Where Heaven Begins (10 page)

“W
ell, lady, first you have to take either Chilkoot Pass or White Pass to get to Lake Bennett. If you’re real lucky, you’ll still have all your provisions with you. Now, if ya can’t get all yer supplies over there yerself, then you’ll pay about triple what it costs to buy them here, if’n you have to buy them from those that carry them over for you, so yer best off gettin’ them to Lake Bennett yerself, ya know what I mean?”

Elizabeth just stared at the bearded, kind-eyed older man who called himself only by the nickname of Hard Tack. He was obviously enjoying being able to show her how much he knew about the trip to the Yukon. He’d rattled on so fast that she was left totally confused.

“Now, I’d shore like to take ya myself,” he continued,
“only I ain’t goin’ all the way, on account of I take supplies just to Lake Bennett. I kin git ya that far, if that helps, but then ya’d have to find somebody else to help you git the rest of the way, which is by boat up the Yukon River, over dangerous rapids and all that.” He looked her over. “Ma’am, I’d suggest ya wait till spring myself.”

“I’d really rather go now,” she answered. “I don’t know what on earth I would do with myself in a place like Skagway all winter. Besides, I can’t afford room and board for that long. I guess I could get a job, but all I want is to reach my brother in Dawson and have it over with. There I could rest at last and truly be home and with someone familiar.”

The man scratched his beard. “Well, now, I know that that group of fellas over there is goin’ for sure, leavin’ in a couple of days. One of ’em is a lawyer, so he says. The others are just friends of his, all businessmen, they claim, ’cept in these parts ya can’t always believe what a man tells ya. I reckon ya can trust them as good as anybody.”

Elizabeth glanced at the group of men gathered in a large tent with about one hundred others who’d come to hear about what they would need for their trip to the Klondike. Those here to fill them in were outfitters and owners of Skagway supply stores, as well as men with horses, dogs, sleds and boats for sale.

The men Hard Tack referred to were mostly dressed in suits and overcoats, certainly not men who appeared to know much about survival in the wilds. Still, as Hard Tack said, they certainly appeared to be gentlemen who would at least honor her integrity and would surely protect her if need be from animals and the elements. She thanked Hard
Tack and walked over to the men, who were intently listening to a man telling them about the proper way to pitch a tent on hard, cold, rocky ground, giving tips on what to do if the snow was deep. It was obvious by comments some of the men made that indeed, they didn’t know much about such things. One of them turned to eye her, then removed his hat. “Ma’am?”

Elizabeth took a deep breath for courage, hating to approach strangers with her request. “My name is Elizabeth Breckenridge, and that man over there—” She pointed to Hard Tack. “He’s a supplier, and he told me you and your friends might oblige my request.”

The man smiled through thin lips and looked her over with rather unreadable brown eyes. He was neither handsome nor hard to look at, with dark hair that seemed too thin for what appeared to be a man only perhaps Clint’s age, which she guessed to be late twenties or perhaps thirty. “And what might that request be?”

“Well, I’m headed for Dawson myself, to find my brother, Peter. He’s a preacher there.” She hoped that fact would cement her own credibility and honor. “I need some kind of escort on the trip, and I was hoping…well, Hard Tack…he said you were a lawyer here with some other businessmen. I hoped that meant you were all gentlemen and that perhaps I could trust you to get me to Dawson. I wouldn’t be any burden, I promise. I could cook for all of you, keep your clothes washed and mended, that kind of thing. I can’t really afford to pay—”

“Certainly!” the man answered before she could finish. His grin widened. “We’d be honored to take you along with
us, Miss Breckenridge!” He touched the arm of one of his friends, a portly, middle-aged fellow wearing a suit. “Jonathan Hedley, meet Miss Elizabeth Breckenridge.”

Hedley nodded to her as the first man put out his hand.

“And my name is Ezra Faine, ma’am.” He looked at Hedley. “Miss Breckenridge needs an escort to Dawson, wondered if we might be obliged to help her out.”

Hedley’s eyebrows shot up with pleasure as he grinned, his cheeks actually turning red. “Why, of course we would!” the man answered, too quickly it seemed to Elizabeth. He turned to Ezra and winked.

