The Great Alone (73 page)

Justin noticed the suggestion was not offered with any religious fervor. “Why don’t you show me the inside of the church?”

Again she drew back. “No, I couldn’t go there with you.” She shook her head.

“Why?” His curiosity was aroused by this unusual young woman. She had such an extraordinary face that he wondered why she dressed in such homely attire.

“My aunt might see me with you.”

“Naturally she wouldn’t approve of you being seen with a strange man,” he guessed. “We can correct that situation. My name is Justin Sinclair, formerly from Seattle. And you are …?”

An impish light danced in her eyes. “Marisha Gavrilyevna Blackwood. And I’m afraid you don’t understand.”

“Marisha Gavrilyevna. Are you Russian?” He wondered if that was the source of the faint accent that gave her speech its distinctive sound.

“Russian, American, Indian—I’m a little bit of everything.”

He was a little surprised by the open admission of her mixed ancestry, although it certainly made the situation easier for him. At least now he knew what kind of woman he was dealing with.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Sinclair, but I must go.”

As she took a step away from him, he laid a restraining hand on her arm, feeling the coarse texture of the wool shawl. “Why? We aren’t strangers any more. I’m Justin and you’re Marisha. How could your aunt possibly object now?”

“My aunt objects to all men. She says they can’t be trusted, that they only bring pain. My father ran off before I was born and took everything my family had. She insists that all men are tarred with the same brush.”

“What happened to your mother?”

“She died when I was eleven.”

“How old are you?” It was impossible to judge her age—all he could see was her face.

“Nineteen. Already I’m an old maid—like she is.” Bitterness flashed across her face, hardening the set of her lips. “There aren’t many bachelors in this town, and she’s managed to chase away the few that have come calling.”

“Where is she now?”

“At St. Michael’s, cleaning. I’m supposed to be working in the garden, but I slipped away to come down here.” The corners of her lips twitched with a smile as she made the admission with no hint of remorse. “She’ll be furious when she finds out.”

“Is this where you usually come?”

“No. I just wanted to see the ship and find out where it was going.” She gazed longingly at the steamer.

“Since I’m not doing anything and your aunt is already going to be mad at you, why don’t you take me to the place where you usually go when you sneak off from your aunt?”

She studied him for a minute, as if assessing the degree of risk. Justin didn’t doubt for an instant that this aunt of hers had practically kept Marisha under lock and key, but she obviously had a rebellious spirit.

“This way,” she said and started off.

Walking swiftly, she skirted the edges of town and led him along the southern shoreline facing the sound and its scattering of small islands. Most of the time she kept her head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone who might be watching. Only twice did he notice her glance around to see if they were being observed. They were on the outskirts of town and nearing the forest when she finally slowed down.

“They call this path the Governor’s Walk,” she told him. “Supposedly Baranov used to walk along here.”

“Who’s Baranov?”

“Aleksandr Andreevich Baranov was the first Russian governor of Alaska. Actually he built Sitka. There used to be a big old mansion on that knoll we passed. It was known as Baranov’s Castle, but it burned down three years ago. Do you see that big rock by the shore just ahead of us? During his last days here, they say he used to spend hours sitting there gazing out at the Pacific. Guess what it’s called?”

“Baranov’s Rock.”

“Yes.” She laughed and ran ahead to the boulder.

There, she stopped to lean against it and gaze out to sea. Stare as he might, the heavy shawl and the voluminous material of her dress made it impossible for Justin to tell if she was plump or if her clothes merely made her look that way.

As he approached the rock, the beach gravel crunched underfoot. Although she didn’t turn, a slight movement of her head indicated her awareness of his presence while she continued to look at the wide stretch of island-studded waters.

“In the spring, when the herring come into the bays and inlets to spawn, the Tlingit Indians wait until low tide, then spread hemlock boughs on the exposed beaches, and fasten them down. The herring deposit their eggs on the branches. You should see it,” she murmured. “The boughs look like they’re covered with thousands of pearls.”

“It must be something.” But fish was about the last subject that interested him.

