At the Rainbow's End

by Jo Ann Ferguson

  “I listen to everything you say.” He moved closer to her. His dusky silhouette swallowed hers. Tender fingers traced the aching muscles of her back. “Sam, we can finish this fight tomorrow, but I want you to go to sleep tonight. You look nearly as peaked as Kevin.”

  She closed her eyes and sagged against him. As his arms went around her, she whispered, “I don’t understand why I love you.”

  “Because I’m irresistible?”

  “Hardly.” When he chuckled against her hair, she nestled closer to him. “Maybe because I’m a glutton for heartache.” She looked up when he did not respond lightly to her teasing. Even in the shadows, she could see the old tilt of his eyebrows in a sorrowful expression. “Joel, what—”

  He yawned broadly. “Sorry, I’m tired, too. But I have slept some, at least. Go to bed. I will wake you if I need your help.” The odd glitter returned to his eyes as he added, “I love you, Sam. Whatever happens, remember that I love you.”

  “I don’t understand you. What do you mean, ‘whatever happens’?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He tweaked her nose in a playful manner. “All I want you to do is dream of me holding you.”

  Samantha considered delving deeper to determine what bothered him. Everything should be perfect. Then she paused. She was worn out from tending to Kevin. He was exhausted from trying to do both of their chores. Her questions would only bring angry recriminations. After the house was back to normal, she would try to find out why he was asking her forgiveness for some crime he had not committed.

  “How’s Kevin doing, Sam?”

  Samantha stopped at the edge of the riverbank, smiling. Piles of dirt nearly covered the ground. Joel and Kevin certainly had weeks of hard work ahead in the spring.

  “He ate a good breakfast, and he’s sleeping now,” she said cheerfully. “I don’t think it was mountain fever. Whatever it was should be gone in a few days, if he continues to rest. As soon as he’s better, I want you to help me convince him to go into Dawson to see the doctor at Good Samaritan Hospital. If it can recur, he should be prepared.” Her eyes roved over Joel’s wet clothes as her face grew serious. “You’ve been pushing yourselves too much all year.”

  “The weather is changing. Winter will be here any day. If we don’t get this done now, it will have to wait until next April. Once the water freezes during the day, we won’t be able to work.” He lifted his shovel to drop another water soaked load in the sluice. “It’s rough to do by myself, because it’s a two man job.”

  “Two man or two person?”

  With a laugh, he said, “I know you are a full partner, Sam, and you work damn hard. This just isn’t work for a lady.”

  “No?”

  Before he could speak Samantha slipped past him and down the bank into the river. She stifled a groan as her feet went numb. She had not known water could be this icy and still run. Without looking at him, she pulled off her gloves and shoved up the sleeves of her coat. She went to the far side of the sluice and began spreading the dirt, as she had seen the men do.

  “Get out of here!”

  She looked up to see Joel’s angry face. His rage did not frighten her, for she knew it was because he cared for her. “You need help. I can help.”

  Dropping the shovel onto the bank, he rounded the end of the sluice and grabbed her arm. He swung her toward him. “You can help best by getting out of this river before you freeze, too!”

  “Let me help you, Joel. You can’t do this all alone. I don’t want you to sicken, too.”

  “How about you?” He frowned, facing a stubborn glare from her dark eyes. “Those cotton petticoats are not protection from the cold. You aren’t immune to whatever made Kevin ill.”

  “I’m fine. I want to help. Let me?”

  His eyes eased along her to where the water smoothed her skirts to the outlines of her slender legs. Releasing her arm, he put his own around her. She gasped when he jerked her to him, holding her slender form close.

  “How in hell do you expect me to let you work when you look so desirable drenched, Sam?” His fingers, stiff with his hours of work, stroked her face. “When I see the lovely, virtuous Samantha Perry with her dress plastered to her limbs, all I can think of is how much I want to touch her.”

  “Not the gold?” she teased, wide-eyed with mock awe.