“We leave in two days, Miss Breckenridge,” Ezra told her. “We and our friends would be glad to take you along with us. We’ll make sure you get to Dawson all safe and sound. Do you have all the supplies you need?”

Someone in the crowded tent bumped Elizabeth’s velvet hat, and she adjusted it as she answered. “Actually no. I mean, I just don’t have the money—”

“Not to worry,” Ezra told her. “We have brought along plenty of money, and we’ll get all the necessary supplies. You just bring along your personal baggage and we’ll make room.” He leaned closer, grinning eagerly. “You, uh, don’t have any other female friends you could bring along, do you?”

Elizabeth frowned. “What?”

The man put an arm around her shoulders and led her aside. “Ma’am, we both know that it’s pretty unlikely a woman traveling alone to Dawson is totally proper, if you know what I mean. Now, I’ll accept your story about having a brother there who is a preacher. That’s what we’ll
tell the others. But, well, it’s possible we could get caught in a blizzard or something like that, which means we’d have to all hole up in a tent together. Now I know that even a woman who’s, uh, not so proper, shall we say?—that even she wouldn’t want to put up with a whole tent full of men. Me, I’ll have my own tent, and I’ll see you get to Dawson without charging you one blessed cent, as long as you share my tent with me, if you know what I mean.”

Elizabeth’s heart fell like a rock. This man thought she was lying about Peter! He thought she was a prostitute trying to hook a free ride to Dawson! Fury and disappointment engulfed her, and she could not hide her tears as she looked at Ezra Faine. “You are a filthy-minded, reprehensible man with not one ounce of manners or honor about you!” she shot back.

The man grasped her arm. “Now, honey, don’t get angry. I just wanted to be sure—”

“Let go of the lady,” came a deep voice.

Elizabeth recognized it as Clint’s. Ezra glanced up at someone tall standing behind her. “What was that?” he asked.

“You heard me. Take your hand off her arm. And if I were you, I’d turn around and rejoin my friends and not say one more word.”

Ezra gave Elizabeth a light shove before he let go of her. “Says who?” he asked, trying to look brave and manly.

“Mister, I’m a bounty hunter, so hurting or killing a man means nothing to me. Is that enough of an answer?”

Ezra backed away slightly, looking Clint over and pretending not to be afraid. He moved his gaze to Elizabeth. “He one of your customers or something?”

In the next split second a big fist came from behind Elizabeth and slammed into Ezra Faine’s face, sending the man sprawling into a stack of sacks stuffed with beans. One of them broke, spilling the contents onto the wooden floor. Beans bounced about, some of them off Ezra’s face. Other men turned to look, and Clint grasped Elizabeth’s arm. “Let’s go,” he told her.

Still fighting tears, Elizabeth left with him.

C
lint walked so fast that he nearly dragged Elizabeth along the boardwalk back toward the hotel.

“Clint Brady, how dare you!”

“How dare I what? Keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life?”

“And you haven’t made any?”

“I’ve made
plenty!
” He scooped her up in his arms to carry her across one of the narrow board crosswalks.

“What are you doing!”

“Keeping you out of the mud.”

“Not long ago you wanted to knock me clear out the back door, if I remember your words correctly!”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I want to talk about.”

Elizabeth could not help being surprised at how adeptly he picked her up, as though she weighed nothing. He couldn’t possibly be anywhere near his normal strength, but he’d clobbered Ezra Faine with startling force.

They reached the boardwalk at the other side of the street, and Elizabeth felt a sudden, surprising surge of happiness and desire rush through her as she looked at Clint Brady by the soft light of the oil lamps hanging along the boardwalk. It so startled her that she fought it vehemently.

“Put me down!” she commanded, tears coming again and making her even more embarrassed and upset with herself.

Clint just stood there with her for a moment, an odd look in his eyes, almost like a sorry little boy—a look that changed to something she could not quite decipher. Sorrow? Adoration? For one brief moment she thought he might actually kiss her!

“Tell me you aren’t afraid of me. I’m sorry for what I said, and we need to talk.”

“We certainly do! And you owe me a dollar for that wasted food!”

Clint set her on her feet. “It wasn’t wasted. I ate all of it.” He put a hand to her back. “Come on back to the hotel with me.” He started walking again, a little slower this time.

