Harper's Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  "God, just look at what they've done to this place," Dylan said, more to himself than to her. He pointed at the surrounding hills, logged nearly bare. What didn't go for firewood, and to build sluice boxes and pilings for mining operations, was used in the explosion of new construction aided by the twenty hours of daylight. Skeletons of half-raised buildings added to the wildly contrasted landscape, and sawmills were kept running around the clock. In place of the trees were white orchards of ragged tents that housed ragged men, crowding the hilltops and spilling down their sides. "When I came up here two years ago, it was nothing more than some tents and a moose pasture. A few hundred people lived here. It was hardly a paradise to begin with—it's pretty swampy and the mosquitoes are so thick they'll eat a man alive. But at least at night you could hear the wolves howling in the hills, or maybe a moose calling for his mate. Now a man can barely hear himself think."

  "You don't believe the gold rush is a good thing?" she asked, stepping around a deep puddle.

  He shrugged. "I'm not saying it is or isn't—I didn't come to Dawson for that. I just drifted up here with no particular plan. It was a good place for a man who had nowhere to—" He broke off for a moment. "But then Carmack found that gold on Rabbit Creek, and the rush was on. Now this town only has a little peace and quiet on Sundays." By order of the North West Mounted Police, all business and work in Dawson ceased every Saturday night from midnight till two A.M. on Monday morning. So unforgiving was the blue law that anyone caught working, even fishing for his dinner or chopping wood for his own fire, was sentenced to the woodpile, where he could chop all he liked.

  "I've never seen anything like Dawson," she said, staring in amazement as four men hoisted a crystal chandelier from a wagon bed.

  "Do you like it?" he asked, watching her with those probing green eyes.

  "No. I'll be happy to go back to Portland. It wasn't my idea to come up here to begin with."

  "I didn't suppose it was. There are women here who wanted to dig for gold beside their husbands, or to even work claims of their own." He studied her with a questioning expression that was almost gentle. "But they came mostly because they wanted to, not because someone dragged them up here."

  She lowered her eyes to the top of the baby's head, but not before she noticed how striking he looked with the dear blue Yukon sky behind him. The sun highlighted the blond streaks in his hair that blew back from his shoulders in the light wind. He seemed completely unaware of his elemental handsomeness, but Melissa was not. She didn't want to notice his looks. She had known women on her street who waved farewell to their good judgment and had believed some man with a pretty face or smooth words, all to no good end. At least she could say that desperation had driven her to marry Coy, not the loss of her sense.

  They reached Harper's Trading, and she was glad. Small though Jenny was, she was getting heavy in her already aching arms. Added to that, Melissa's breasts were growing firm with milk. Dylan followed her upstairs with the things she had bought, but she was grateful when he turned to go back to work. He treated her well enough, but she felt that odd quickening in her chest when he looked at her.

  "Come by the store later and choose whatever provisions you need," he said, standing by the door. "I'd like to see what you can do with more than bacon and biscuits."

  Chapter Four

  When Dylan walked into the store, he saw Rafe tipped back in the rocking chair beside the cold stove, flipping cards into a chamber pot that he'd taken from a shelf. His feet were propped up on a keg, and a whiskey bottle and a half-empty glass stood on the plank flooring next to him.

  "I wondered where you got off to. I've been languishing here for the better part of an hour. Between card games, drinking in the saloon without intelligent conversation sometimes loses its allure." He grinned at Dylan and gestured at the strongbox. "I did manage to sell a pair of rubber boots and some matches to one of your adventurous customers in your absence. I put the dust in your box."

  Dylan laughed, highly amused at the idea of Rafe Dubois, a high-born Southern gentleman with silk handkerchiefs and French-laundered shirts, working behind his counter. "Maybe you should think about a job in trade. I could use the help here. You already have a key to the place."

  "That is an offer that I'll believe I'll pass on, thank you. I did you the favor since you'd wandered away from your business."

  Dylan shrugged and hung his hat on a peg near the now cold stove. "I took Melissa down to the waterfront to, you know, buy her a few things." He mumbled the last part of the sentence, but Rafe heard him perfectly well.

