Gold Rush Groom

by Jenna Kernan

  His spirits flagged as they struggled up Long Hill, shuttling their belongings a few hundred feet and then returning for more cargo. This way, Nala could make the trips with them, taking some of the load from Jack. They had sent the cart back early, for the trail was too steep and rocky to use it. Until they reached Lake Bennett, Jack would have to carry and pull like a mule.

  To bolster his determination, he thought of his little sister, Cassie. When he made his fortune, he’d see she attended Wells or Vassar so that she had more than her good looks and a sizable dowry to recommend her as a wife—she’d have a fine education as well. His father had not thought it important that Cassie attend anything past finishing school, but Jack disagreed. Perhaps he would never finish his degree, but his sister would have a chance to finish hers.

  Jack lifted another load, biting down with grim determination, as if he could see her there at the university. Yes, he’d get her there if he was damned trying.

  Cassie’s care was the job his father should have shouldered. But he was gone and so it fell to him. Jack lifted another crate full of tools and trudged along. Raising a refined, well-educated young lady, took money, lots of it.

  Jack dropped the load beside the others. Lily had said she would carry only her gear, but she relented when she recognized he would not leave his “folderol” behind. She passed him with the empty sled, whizzing over the snow in the running tracks she had made, skirting around the line of lumbering men as she went.

  Yard by yard they crept along the ground, like ants carrying a caterpillar, until they breeched the final hill and saw the last piece of flat ground from here to Stone Crib. Lily waited at the crest of the rise, motionless in the twilight as she stared out. He could see nothing but the men before him until he was nearly even with her and then he understood what had stopped them.

  The little depression was filled to bursting with men and tents and gear. A center artery of traffic marched through the middle of the group. Beyond stood the Golden Stairs.

  “Is that black line the trail?” asked Lily, her voice low and reverent.

  “No, or not only the trail. Those are men, fixed in lockstep from bottom to top.”

  Her eyes widened at that.

  “It’s the Chilkoot Pass, the most devilish climb from here to hell and back. It rises a thousand feet in a half mile.”

  Lily continued to stare. “So that’s it. My friend, Diinaan, told me that if you move from the trail to rest, you’re hours getting back in line.”

  “Come on, let’s get down before it’s full dark.”

  The final three hundred yards took all Jack had. They set their canvas on the bare snow and Jack realized only belatedly that he had toted no firewood from Sheep Camp. He fell back into his blankets exhausted and began to doze.

  Lily prodded him awake.

  “What am I to cook on?”

  Jack did not open his eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

  She sniffed. “Perhaps not, but Nala is and the food is frozen.”

  Jack sat up. Nala had to eat. He looked about at the fires of other camps. Lily stared down at him with eyes flashing fury. He’d not seen this look before. Her tight expression radiated discontent and he found he didn’t like disappointing Lily.

  “Isn’t that just like a man to set off with no plan at all?”

  “I’ll get some,” he said, already on his feet but she marched over to the closest fire and set into conversation with the stampeders gathered there.

  After a few minutes she returned for her kettle and Nala’s food. Jack roused himself to set the camp properly and when he had finished organizing their gear, she returned with the kettle nearly full of oats, rice and two large strips of reinvigorated dried salmon.

  His mouth watered as she set the offering before Nala, who ate every single morsel and licked each stray oat from the kettle.

  “I agreed to make them cornmeal biscuits,” Lily informed him.

  “We don’t have cornmeal,” Jack pointed out.

  “They do. In return we’ll have two strips of bacon each along with three biscuits, plus use of their fire to make our own coffee.”

  The woman negotiated everything and always seemed to come out ahead. Jack joined the men to watch Lily melt snow in her skillet, to which she added bacon grease and cornmeal until she had a fine dough. The aroma of biscuits cooking with the bacon drew many longing looks from weary men. Jack thought some gathered just to look at Lily.

  “You’d make a fine cook in Dawson, ma’am,” said the rangy one, whose name Jack could not recall. It hardly seemed useful to remember names.