  He laughed. “Always looking for compliments, aren’t you, my dear?”

  “The truth.” Her eyes lost their mirthful glow.

  “The truth? It seems we’ve been damnably short of that around here for some time.”

  “You aren’t jealous of Kevin still, are you?”

  Gently, he cupped her chin in his stiff fingers. “No, for I know the truth now. I was thinking more of our plans for the future. Marriage.”

  She sighed. He was so insistent. As she gazed at the stern line of his jaw, shadowed by unshaven stubble, ache grew in her. Discovering the pain he had hidden about Camilla, she had wondered how long it had been secreted behind his facade of cockiness. How many heated words had they exchanged needlessly, because neither of them could admit what would make them happy? She wondered if she had been denying the inevitable since she arrived at Fifteen Above.

  Softly she answered with new sincerity, “I don’t know if I can marry you, Joel. Maybe if I’d known the truth before I came here … You’re so different from the man I expected to love. I must get used to that. And to you.”

  “At least you’re being honest.” His fingers tilted her face upward. “You are, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly she dimpled. “I’m also being honest when I say my legs are freezing. If I don’t get to work soon, I swear they will turn to sticks of ice.”

  With a smile, his lips descended to seduce her into surrender. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, close once more to being swept away on currents of passion which flowed faster than the water swirling around her legs.

  Suddenly he pushed away from her and cursed. Then she saw him chase his hat down the current of the creek, and laughed until tears ran along her cheeks. As if it had decided to prevent him from recapturing the felt hat, the water twisted it out of his reach again and again. When he finally caught it, just before it entered the rapids between Fifteen Above and Fourteen Above, she cheered and clapped her hands.

  He held it over his head in a victorious pose that lasted until water spilled out onto his head. Splashing back to her, he pressed it back on his soaked hair, then bent and kissed her lightly.

  “Dammit, woman, why do I love you so much?”

  “I don’t know, but I know you leave me weak with laughter at your foolishness.”

  His left eyebrow arched like a burlesque villain’s. “You might be right about that, my dear, but I can think of other things I would rather do to strip you of your strength.”

  “We have to work now,” she said softly, daunted by the eager passion in his voice. “Joel, I’m freezing. At least let me help you, instead of making your day longer. Perhaps tonight you can play some music for us.”

  “All right, Sam.” He grinned and ruffled her hair. “Get to work, honey.”

  Samantha partly regretted her offer to help in the creek, but she would not quit. The quicker they finished the day’s tasks, the quicker they could get out of this water.

  For the rest of the hours of sunlight, that thought repeated in her head like the endless tolling of a churchbell. Her legs cramped if she stood in any position too long. She continually rocked back and forth from one foot to the other to seek some brief comfort. More than once the wet dirt splashed out of the sluice to strike her in the face. She waved aside Joel’s apologies and wiped her face on her filthy sleeve.

  After an hour, her movements became automatic. She no longer thought about what her hands and legs did. With her eyes on the sluice, she concentrated only on the dirt. Black sifted through her fingers over and over, but no sign of glitter emerged to make her labors worthwhile.

  She did not n
otice when Joel stopped shoveling and went to the far end of the sluice to check what had washed down to the heaviest particles. His shoulders sagged when he saw no sign of gold. At the beginning of the spring thaw, he and Kevin had found enough to allow them to continue. They had not sluiced a sparkle since Samantha arrived.

  Joel looked at her. She was working with the same slow sense of pain he had suffered his first days of walking the trail north with a fifty pound pack on his back. It was an anguish that defied definition, an ache in the middle of the legs which rose to the center of the back and settled most heavily in the shoulders. He had overcome that through constant labor and building up those muscles, but he would never forget what he suffered.

  “Sam?”

  He was not surprised that she did not respond. All of her strength was being expended to keep her from admitting defeat. He put his arm around her to assist her out of the water. “Come on, honey. It’s time to quit.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad.” She looked up at him with touching expectation. “Did we find gold?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Let’s get you home where you can warm up.”

