He built a fire in a pit which he dug out of the thin layer of thawed earth and lined with stones. When she was about to remove the netting from around her hat, he cautioned her to leave it in place. Within minutes he had water boiling in a small pot over the fire and was warming some biscuits and sidemeat in another pan.
Samantha gratefully accepted the cup of steaming liquid and the plate of unappetizing food. She raised the mosquito netting up over her hat to take a sip of coffee, wondering if she would ever become acccustomed to the long hours of sunlight. They would rest in this twilight before continuing on the silent trip southeast along Bonanza Creek. In the distance, she could hear men talking to each other as they worked in the creek, frantically searching for elusive gold.
“This is good,” she said to break the silence.
“Thank you.” He could not hide his pleasure at her compliment. “I’m not a very competent cook, but I have learned to like my own cooking. Perhaps you will make us a good dinner tomorrow night. We will arrive at the claim in plenty of time for preparations.”
She lowered her eyes. She could not imagine continuing on. Her legs ached from her long hours at the laundry tub today, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep. She slapped away a mosquito and batted at another whining near her ear.
“You’ll get used to them,” he said as he noted her motion.
“Really?”
He smiled for the first time since they had met in the yard by Mrs. Kellogg’s house. “Maybe not. I can’t get used to them myself. They seem far more determined and vicious than the ones we had back in Pennsylvania.”
“Pennsylvania?” she asked in sudden confusion. “I thought you were from Virginia.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He poured the last of his coffee on the ground. “Do you want to sleep?”
Disconcerted by his strange words, she nodded. He pulled a blanket from his pack and spread it on the ground. When he motioned for her to lie down, she felt uneasy. She had promised to marry Joel Houseman, but they had not paused at a pastor’s house. Only now did she think of how they would be living together on their small claim. Again unsure of how to approach him and relieve the distress in her heart, she said nothing.
She did not sleep immediately, although she closed her eyes. The unnatural twilight and the constant whir of mosquitoes kept her awake. Cold sifted up from the ground, which was permanently frozen, only inches below her. Wind moved the treetops.
When she felt Mr. Houseman move close to her, she stiffened. When she realized that he intended to stay awake and keep guard on their supplies, she allowed herself to relax.
She felt his eyes on her. Her senses honed by her time in Dawson, she could tell he regarded her possessively. She wondered why he had not even taken her hand. Mr. Munroe had greeted Gwen with unbridled enthusiasm. Joel acted like a polite stranger.
As she drifted away into a fatigued sleep, she smiled. They were strangers. If she gave them time to find the love they had professed in their letters, her dreams might come to life.
A gentle voice called near Samantha’s ear, “Miss Perry? Miss Perry, it’s time for us to start.”
She turned to look up into Joel’s face, smiling to see him so close. He leaned over her, one hand on either side of her shoulders. She traced the fine lines of his face with her eyes, delighting in the face she had looked at so often in the precious photograph.
When she saw his lips descending to cover hers, she shivered with anticipation, eager for an expression of the love she had longed for during the long and difficult voyage to this frontier. She lifted her arms to place them around his shoulders.
With a strangled moan, he moved away, stood, and turned his back on her. A muted oath drifted to her. She slowly rose, rearranged her clothes into a semblance of freshness, and walked to where he stood.
“Mr. Houseman, good morning.” She knew her words were inane, but she did not know what else to say to this puzzling man.
“Good morning?” He said, laughing, “You’re the lady I expected you to be. Shall we go? I know we’ve had no breakfast, but there’s more food and an escape from these flying bloodsuckers on the claim.”
“Yes, of course.” She folded the blanket and handed it to him. While he tied it on the back of the horse, she wondered if he truly had intended to kiss her. She had been sure he would, but now he acted as if nothing had happened. When he looked at her, she lowered her eyes and moved to stand beside him. She had no idea how to handle this baffling situation.
