The Great Alone (83 page)

She hadn’t seen him since the morning before the ill-fated miners’ meeting nearly two weeks ago. “Tell him”—she began stiffly, then reconsidered the refusal she’d been about to make—“to come in. Fetch my wrapper, Matty. And a ribbon for my hair.”

As Deacon lifted the canvas and stepped through the opening to the other side, Matty brought the amethyst wrapper and helped Glory slip into it. While Glory buttoned the front of it, Matty tied a matching ribbon around her hair.

Gabe Blackwood entered the private quarters and doffed his hat, holding it in front of him. “Good morning. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Leaving the bottom buttons of the wrapper’s skirt unfastened, Glory turned to face him. “You have disturbed me more by your absence. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you I was beginning to wonder if you meant it when you said you enjoyed my company.” After continually making up reasons to see him, she had deliberately stopped the practice to see if he would come to her.

“I thought you had finally tired of mine.”

“That is hardly the case.” She assumed her most charming smile and gestured to the leather-covered chair next to one of her trunks. “Please, come in and sit down.” He hesitated, his glance darting to Matty, dislike flickering in his expression. Taking the cue that he didn’t want her present, Glory suggested, “Matty, see if Mr. Colby has some coffee, and bring us two cups.”

Gabe watched her leave the partitioned quarters before he ventured over to the chair. “I don’t like the idea of you having that Indian around. You can’t trust any of them. They lie and cheat, and they’ll steal from you, too, if you don’t watch them.”

“Matty is Eskimo, not Indian.” Glory repeated the distinction so frequently made by Eskimo natives.

“It’s the same thing.” He did not appear pleased by her defense of the woman.

“Not to an Eskimo.” Long aware of his prejudice, she smiled, pretending to tease him. “What if I were to tell you that Matty isn’t full-blooded Eskimo? Her father was a Yankee whaler.” She was tempted to tell him that she and Matty were related, but she didn’t want to reveal her identity to him.

“Breed or Indian, it makes no difference. I have no time for the nonsense preached by bleeding hearts like Sheldon Jackson about the white man’s mistreatment of Alaskan Indians. They’re a worthless bunch of good-for-nothings that should be shipped off to a reservation somewhere.”

Glory gave him a wide-eyed look. “I never realized you felt so strongly about it.”

“None of them can be trusted. If we could get rid of them, there would be no more need for the Army to be here. The military’s been the bane of Alaska right from the start. We don’t need some snot-nosed lieutenant from the Army telling us what we can or cannot do. We are fully capable of governing ourselves without any interference from them.”

“I heard about the miners’ meeting.” Glory sat down on the trunk next to his chair.

“Then you know we were ordered to disperse at bayonet point.” His anger over the incident was still fresh. “That upstart of a lieutenant actually threatened to use force to clear the tent and forbade the holding of any more meetings.”

He omitted mentioning that the purpose of the meeting had been to nullify all existing mining claims in the district and declare the creeks open for restaking. Nor did he tell her that he and a few of his cronies had arranged for some friends to camp on Anvil Mountain and watch for a bonfire signal advising them the deed had been accomplished, so they could stake the best of the claims for themselves. But Glory knew of their plan. She’d made it her business to know about anything and everything Gabe Blackwood was involved in.

“I know the Army has since issued orders that no one is permitted to carry pistols or revolvers,” Glory remarked.

“It’s an order impossible to enforce. Broke miners from the Klondike are arriving in Nome by the hundreds. The decks of every steamer coming down the Yukon are packed with them. No one, and certainly not a handful of soldiers, is going to be able to disarm those seasoned sourdoughs. And, believe me, after missing out on the Klondike, they aren’t too happy about arriving here and finding that all the paying claims have been staked by some foreigners. They feel they have a right to jump those claims and I don’t blame them.”

“You’ve been very busy lately trying to settle disputes between owners before they erupted into bloodshed. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.” She’d also heard that a lot of the claim jumping was simply a means of blackmail, since the real owner preferred to pay off the jumper rather than have his claim tied up until a judge could hear the case. At the moment, the only judge was in Sitka. No one knew for sure when he’d be coming here.