  Unashamed of her fatigue, she leaned against him. The wind whipped her clammy skirts tighter against her legs. She shivered as she stumbled along the path. It would take all night for her wool skirt to dry before the stove.

  “You did well,” came the whisper in her ear.

  “I’m exhausted.”

  Joel laughed softly. “You should be. You kept pace with me all day. We worked for six hours.”

  “Thank goodness the sun sets earlier, now. I never could have managed to put in a day like you and Kevin did when I first got here.”

  “You did well,” he repeated. He stopped and turned her to face him. When she put her head against his chest, he stroked her back.

  Samantha did not want to move. The gentle massage of his hands eased her pain in muscles she had not known she had before today. Every step added to her agony. She wanted nothing more than simply to fall asleep cradled in his strong arms.

  At the thought, she started. Pulling out of his arms, she forced her abused body to move toward the cabin, but he caught her and whirled her around to face him again.

  “Sam?” Although she could barely see his face in the deep Yukon twilight, she could hear confusion in his voice.

  “Let me go. Please, just let me go.”

  At the near hysteria in her cry, he tightened his grip on her. “Sam, what is it?”

  “I’m scared,” she murmured. “So very scared, Joel.”

  His brow creased with bafflement. “Scared? Of what?”

  She sagged, fatigue intensifying her feelings, tears burning in her eyes. “Of you. And the way you make me feel.”

  “How do I make you feel?” He enfolded her in his arms again, savoring the lustrous glow of her eyes in the deepening purple of the evening. He kissed her.

  “Scared and …”

  “And?” he prompted when she did not continue.

  When she spoke, he could barely hear her words, warm against his wind-lashed skin. “Wonderful.”

  He took her face in his hands. Bending so he could meet her eyes, he tried to show her his own turbulent feelings. His words repeated what his eyes told her. “Scared. And wonderful. That’s no different from the conflict in me, sweetheart.” He placed his lips against her forehead, adding, “And I think it’s thrilling.”

  “Thrilling?” She pulled away to look at him from arm’s length, surprised. The confusion putting her center into spasms was not thrilling.

  “Undoubtedly,” he said, scooping her off her feet and up to rest against his chest. Although his body was weary from the long hours of work, all that was now forgotten. “I can imagine carrying you to some secluded, greenwood bower and loving you all through the night.”

  She laughed, her exhaustion lowering the last of her barriers. “That sounds lovely except for a few small details.”

  “Such as?” he asked in the same, light tone.

  “One, I doubt if something as civilized as a greenwood bower exists in the Yukon. Two, if we stayed out all night long, we’d probably freeze to death. Lastly, I doubt if I can stay awake through supper.”

  His husky tones caressed her ear. “I could try to keep you awake, Sam.”

  “I’m sure.” She yawned broadly and laughed. “But I think even you’d lose tonight, Joel.”

  “Another night?”

  She caught her breath at his intense tone. The simple question forced her to face what she had been trying to avoid. She wanted Joel to hold her and teach her, while they shared their love. That was why she thought of such a lovely moment so often. Unsure of anything but the truth of her answer, she whispered, “Yes.”

  “Soon?”

  “Yes.”

  When he placed her on her feet and held out his hand, she wondered when that bewitching moment would come. She walked with him to the cabin. The flickering light of candles did not extend very far into the darkness beyond their rustic cabin, built on a mound above the fierce force of the river.

  “Here we are, Sam,” he murmured. “Let me tend to the horse. Then I will help you cook us supper.”

  “Supper? You don’t need to help.”

  “But I want to.” Smiling into her tired eyes, he was pleased to see the longing that no toil could vanquish. “Everything I do with you is fun, honey. Besides, I want you to stay healthy. Just in case.” With an irreverent wink, he left her alone with her dreams.