They renewed their journey with the same silent determination to put miles behind them, but that changed quickly. The miners they were passing now were not strangers to Joel and greeted them, coming out of their cabins at broadening daylight to return to work. Although each man appraised her closely, no one said anything to her other than a brief good morning. Making no effort to introduce her to the others, her companion hurried on. She wondered if it was the yearning to return to his work that made him increase the pace.
An aura of nervousness billowed out around him, made obvious by the whiteness of his knuckles gripping the reins and the straight, grim line of his mouth below his mustache.
They walked down a hill into a valley which must have once been beautiful. Like the rest of the countryside around the rivers flowing into the Klondike, the land had been stripped of everything lovely. In the distance, she could see an unbroken line of claims, announced by sluices and plumes of smoke from cookstoves. She felt a pang at the loss of what had been here.
Shaking her head to dislodge these gloomy thoughts, she asked herself why she cared about such things. They were not here to admire the scenery. They were here to realize their dreams of finding gold and discovering a life together.
She had to cling to trees as the slope dropped away steeply. Joel could not assist her. All of his attention was needed to help the overloaded horse down the hillside. She remained far behind them, but the gentle, consoling words he spoke to his steed gave her some solace. Her future husband was a kind man.
At the base of the hill, he waited for her to draw even with him, then nodded to show he was pleased she had managed the slope without mishap.
Soon they entered a clearing exactly like many they had seen on their journey. Samantha hid her dismay when he reached for the pack on the horse. This must be home. She tried not to show her disappointment as she saw the barely chinked log walls of the hut, topped by a roof of canvas to prevent moisture from dripping inside. A second cabin was attached to the first. It had the luxury of a window, fashioned in the peculiar style found in Dawson, of empty bottles held together with hardened mud, light could filter through it into the small house.
When the door swung open she could not hide her surprise. A man walked out to cross the muddy yard. He was taller than Joel, and his dark hair shone in the sun as brightly as her own. His eyes were the deepest blue she had ever seen. Little of the rest of his face could be seen behind a beard as thick as Joel’s.
He paused in mid-step when he saw her, standing by her escort. He smiled the same way Joel had at his first sight of her, easing lines ingrained by hard work and the rough climate.
“This is Miss Perry?” He sounded delighted.
Her fiancé nodded with obvious reluctance. He put his hand on her arm, startling her. It was the first time he had touched her. “Miss Perry, this is my partner Joel Gilchrist.”
“How do you do, Mr. Gilchrist?” She offered her hand politely, thinking it odd that both men shared the same given name. Never in any of the letters had there been the mention of a partner. Perhaps this was a new arrangement to ease the workload. “Do you live nearby?”
“I live here.” His dark eyebrows formed a line across his forehead as he regarded the other man steadily. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing,” Joel Houseman answered, too quickly.
The taller man frowned. “Nothing? You brought her all the way out here without telling her the truth? I thought you were going to t
ell her before she left Dawson.”
Samantha demanded, “What truth?” The men ignored her.
With his hands creating a flurry to match his hasty explanation, Mr. Houseman did not try to soften his words. A heated blush climbed her cheeks as she heard him tell his partner how he had been smitten with her from the second he saw her working at the laundry tub. Embarrassment became fright as Gilchrist stepped forward threateningly. Then she realized his rage was directed at the man beside her.
“Charmed, were you? Did you marry her? Did you forget our agreement, along with what you were supposed to tell her?”
“Calm down,” said the blond man, still holding her arm. “We didn’t stand before the preacher. I don’t cheat my own partner. I’m just speaking the facts. She is powerfully pretty, and I wouldn’t have a difficult time taking her to wife.”
“We decided how it would be, remember?” the darkly handsome man said in a steely, quiet tone which did not disguise his rage.
Peeling her fiancé’s hand off her arm, Samantha stepped away from both men. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Gilchrist. There is no reason to argue. Mr. Houseman proposed to me and paid for my passage here. I promised to marry him.”
“You promised to marry Joel Houseman, right?”