“Is that why you haven’t been by to see me?” he asked.

“When you had so many important matters to occupy your time, it wouldn’t have been right for me to force my company on you.” She studied her primly folded hands, avoiding his curious gaze.

“My dear, you have never forced your company on me.” The chair creaked under his shifting weight as he leaned toward her. “When you come by to see me, it has always been the highlight of my day. I look forward to your coming.”

“You have no idea how much it means to me to hear you say that. I want so much for you to like me.” The quiver in her voice was genuine. Glory knew that what she said was true. Regardless of how much she hated him for the way he’d treated her mother, abandoning her and their unborn child, she wanted him to like her—to truly become fond of her. She wanted to know he could care for her. Yet, crazily, she wanted to see him destroyed, too. She knew it was within her power to do it—if she wanted to.

“I do like you, Glory, very much.” He covered her hands with his own, as if trying to impress upon her the sincerity of his words. “Almost from the first moment we met, I have felt close to you. You have come to mean a great deal to me. Truly, I mean that.”

Feigning agitation, she pulled free of his hands and rose to her feet, taking a step away and hearing the creak of his chair that signaled he had risen also. “People in town are talking about us. You know that, don’t you?” She paused, conscious of him standing behind her. “They say we’re having an affair.”

“What nonsense! I have never done more than kiss your hand.”

“I know that.” She swung around to face him. “But remember who I am. If you saw a well-known prostitute in the company of the same man day after day, would you believe their relationship was platonic? No, I don’t think so. And neither do they.”

“You mustn’t let their wagging tongues upset you.” He gently took hold of her shoulders.

“Don’t you see, it isn’t me I’m worried about. It’s you. The future governor of Alaska shouldn’t be seen with the notorious Glory St. Clair. As soon as I heard what the gossips were saying, I realized I shouldn’t see you any more.”

“I didn’t know you thought so much of me.”

“I do.” She took hold of both his hands. “I never wanted to hurt you, Gabe. Believe that. I only wanted you to like me as a person, as a human being with feelings and needs like everyone else. You’ve always treated me with courtesy and respect. You’ll never know how much that means to me, Gabe.”

“My sweet, lovely girl. You have not hurt me. You have given me too much joy. Let people talk. I don’t care a whit what they say.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” She drew back to look at him, a faint pout on her lips.

“If I were concerned about what people might say, I wouldn’t be here now. A half dozen people saw me enter your quarters a few minutes ago.”

“You know what they think we’re doing back here, don’t you?” She smiled in her naughtiest fashion.

“I believe I do.”

“Why, Gabe, I do believe you’re blushing.” She laughed. “Is that what you’d like to do with me?”

“I believe you are teasing me, Miss St. Clair.”

Although her suggestion had obviously made him a little uncomfortable, she saw the look in his eye—the hesitant desire of an old man uncertain of his ability to perform. She could get him into bed. She had learned her trade too well not to know how to coax a man into bed. With older men, especially the straitlaced ones, it was almost like bedding a virgin; both had to be babied along. Which was why she avoided both when she could.

She let go of his hands before he felt her shudder of revulsion. “It was naughty of me, wasn’t it?” She smiled as she moved away, walking over to the keg by the bed and picking up a pack of Turkish cigarettes. From the saloon side of the tent, several voices were raised in excitement, but Glory was too used to the noisy carrying-on to pay any attention to it.

“What do you suppose all that commotion is about?” Gabe wondered.

“Maybe somebody’s winning at the faro table.” Glory shrugged and struck a match. As she held the flame to the tip of the cigarette, Matty returned carrying two tin mugs of coffee. Glory took a puff on the cigarette to light it, then exhaled the smoke to blow out the flame. “What’s the excitement out front, Matty?”

“Man come. Him say him find gold in sand.” She set the coffee on the crate that served as a table.