  The other man recrossed his ankles and pitched another card at the chamber pot. So far he'd missed only twice. "A shopping expedition? What a picture of domestic delight."

  Dylan knew Rafe was teasing him, but he felt defensive. "Hell, Logan abandoned her here with just the clothes on her back. The baby didn't even have a diaper."

  A card pinged off the inside rim of the enamal pot. "So I gathered," Rafe said, keeping his eyes on his game. "And how are Melissa and her child faring?"

  "All right, I guess." Dylan hoisted a crate of beans to the counter and began putting the cans on the shelf.

  "And you? How are you doing with your new arrangements?"

  "This is a great time to ask, considering that you got me into this."

  "I'm guessing there's a fine woman hiding beneath Melissa's timid exterior. You make a nice-looking little family."

  The word family made Dylan wince. "The hell we do. That's not why I agreed to this. Logan would have sold her to the highest bidder. I couldn't let that happen." He had the feeling that Rafe was enjoying this enormously.

  "You'll thank me later."

  "For what?"

  Rafe looked up. "For giving you something more to care about than proving a perfidious woman wrong."

  As if summoned by his comment, Elizabeth's face rose in Dylan's memory. Raven-haired. Beautiful. Treacherous. He swung around, frowning. "Is that what you think I—" he began.

  Just then, though, a couple of stampeders came in for supplies, and his attention was forced away from the subject of fickle women.

  The two miners both smelled like cow flops on a riverbank at low tide—not a lot of washing went on at the claims. In fact, not a lot of anything but digging and sluicing went on. Frantic to make good on the claims they'd filed, the miners often worked twenty hours a day, especially during these periods of almost total daylight. Thinking about that reminded Dylan why he'd chosen to open this store.

  "How's it going out there?" he asked them, not really wanting an answer.

  One of the miners, a rough cob with a grizzled beard and a battered hat, replied, "Me and my pard over there, we've been digging night and day for a little color." He indicated the other man, a mild, simple-looking sort who stared at the bushel basket of oranges serving as a doorstop. The first man eyed Rafe suspiciously, who appeared not to notice anything beyond his cards. But Dylan knew he was listening avidly. These two were probably prime examples of what Rafe called man's greatest folly. Then the miner leaned closer to Dylan and whispered confidentially, "I just know I'm gonna strike it rich, but I have to keep an eye on old Jim. He tries to pretend that he's simple, and he does a good job of it. But given half a chance, I know he'd stick a knife in my gullet while I'm asleep and steal my poke." He squinted one eye venomously.

  "Is that a fact?" Dylan backed away from the stench of his foul breath and unwashed body. He sensed Rafe's suppressed laughter as he continued to pitch cards at the chamber pot.

  The gold rush had brought all kinds of people to the Yukon, and funny things happened to some men's minds in the face of such great potential wealth. He knew of one stampeder who had come up in '97 and mined thirty thousand dollars. But the money had given him no pleasure. Anxiety about being robbed had driven him to the edge of reason, until he was overcome by worry and shot himself. Another one, rotting with scurvy and almost lame, grew so obsessed with finding gold that he wouldn't take the time
to betreated. Gold wouldn't buy much in the grave, Dylan thought.

  A sizable pile of beans, coffee, nails, tobacco, and other supplies was assembled on the counter, and the men handed over their pokes to Dylan to weigh the payment.

  Gold dust was the common legal tender in Dawson, and gold scales were as much a part of everyone's possessions as shovels and whiskey. Except for those rare occasions when he received coins or paper money, all of Dylan's transactions involved weighing raw gold. As he sprinkled dust onto the one pan, the rough cob suddenly grabbed his wrist.

  "I seen what you're up to," the miner erupted angrily, revealing blackened teeth. He reached for a knife from his belt. "I never seen such a place—there ain't an honest man up here. Well, nobody's going to cheat me, by God! I wish to hell the Mounties would let a man carry a gun. I'd—"

  Stunned, Dylan jerked his hand away and grabbed the meat cleaver beneath the counter. The miner yelped. "You'd be on the floor now, bleeding your guts out because I would have shot you. I don't cheat anyone," he said in a low, clear voice. He swung the cleaver down, narrowly and purposely missing the man's hand. It caught the corner of his grimy shirt cuff beneath its blade and drove it deep into the planks, trapping his arm. From the corner of his eye, Dylan saw Rafe rise from his chair and edge closer.

