and archipelagos of the rough coastline caused them to reach the small dock of Ketchikan just as the ferry did. James groaned. There was no time to warn Kaatje, to tell her what he had done. He could only be there to witness what transpired and to do what he could to ease the truth into light.

Kaatje looked out the window at a group of Tlingit Indians disembarking from the Tuesday morning ferry, then looked again. Was that Soren? And then from the other small steamer—was that James? Soren walked straight down the dock and toward the roadhouse while James hung back a little, obviously preferring not to be seen just yet. A bead of perspiration cascaded down her spine. Both of them, here, in Ketchikan. It did not bode well.

“Clarify my feelings, Lord,” she whispered. “Help me to see your path and follow it every step of the way.” She moved to one side of the window, watching as Soren climbed the freshly hewn timber steps and rapped on the front door. She did not answer it for a moment, staring at the man who was once her husband. Who still was, legally. Elsa came down the stairs, but Kaatje waved her back. Taking a breath, Kaatje opened the door.

“Kaatje,” Soren said. There was anger and disgust in his voice. No joy or welcome.

“Soren?” she asked in confusion. “What…what are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same question.” He pushed her hand aside and made his way through the foyer and into the front room, a large sitting room with giant windows looking out toward the ocean. On the other side of the room was a doorway to the restaurant, and on the far left, a doorway to the hotel rooms upstairs. The huge Victorian was built to accommodate up to fifty people a night. It was the largest Trent had ever constructed.

Elsa stepped forward with a slight cough, as if to reassure Kaatje of her presence, obviously concerned by Soren’s demeanor.

“It’s all right, Elsa.”

“Is it?” Soren asked. He unrolled a newspaper and showed it to Kaatje. It was the issue from the day he left her in Juneau. “Remember this?”

“I do.”

“So do I,” said a low voice at the door. It was James. He entered and closed the door behind him. “I need you both to sit down. I think I should say something first.”