“It is.” She sighed and pushed away from the rock. As she turned toward him, she reached up and began tugging at the scarf knot at her throat. “I hate this babushka. It makes me feel like a babushka.”

“What’s a babushka?”

“It’s a scarf old women in Russia wear. So the word means both ‘scarf’ and ‘old woman.’ It’s also a word for ‘grandmother’—which I’m never likely to be.” The knot initially defied her attempts to loosen it. Using both hands, she finally managed to free the ends and pull the scarf off her head.

“Glory be.” Justin stared in surprise.

Her hair was a bright yellow gold that glistened in the sunlight; it was neither brassy nor tarnished with dark streaks, but pure and rich. The contrast between her dark eyes and brows and her golden blond hair was striking and dramatic. The feeling of shock was slow to leave him, even though he noticed how amused she seemed to be at his reaction.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, unable to get over it.

She smiled wryly and moved away from the rock, absently swinging the scarf in her hand. “Beauty is a curse. That’s what Aunt Eva says.” Despite her attempt at lightness, Justin detected an underlying bitterness in her tone. “A girl shouldn’t be concerned about her looks. She should dress plainly. Wanting to look pretty is vain, and vanity is a sin. These are the only kind of clothes I have, but someday I’m going to have beautiful gowns to wear. Someday,” she repeated with a determined lift of her chin.

“I don’t care what your aunt says, she’s wrong. Nobody with hair like yours should cover it up. My mother always said a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.”

Marisha touched her hair, smoothing the strands back to the golden knot at the nape of her neck. “Her crowning glory. I like that,” she murmured thoughtfully, then seemed to dismiss it from her mind. “Let’s walk this way. There’s something I want to show you.” She followed a faint trail that paralleled the shoreline for a ways, then led into the woods. Justin was too intrigued by her to care where they were going.

Huge trees towered all around them, their overlapping branches shutting out any direct light from the sun. A high humidity made the air seem heavy as they walked along the path through the forest, their footsteps making hardly any sound, cushioned by the soft, composted soil.

“Have you ever seen gold? Real gold, I mean.” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I saw some once. Blue Pants Kelly—he’s an old prospector from around here. He used to be in the Army, but even after he got out he still wore the blue pants from his uniform. That’s where he got his name. One time he showed me a piece of ore that had thin slivers of gold running through it.”

“They’ve found gold around here?”

“Some.” She nodded. “There are a couple of mines over on Silver Bay and a stamp mill, but I guess they haven’t recovered any large quantities of gold.” She walked a few steps farther in silence. “I’d like to find some gold.”

“It’s up there in the Klondike. Only there it’s placer gold—loose gold. All a man has to do is pan it out of the streams. You don’t have to dig tunnels or have a lot of machinery to crush it free from the rocks. You just put some gravel in your pan and pick out the nuggets. It’s so easy a child could do it.”

“Or a woman,” she murmured as if to herself.

Through a break in the trees just ahead of them, Justin saw the shimmer of sunlight reflected off the surface of water. The towering spruce thinned out where the ground sloped down to the water’s edge, the finger of land claimed by a tangle of tall brush and bushes. The graveled shoreline was strewn with huge drift logs, some almost as tall as a man. As they rounded the point of land, Justin saw the mouth of a river.

“That’s the Indian River,” Marisha Blackwood stated. “The Russian name was Kolosh Ryeka. See that bluff of land back in the forest?” She pointed it out to him. “The Kolosh, or Tlingit Indians as everyone calls them today, had a large fort there. This is the site of the big battle between the Russians and the Tlingits. The Russian ships anchored in this bay to bombard the fort with their cannon. My great-great-grandfather, Zachar, was married to a Tlingit woman. Her people had attacked the first fort the Russians built on Baranov Island and killed all but a few men who managed to escape. My great-great-grandfather was one of them. He was on one of the ships in the bay when the Russians came to retake the island. He didn’t know it, but my great-great-grandmother—his wife—was in the fort with their young son. They escaped into the forest before the Russians overran the fort. It was several years before she and my great-great-grandfather were reunited.” She turned, looking into his face, then gazing again at the water. “I find it interesting to know that if her son had died that day—my great-grandfather—I wouldn’t be here now to tell you about it.”