  The miner's eyes looked as big as flapjacks, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish's. But no sound came out. His dim-witted sidekick, Jim, merely looked puzzled.

  "You should be glad the MP don't allow firearms in Dawson, mister," Dylan said in the same low voice. "Where I come from, you falsely accuse a man of cheating and you find yourself in a world of hurt. But this is your lucky day, and I'm going to let you keep your hand. Now you take Jim and get out of here. And don't come back."

  Dylan left the cleaver in the counter, and the miner yanked and yanked on his shirtsleeve, like an animal with its leg caught in a trap, until the fabric finally gave way.

  "You're a crazy son of a bitch!" the man panted. He scrambled out of the store, pushing Jim ahead of him, and Dylan watched them go.

  It was then that he saw Melissa standing there in a new dress, her eyes filled with fear.

  *~*~*

  Melissa gaped at Dylan, her heart pounding against her ribs like a hammer on a rock. She had walked in just in time to see Dylan produce the legendary meat cleaver and sink it into the miner's arm, pinning it to the counter. At least from where she stood, it had looked like the blade had impaled flesh.

  Dylan turned his gaze on her, and the frightening blank fury on his face nearly froze the blood in her veins. His eyes seemed as hard as green bottle glass, and his jaw was so tight, she could see the muscles working in his cheek. This was the man she'd heard about, the man with an icy rage that most knew better than to cross. Dear God, she had to live with him, sleep with him in the same bed.

  Dylan stepped out from behind the counter. "What are you doing here, Melissa?" His fists were clenched.

  He seemed enormous, as big as a mountain, and tension radiated from him in waves. She could hear the anger in his voice, and her eyes fell to the tendon and muscle in his forearms.

  She cast a panicky look at Rafe Dubois, but he merely nodded and smiled. "Mrs. Harper," he acknowledged pleasantly, "you look very nice this afternoon." Then he sat down in a chair and began fiddling with a deck of cards. She took a step backward and laced her fingers together to make one tight fist over her heart.

  "Thank you. I-I just came for some flour and the other things . . . like-like we talked about earlier." She heard the quiver in her own voice and hated it. "But I can come back—this is a bad time."

  Dylan came closer and reached for her, closing his big, warm hand around her upper arm. His long fingers encircled it easily. She uttered a little squeak and tried to pull away, but his grip was sure.

  "No, it's not a bad time." He exhaled, as if discharging a bit of the rage that was percolating inside. "Now and then I get a surly customer, or one who's not quite right in the head."

  And it was sane to nearly chop off a man's hand? she wondered foolishly, feeling a swell of hysterical laughter fill her chest. Realizing that he wasn't going to let her leave, she said, "I just need one or two things to cook dinner." Maybe she could make a quick escape, she thought, and leave him down here with his temper.

  He released her arm with seeming reluctance, and she immediately stepped back. "All right, take whatever you want to make a good meal. You might as well look through this stuff, too, before I put it back on the shelves." He gestured at the supplies still heaped on the counter. "If you need help taking anything upstairs, I'll carry it for—"

  "Oh, no, I don't want to trouble you," she said quickly, avoiding his intense gaze. "If you'll just give me a gunnysack, I can manage." She glanced up, and he watched her for a moment longer. Then he nodded and walked away.

  Melissa had trouble keeping her mind on her task; she picked up and put down the same tin of baking soda three times before she realized what she'd done. In the end, she'd collected a few potatoes, coffee, sugar, a piece of ham, some dried apples, and a couple of other staples. It hadn't seemed like much. When she filled the burlap sack Dylan gave her, it turned out to be heavier than she'd expected. She gripped it tightly, but when she dragged it from the counter to lift it, the sack dropped to the rough floor with a thud, bending her with it.

  "Melissa, let me bring this upstairs for you," Dylan said. His frown dipped to the bridge of his nose, giving her no confidence.