She did not back away from his daunting blue stare. If she was going to have to suffer this man’s presence, she would not allow him to cow her on their first meeting. Without a sign of her internal turmoil, she said, “That’s correct, Mr. Gilchrist.”
“Not Kevin Houseman.”
“Who?” She turned to the man who had brought her here from Dawson.
A scarlet as bright as the gaudy decorations of the Dawson hotel splashed across his face. He swallowed several times. “Miss Perry, I am Kevin Houseman.”
“Then who is Joel Houseman?”
Instantly, she knew the answer. Her gloved hands clasped over her mouth; she tried to deny the truth she could see on the men’s faces. Joel Gilchrist—Kevin Houseman.
She felt arms around her shoulders when she swayed. Trying to shrug them off, she nearly fell to the ground, her knees too wobbly to support her. Her ears rang with the effort to breathe, as she was helped into the cabin. A bench was pulled away from a table, which took up most of the room. A glass was pressed into her hands. When she did not raise it to her lips, it was taken and placed against her mouth.
With a gasp to ease the fire etching its way to her middle, she struck out at the hand holding the glass. It flew across the room to crash into the wall and fall to the floor in a rain of sharp shards.
“Damn!” snarled a male voice. “Look what she did. That was our last glass one.”
“Not now. It doesn’t matter.”
Gentle fingers guided her chin up to gaze at a distorted image of the face she had seen so often in a photograph. She fought her rebellious stomach. In a voice scratchy from the whiskey, she whispered, “Why?”
The one named Joel Gilchrist sat next to her and took her fingers in his. Shocked by his audacity, she tried to pull them out of his grip, but he refused to release her. “You must listen to the truth, Samantha.”
“We are not friends. You may not use my given name,” she said stiffly.
“Friends?” He laughed as he looked past her to the other man. “You promised to marry me. I think that makes us more than friends.”
“No!” she cried. She wanted to stand. With the men on either side of her, she was imprisoned. She felt she would suffocate any moment. “I didn’t promise to marry you, Mr. Gilchrist.”
“Then who?” he asked reasonably. “Kevin?”
The other man interrupted. “Enough. Let her get settled in. We’ve had a long trip. She must be exhausted.” He helped an astonished Samantha to her feet. “We thought until this was all worked out, you’d like to sleep in the loft in the addition.”
She ignored them, longing to escape from this madness, hurting from loss of the love she had thought would bring such joy into her life.
“Kevin, why don’t you unload the horse?” Joel suggested smoothly. “You have had a chance to get to know our Samantha during your journey here. Grant me the same opportunity.”
“Don’t I have anything to say about this?” she demanded.
Joel turned to her and smiled. The effect startled her. His wind-burnished face smoothed to display his handsome features. With one hand resting on the tabletop, he asked, “What do you want to say?”
“I-I—” She could think of nothing. He grinned at her in easy amusement. His eyes slipped from hers and moved along her body again. She wished she had her long cloak to pull around her, block his admiring gaze.
“That’s settled, then.” He smacked his hand on the table. “Go on, Kevin. I’ll show Samantha the loft while you bring in her things.”
There was no alternative. She went with him to a ladder at one side of the room. Wrapping her skirts tightly around her, bunching the excess material in her hand, she cautiously climbed the ladder. Made of saplings bound together with coarse twine, it creaked ominously as she stepped on each rung. She sighed with relief when she put her foot on the uneven floorboards of the attic. Joel followed, carrying her small bag.
“This is it?” she gasped as he joined her. Dirt huddled in the corners, stirred by the wind which surged like hot breath through cracks in the walls. A bed frame leaned drunkenly against the only wall high enough. The other walls ended in the low gables of the roof. She could stand upright only in the middle of the room.
Joel shrugged. “It’s private. We’ll bunk together downstairs. We thought you might like this.”
She crossed the room. There was a stained ticking on the bed. She feared it was infested with unwanted companions. Touching the iron bedstead, her fingers came away filthy with a thick coating of dust.