“Gold? On the beach? Don’t tell me people are believing a story like that?” Glory scoffed and at the same moment noticed that the voices had receded.

“Everybody leave, go see,” Matty replied.

Curious, Glory stepped to the opening and pushed part of the canvas back to see into the saloon. It was deserted. Through the raised tent flap of the entrance, she could see a steady flow of people going by, headed in the direction of the beach.

She glanced back at Gabe. “Do you suppose it could be true?”

“Traces of gold have been found in beach sands in other places along the Seward Peninsula,” he said. “Prospectors use it as an indication of possible gold locations inland.”

Glory stared again at the miners going by the tent. “Let’s go see what they found.”

She crossed the room, dropping her freshly lit cigarette in the coffee cup as she passed the crate, and grabbed up a shawl from a pile of clothes on a trunk. “Are you coming?”

She ignored the disapproval in his expression at her failure to dress before venturing into the streets. As far as she was concerned, she was decently clad. She swept the shawl around her shoulders and started for the opening with Matty on her heels. Reluctantly, Gabe followed.

Once on the street, they were quickly swept into the human current flowing toward the beach. The skeptics strolled leisurely, snickering at the believers who dodged and darted through the crowd, rushing to get there first. The ones who were neither skeptics nor believers, but caught somewhere in between, like Glory, walked swiftly, equally afraid of committing themselves in case there was no gold and afraid of missing out if there was. Like lemmings, they never wavered from their course to the sea.

The beach area immediately outside of town was strewn with small tents pitched by destitute miners recently arrived from the Klondike. Their camps were already overrun with people digging in the sand when Glory reached them. She quickened her pace, seeking a less crowded area to avoid the pushing and shoving.

She saw a bearded sourdough scoop up some sand in his gold pan and take it down to the sea’s edge. As he crouched down, squatting on his heels to wash the sand in the metal pan, Glory hurried onto the wet wave-packed sand to observe the outcome. She hovered behind him, watching over his shoulder while he patiently sloshed the water back and forth, letting the lighter grains of sand spill over the side with the water, slowly reducing the amount of sand in the pan and allowing the heavier gold—if there was any—to settle to the bottom. It was a tedious process.

Her nerves wore thin with the waiting. “Is there gold in the sands?” she demanded impatiently.

No answer from the prospector was necessary as she saw the shimmer of gold dust along the bottom edge of the pan—not much, enough to coat the underside of a fingernail. But if that existed in a random scoop of sand, how much more could be found? She grabbed up the skirts of her nightgown and wrapper and ran back to Matty.

“There is gold here.” She spoke in an undertone, as if it was a secret that could be kept from the people swarming all over the beach looking for the same thing. She tightly gripped the woman’s arm with both her hands. “We’re going to be rich, Matty.” For an instant, she gave in to the excitement that charged her, and she hugged Matty. “This gold is ours. For once, the Tarakanovs are going to be rich!”

“Missy Glory okay?” Matty looked at her worriedly.

“I’m okay,” she said and released a short, exuberant laugh. “You stay here. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

Reports confirming the presence of gold on the beach had spread rapidly. Glory had to fight her way back to town through a headlong rush of prospectors, merchants, bartenders, and gamblers now joining the stampede. Although she watched for Deacon, she didn’t take time to look for him. She didn’t know where Gabe had gone and didn’t care. She bought a shovel, a rusty metal bucket, some mercury, and a crude wooden rocker from a merchant whose clerks had deserted him. With no one to help her transport her newly purchased equipment to the beach, she had to struggle with it herself.

By midafternoon, she and Matty were working their claim, and the first flakes of gold were wrapped tightly in the lace handkerchief in the pocket of her wrapper. Glory had worked out a system: She shoveled a scoopful of ruby-colored sand into the wooden rocker that resembled a baby’s cradle; Matty filled the pail with sea water and poured it over the sand while Glory rocked the “cradle” back and forth as vigorously as she could; and Matty pushed the tailings out of the way.