  Worried that he would simply grab it away from her and take it himself, from her bowed position she protested, "No, please don't bother. I just lost my grip on it." With supreme effort she lifted the sack and stood upright, then dragged it toward the door. Her arms and shoulders, already stiff from lifting the rice last night, flared with pain, but she refused to let him see that.

  "I'll have dinner ready in an hour or so," she panted and hauled her groceries through the open door, glad to have made her escape.

  Dylan stared at the outside wall as he listened to the sound of her slow steps going up the stairs on the side of the building. It sounded as if she were dragging the weight of the world with her.

  From his post by the chamber pot, Rafe Dubois looked first at the now empty doorway, and then at Dylan. "Hell, that girl is scared to death of you. She probably fears you more than she does the devil himself," he remarked with casual surprise.

  Dylan shrugged, wishing Rafe hadn't noticed. "She's got a safe place to live here and more food than she's probably seen in three months. I can't help it if I scare her—that's her problem."

  But he knew that was a lie, and Rafe's quirked eyebrow told him that he knew it, too.

  *~*~*

  Upstairs, Melissa's cooking efforts were hampered by Jenny. She had fed and changed the baby, but for some reason her usually quiet and happy child would not settle down. In fact, she had started getting fussy as soon as Melissa had fed her. It was as if her own nervousness had telegraphed to Jenny. She put the baby in her makeshift bed, but after a few minutes she started crying, and Melissa picked her up and walked with her, anxious to quiet her. She checked the little girl's diaper for open safety pins and felt her for fever. She found nothing. But when she tried to lay Jenny in her crate again, the baby recommenced her howling, forcing Melissa to pace the room with her.

  "Hush, now, button, hush," she urged feverishly. "We have to be quiet, just like before when your father was with us, remember? He's gone, but we still have to be quiet."

  Between moments of walking with the baby, Melissa managed to put together a meal of boiled ham, mashed potatoes, and apple pie. There was no butter, and only canned milk for the potatoes, but then she hadn't tasted fresh milk since she passed through Seattle, months earlier. Butter was something she had not often seen in her life.

  She caught herself listening for the slam of the door downstairs in the store, for Dylan's footfalls on the stairs. The sight of him with the meat cleaver in his fist wouldn't leave her min
d. How far would that rage go?

  The most frightening part of his anger had been the deadly cold of it. Coy would rant and swear and carry on, yelling and throwing things. A lot of noise had accompanied his fits of anger. Coy's outbursts had been no less frightening, but they hadn't sneaked up on her. Dylan's fury made her think of a cool and deadly snake, sliding up from nowhere.

  Dylan was so different in every way from Coy, or her father and brothers. At least he seemed so in her few dealings with him.

  But a temper was a temper, and she imagined that one slap or punch hurt just as much as another.

  Her heart, though . . . she had learned to keep it safely out of reach. The bruises healed, but a broken heart would not fare as well.

  *~*~*

  After Rafe left Harper's to search out a card game at the saloon, Dylan decided to lock up for an hour or so and go eat dinner. He thought he detected the aroma of ham and hot apple pie drifting down through the ceiling. It smelled better than any saloon food he'd tasted in Dawson, maybe better than anything he'd eaten since he left The Dalles, his hometown in Oregon.

  He stood outside on the duckboard and flipped the hasp over the door, then secured it with a padlock. Despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold dust deposited here in Dawson, he knew a lot of business owners didn't bother to lock their doors. The Mounties's presence was so respected, and the threat of banishment from Dawson so real, genuine crime was a rarity here. No one wanted to be forced to leave town and forfeit his one big chance to strike it rich. Men were arrested for using obscene language, or cheating at cards, or for selling whiskey to saloon girls. Theft, robbery, and assault were surprisingly rare; towns with far fewer people living under calmer circumstances experienced much worse. But Dylan had been burned by tempting fate, and he kept his place locked.

  Dawson's low instance of crime wasn't the chief subject on his mind, though. His thoughts kept drifting back to Melissa. It wasn't difficult for him to picture her standing at the stove in that new dress he'd seen her wearing when she came into the store. It had looked nice on her, with its narrow blue-and-white stripe, and high white collar that made her neck look like a swan's.