“Why did you hit that poor man?”

“Poor man? Why were you crying?”

Elizabeth wiped at the tears on her cheeks. “I don’t know.”

“I think it was because the man was insulting you in some way, maybe misunderstood your intentions. Am I right?”

“Yes,” she answered, embarrassed.

“You’d go a long way to find a man out of that crowd who’d honestly see you got to Dawson safely. Most would probably have every good intention of helping you out, but men are men, and each one at that tent is out for himself. You get snowed in with any one of them, worse than that, a group of them, and all their good intentions could easily go right out the smokehole and blow away with the mountain winds.”

“And I suppose you’re different?”

They were nearly at the hotel. “Maybe not, except for one thing.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

They walked up the steps to the hotel front door, where he turned to face her before going in. “I care about you.”

The comment left Elizabeth speechless for the moment.
I care about you.
What the heck did that mean? As just a friend? As something
more
than a friend? Heavens! What if
that
was what he meant?

The thought made her suddenly self-conscious. What was she supposed to say to him? Should she ask him what he meant? Did she
want
him to care about her as more than a friend? Truth was, deep inside, she did. She’d never really allowed the thought to surface until now. Still, he was nowhere near the kind of man she’d always imagined she’d end up with someday, and he was too old, wasn’t he? Heck, she had no idea
how
old he was. Perhaps his size and experience made him seem older than he really was. And for heaven’s sake, he killed men for money! He didn’t even believe in God any more…or at least so he claimed. She suspected that wasn’t true at all.
Dear Lord, what am
I supposed to say? What should I do? What does this man want? What do
You
want?

Clint led her inside. Elizabeth was glad to see that Mr. Wheeler was not at his desk as they stormed through the lobby and into the back room. Clint closed the door and turned up the lamp. He ordered Elizabeth to sit down in the wooden chair, and Clint sat down on the cot. He took a deep breath, resting his elbows on his knees. Elizabeth waited for him to speak first, still a little wary of him after his drunken threat to her the day before.

“Here’s the deal,” he told her. “I’ve rescued you from peril twice, and you just might have saved
my
life. For some reason we keep running into each other and helping each other out. And now I’ve come to know you too well just to let you go off to Dawson with complete strangers, and too well to…well, like I said, I care about you, which means I could never…you know…take advantage, if the issue were to arise.”

Elizabeth felt the odd rush of desire again, a feeling that confused her. With it came an uncomfortable embarrassment at what he meant.

“What I mean is,” he continued, “I’ve come to respect you highly. What happened earlier…I can promise you that won’t happen again. I drank that whiskey because whiskey can be a pretty good cure-all for a lot of things. I figured it would make me feel better and heal faster. Fact is, I feel awful. My head feels like it’s trying to lift away from my neck, and my chest still hurts, but I think that by day after tomorrow, I could start for Dawson.”

“That’s too soon.”

He put up his hand. “I’m not finished.” He coughed before continuing. “I want to apologize for what I said earlier. You can rest assured I’ve never hit a woman in my life and never would. That was whiskey talking.”

“And what if you drink during our journey?”

He held her gaze for a moment, and she thought again how blue his eyes were, how handsome he was.

“Well, I promise not to. You’ll just have to believe me. But if I
do
drink—and even if I don’t—you have to promise me one thing. One thing, and I’ll get you to Dawson safely.”

She frowned. “What is that?”

“Don’t bring up my dead wife’s name again.”

So, that was it. Why was it so terrible to talk about Jenny? “And what if
you
bring it up?”

He shrugged. “I won’t. But if I
were
to bring it up, it would be because I want to talk about her and…what happened to her…and…our son.”

A son! Elizabeth could see just the mere mention of both of them made him agitated. “All right,” she told him. “But may I say one thing?”

He eyed her warily. “What?”

Elizabeth swallowed before continuing. “Well, I just want you to know—”
God, help me find the right words
“—that I care about you, too. And the couple of times I did mention your family, I was just hoping to help you cope with loss…because that’s just the kind of person I am. My heart is filled with the love of Jesus Christ and with His teachings and commandments, which means He would want me to be His instrument of healing in any way I can. So I just want you to know that if and when you should
ever want to talk, I am ready and willing to listen, and I would never, ever judge your anger or the things it has made you do. I look at you and I see someone who I believe was once a wonderful family man who believed in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ.”