  She reached for the door latch and wondered if those dreams would ever become reality. Even as she greeted Kevin and asked how he felt, she tried to think of a way she and Joel could have some time alone without revealing the truth.

  Pushing the thought from her mind, she sat on a bench and pulled off her wet boots and regaled Kevin with tales of her misadventures in the creek. Despite the cold and cramp of her body, she did not think she had ever been so happy. She hoped this joy would last forever.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Samantha came out of the cabin, Joel was setting a board on top of two carefully balanced logs and placing four dishes of liquid on it.

  He glanced up and smiled when he saw her shivering in the doorway. “Put on something warm, and I’ll show you something.”

  Grabbing her thickest cloak from the hook, she wrapped it around her shoulders and hurried out. The wind flipped the cape and her skirt ahead of it, revealing the red flannel encasing her legs. The temperature had turned sharply colder, and she delighted in the warmth of her unsightly flannel underwear.

  Joel’s eyes twinkled as he looked at her pretty, chafed face. He said nothing about her undergarments, not wanting to enrage her by stating that he had been correct.

  “I’m making a Klondike thermometer,” he explained.

  “We have a thermometer in the cabin. Why don’t you simply hang it out here? Then we won’t run the risk of spilling these each time we go in and out of the house.”

  He toyed with her hair until she grimaced and pulled up her hood. “You sweet innocent, the liquid in that first bowl is mercury, same as in the thermometer by the stove. We bought two, and then broke one to get this. When the real cold arrives in a week or two, this will freeze solid.”

  “Mercury will freeze?” she gasped.

  “Anything can up here, honey. Just remember that, if you get the urge to go for a walk in the snow. When the temperature reaches minus 38, the mercury will become solid. The next dish is whiskey from Dewey’s in Grand Forks. If that freezes, it shows the air is at minus 55.” He lifted the third dish. “Smell this.”

  Turning her face away, she choked on the strong fumes, gasping, “You could have warned me. That’s kerosene.”

  “Valuable liquid, too. Forty dollars a gallon.” He placed it back on the impromptu board and log table. “Pray that doesn’t solidify. If it does, it is getting damn cold, at around 65 degrees below zero.”

  “65 degrees below zero? Surely you’re joking!”
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  Joel smiled at her disbelief. “I wish I was. We had a week last year when the kerosene never thawed. This last is some of the Perry Davis’ Pain-Killer you bought at the store. We had none last year, so I don’t know if it even got to the minus 75 degrees needed to freeze it.” He chuckled. “Cheer up, Sam. Everything is fluid now.”

  “In your letters you told me it was cold, but I had no idea it would be like this.” Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at him suspiciously. She had learned not to trust that too charming grin. “You wouldn’t tease me, would you?”

  “I would. Unfortunately, though, this is the truth.” Taking her hand, he drew her toward the stable. “Come with me. I have to feed the horse. I’ll be glad when Kevin is feeling better and can help again.”

  His words reminded her of why she had been looking for him. “Joel, I think he should see a doctor. He doesn’t seem to be bouncing back from whatever this was. That cough is too deep in his chest. It should have disappeared by now.”

  He opened the door of the small building and ushered her inside. It was warm with the smell of hay and animal waste. The horse neighed a greeting at them as Joel slapped its rump. He opened a bag of valuable grain and poured a ladleful into a trough before the animal.

  “Have you spoken to Kevin about this?” he asked. “I suggested it once, and he cut me off before I could finish my subtle hint.”

  Samantha laughed. The idea of Joel being subtle about anything amused her. His forthrightness attracted her, and enraged her, too. She leaned against the prickly pile of hay and crossed her arms over her chest, to hold in any bit of body heat.

  “I think we should confront him together,” she said, suddenly serious. When she met his gaze, she knew he agreed. She was discovering more and more that they did not need to talk to share what was in their minds. It seemed as if their love melded their hearts together, and intertwined their souls.

  “Now?”

  She nodded. “The weather is clear.” Smiling grimly, she added, “And everything’s still liquid.”