“I need a changing screen,” she said, not looking at him.
“You have plenty of privacy. There’s not even a window here.”
As if he had not spoken, she said, “I can use a piece of cloth on a rope. If you string it between here and there,” she instructed, pointing, “it should be fine. If you don’t have a washstand, I must have at least a pitcher and a bowl for cleansing. I’ll need also blankets for the bed, and some pegs hammered in the wall for hanging clothes.”
“How about a maidservant and a private bath?”
Samantha regarded him without expression. Her voice cold, she said, “Mr. Gilchrist, I don’t think my demands are unreasonable. I should be allowed some creature comforts.”
Resignedly, he nodded. “Tomorrow. We’ve missed too much work as it is.”
Taking her bag, she snapped, “Sorry to put you out so horribly.”
“So, you do have some spirit!” He put his arm on one of the slanting rafters and watched her unpack. “I was beginning to wonder if you were the same Samantha Perry who wrote to us. You nearly swooned outside.”
“I did not!” she snapped, her pride bruised by his condescending tone.
“I had to help you into the house!”
She recalled his tender hands easing her onto the bench, surprised he had been so consoling.
“I had good reason to be lightheaded,” she said coolly.
A thump from below halted Joel’s answer, and he walked to the hole and lifted up her two large satchels as Kevin handed them up to him. Flinging them to the middle of the floor, he started to climb down the ladder.
“Make yourself at home, Samantha!” he called jauntily as his head disappeared from view.
Her fists clenched at her side in impotent fury. She wanted to wipe that superior smile from his face, somehow. To think, she had expected life in the Klondike to center on a kind, loving man!
Samantha sat on the bed and heard its protesting squeak. With a sigh, she looked at the slanted line of the ceiling. Alone in the half light of the loft, she could not escape the truth. Leaving her world behind, she had come here to be with a man to whom she had vowed eternal love and devotion�
��and he did not exist.
Now she was supposed to accept this situation.
But she could not.
Once she devised a way to repay them, the two men would not be pleased. Of that she was sure. The only question remaining was how she would make them rue their deception.
Chapter Four
The main room of the cabin was vacant when Samantha climbed down the ladder. Her nose wrinkled in distaste at the odor of unwashed dishes reeking with grease. The coffee pot was still warm. Searching, she found a cup which appeared clean and filled it with the thick, black brew. Sipping, she grimaced and placed the cup on the table. Perhaps the coffee had been palatable once, but it was no longer.
With a sigh, she picked up the filthy plates and piled them in the middle of the table. While she lived here, she did not intend to share the sloppy ways of her hosts. She found the washtub in a cupboard with a warped door. Water waited in a pail by the door. She put it on the stove to warm.
Gazing around the plain room with its few pieces of primitive furniture, Samantha wondered how she could have involved herself in this mess …
When the first letter came from the man calling himself Joel Houseman, it seemed the answer to a prayer. She had been living with her brother and his family for nearly eight years, since her mother’s death. They had not wanted her, but she had no place to go. The financial depression settling on the country made it difficult for her brother to provide for one more. She soon learned she must repay him by acting as a slave for his wife and in-laws.
She grew tired of her extended family’s attempts to marry her off to any man who expressed interest, and to several who did not. That she had not been attracted to any of the men had not lessened their efforts. Those who made offers soon discovered she would not let her family’s desires overrule her own.
On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, her brother asked her when she intended to marry. Her flippant answer angered him, and he told her she had one year to find a husband or a new home.
Several weeks later, a member of their church had offered her the chance to write to a “brave, but lonely” man in the Yukon. She had taken his picture and his well-penned, wrinkled letter, sure nothing would come of a harmless correspondence. As the months passed, though, and she discovered how eagerly she waited for the mailman’s visits to the farm, she learned how much she had come to care for the man she knew as Joel Houseman.
At the Rainbow's End Page 5