Clint just stared at her a moment, and she could see a hunger in his eyes, but it quickly vanished. “Now there’s another requirement. I don’t want to be preached to for the whole journey.”

Elizabeth smiled softly. “All right. I’ll do my best.” She folded her arms. “We never even said flat-out that we would do this, you know—go to Dawson together, I mean. I take it that’s the decision you’ve made, considering the way you walked over to that tent and hauled me out of there and warned me not to trust anyone but you. I’m still not so sure I
can
trust you. But I am going to for the simple reason that I absolutely cannot believe that God didn’t bring you into my life for the specific purpose of seeing that I reach Peter safely. If you are the one He’s chosen for the job, then I have no choice but to trust you.”

Clint actually smiled a little himself then. He took off his coat. “Thanks for fixing things up for me, changing the sheets and all. I’ll pay you back for that meal, and I’ll pay for your room. You shouldn’t have had to take a different one.”

“I’ll manage.”

“Okay, rule number three. Don’t argue with me about everything. Whatever I tell you to do, you’ll do it, including letting me pay for things. I have plenty of money and nothing to spend it on. I have even more in a bank in San Francisco. And no, it didn’t
all
come from killing men for
bounty. And yes, I’ll explain all of it to you in my own time. And I might add that you have some explaining of your own to do.”

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in curiosity. “Oh? What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s kind of strange that a nice young woman like you is headed for Dawson all alone. You said your father had been a preacher in San Francisco, and so had your brother, apparently. You must have belonged to a church. There must have been friends and parishioners who cared about you. Why the sudden rush to head for Dawson so late in the year? It can’t be just because your mother died. You act more like someone who is running away from something. What is it you aren’t telling me?”

Elizabeth felt the renewed shame and anger she’d felt when the deacons accused her of sinfully throwing herself at Reverend Selby. Would this man understand? Or would he judge her in the way so many men in the church had judged her? “I guess I’ll have to answer that the way you said you felt about talking about your wife. I’ll tell you when the time is right.”

Clint rose. “Fair enough.” He walked to the door and opened it. “One more rule,” he added.

Elizabeth stood up and faced him. “What is that?”

“While we’re traveling together, we lead others to believe we’re husband and wife. If and when we come across people who knew us here in Skagway, we tell them we got married.”

Elizabeth felt a flutter in her stomach. “Why?”

“Because you’ll be safer if others think you’re married. I shouldn’t have to explain the reason why.”

“But…if we sleep in separate tents—”

“We won’t. Between lonely men and wild animals, I’m not letting you away from my protection. Besides, two tents mean extra gear to carry. A lot of the time we’ll sleep out in the open anyway.”

“But…I…”

“You’re supposed to trust me. Besides, God sent me to help you, remember? He must mean for you to trust me.”

Elizabeth thought about what a big, strong man he was, a man who carried a gun at that. Still, he was right. She’d said herself that God meant for them to travel together. Maybe she’d stuck her foot in her mouth, but what was done was done, and if she wanted to reach Peter safely, she didn’t have much choice. Clint Brady was her best bet.

She nodded. “All right. From here on we are husband and wife. And you should start calling me Liz. That’s what everyone close to me calls me. It will make us more believable.”

“Good enough.” He stood aside. “Good night…Liz. Be ready tomorrow morning at eight o’clock to go shopping with me. We need supplies and you need a wedding band. I’ll have to go get my horses from where they are boarded and we’ll start packing what we’ll need.”

“Do you know the way?”

“I have good maps, and besides, the trail is pretty well worn by now. We’re bound to run into others the whole way.”

Elizabeth walked through the door and looked back at him. “Thank you, Clint.”

He nodded. “You’re welcome. Use the rest of today and tomorrow to rest up. I’ll be doing the same.”

He closed the door and Elizabeth stared at it for a moment before turning to go to her room.
“Lord, what in the world are You doing?”
she muttered. This was going to be one interesting trip. Not only was Clint Brady a bounty hunter and a Godless man who needed her help in finding his faith…but he’d become more. She’d never thought her trip to Dawson would include a battle with her own heart.