“Are you the last of your family?”

“No. I have a cousin, Dimitri. He’s a fisherman out of Wrangell. From things my aunt has said, I think he does some smuggling, too.” Her faint smile seemed to indicate approval of his illicit activities, no matter what her aunt thought. “Most of my aunts and uncles left Alaska shortly after the Americans took over. Nobody’s heard from them in years. I guess in the Russian days Sitka was quite a city. When I was a little girl, my mama used to tell me about the fancy dress balls they had at the castle. And the concerts and the plays.” Pausing, she crooked her mouth in a wry slant. “My aunt says that the minute they raised the American flag over Alaska, everything here changed for the worse.”

“It doesn’t sound like she has a very good opinion of Americans.”

“She doesn’t. A few years ago someone suggested to her that she should apply for citizenship papers. I thought she was going to explode. She still considers herself to be Russian. I don’t think she likes that I was born an American.”

“And a very beautiful one.” He still marveled over that, and he suspected that the trace of Indian in her ancestry was responsible for her incredibly dark eyes and well-defined cheekbones—maybe even the recklessness he sensed she felt.

“Now you’re trying to flatter me.” She gave him an accusing look, then quickly turned away. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?” Justin frowned.

“A girl shouldn’t look a man in the eye. My aunt says that’s brazen.” She cocked her head in his direction. “Is it?”

“I don’t know.” He was slightly taken aback. It was something he’d never really thought about. “Some might consider it bold.”

“I don’t see how you can talk to somebody without looking at them once,” she declared, then smiled. “Of course, my aunt doesn’t want me to talk to men.”

“I’m glad you don’t do everything your aunt tells you.”

“I know she has her reasons for feeling the way she does. She’s told me some of the things that happened. But sometimes I think she’s just jealous because she’s so homely no man would want to talk to her. She won’t even let me plant flowers in the garden. Vegetables, that’s all we’ve got. ‘You can’t eat flowers, so why waste the time and space growing them,’ she says. Someday I’m going to have a garden and grow nothing but flowers in it. I’m so tired of everything being so ugly and drab and never being able to talk to anyone. I hate it!”

“That’s the way I felt about fishing,” Justin said. “Ever since I was eleven years old I worked on my father’s fishing boat. I got sick of the smell and the slime—of my clothes being so stiff and caked with ocean salt that they could walk without me, of working a run until you dropped, then unloading your catch at a cannery and going back out for another.”

“And you left—walked out just like that?” She snapped her fingers.

“Yup. I happened to be down on the waterfront when the
Portland
docked in Seattle. I saw them unload the shipment of gold from the Klondike—seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth—a ton of gold. And I knew I wanted to get some of it. Right then and there I booked passage on the first ship I could get sailing north. Once I made up my mind, I just did it. There wasn’t anything to think about. I wanted to go, so I left.”

“I want to go, too,” she stated. “Will you take me to the Klondike with you so I can pan for gold? I swear I’ll do whatever you tell me if you’ll only let me go along with you.”

Justin was momentarily stunned. “Hey, you’re welcome to come along, but you’ll have to pay your own way. I’ve got a little money with me, but that has to buy supplies for the trek over the pass and on to Dawson City. The trail is going to be rough.” He doubted that it was something a woman could tackle, or that he wanted the burden of a female, no matter how pretty she was.

“I’m strong. I won’t slow you down,” she assured him as if reading his mind. “I’ve got a little money put by. I’ve been thinking about taking the mail boat to Juneau and seeing if I couldn’t get a job there. But I’ve heard that unless you work for the Treadwell Mining Company there aren’t many jobs to be had. If all you have to do in the Klondike is pick nuggets out of a gold pan, then I wouldn’t have to worry about a job.” She paused, but he could see her mind was still working. Her tension was almost palpable. “How much do you think a ticket on your ship would cost?”