  “If the money’s right, but I’m thinking I’ll do better singing in the bars,” she said, giving them a smile that stunned them speechless.

  The man with the deeply lined face asked her for a sample. Lily grinned at her audience and began to sing as she tended the biscuits.

  The men shut their eyes to savor her sweet voice. Yes, Lily would do well, very well, if they survived the trip. Jack felt the weight of responsibility pressing on his weary shoulders.

  When she’d finished they shared what they knew of the trail. The man who they called Cincinnati leaned in, conspiratorially.

  “I got it from a grave digger from Baltimore that the Mounties are at the top of that.” Cincinnati motioned to the trail, shrouded in darkness but still looming before them all.

  “I should think that would keep order,” said the rangy one.

  “That ain’t all. He was turned back because he didn’t have the one ton of gear they’re requiring to pass.”

  “What?” Lily’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Why?”

  “And they’re checking food supplies. If you ain’t got a year’s worth of grub, back you go.”

  Jack and Lily exchanged a long look.

  “It’s to keep men from getting up in those mountains and starving to death, I’m sure,” said Jack. “It’s sensible.”

  “Well, we’ll not be turned back,” said Lily.

  Jack was growing to like that stubborn set of her chin and the fire in her eyes. The gal was full of piss and vinegar and he was starting to believe that having her as a partner might not be the worst he could do.

  “How you planning on getting that grub?” asked Cincinnati.

  “You said the grave digger turned back, didn’t you?” asked Lily.

  He nodded. “After his first trip up them Golden Stairs.”

  “Then others will, as well, and they won’t want to haul their gear all the way home, will they?”

  And damned if she wasn’t right. As he set about the labors of carrying his gear to the summit one painful load at a time, Lily inventoried what they had and assembled what they lacked, a collection that nearly mirrored the list the Mounties recommended, including 150 pounds of bacon, 75 pounds of raisins and 400 pounds of flour. Then she paid a Chilkat Indian hauler to carry everything to the top, where she waited, just past the checkpoint, guarding their belongings as Jack made trip after trip with his gear.

  It took Jack ten days to finish the last climb up the fifteen hundred steps cut into the ice and snow, wearily dragging himself along the guide rope with the rest of the stampeders. The line of men groaned and sighed, heaved and swore up the thirty-degree incline. Many turned back and each one that did gave Jack more determination to be among the ones to reach Dawson.

  “That’s the last of it,” he said, sinking beside Lily on her canvas tarp. “I’d have been here sooner if I had a partner who could carry.”

  “If you had a partner who could carry, he’d have been dragging his own gear up the pass, not yours. I saw my gear delivered and without you lifting a finger, plus the food stores those redcoats required.”

  Jack looked at her gear which had returned to its original size, meaning that she no longer carried the food. “Where is it?”

  “Jack, you can barely manage your working model and I don’t want to overload the sled. I sold most of the food.
”

  “Did it occur to you that you might need it at Lake Bennett?”

  “It did, but money is easier to carry.”

  “Supplies will be more dear.”

  “In as short supply as women, I wouldn’t wonder. Imagine all those clothes falling to ruin and all those hungry men, desperate for a hot meal and a bit of entertainment.”

  “You should have asked me.”

  She handed him a biscuit and coffee. “Yes, I should have.”

  Her contrition and the food melted his ill-humor.

  Lily narrowed her eyes on him. “Do you want your half of the money now or at Lake Bennett?”

  Jack disliked handling money. “You keep it for now.”

  She tilted her head. “You sure?”

  He nodded and Lily shrugged, setting about the process of making their supper. After a while she handed him a plate.

  Jack accepted it gratefully. He’d not had to cook a thing since he’d hit the beach. It made him feel guilty for his temper over the food supplies.

  “I’m sorry I was short with you, Lily. The money’s yours, not mine.”

  “Some of it maybe. But some I earned since we were together. That means you get a say in how we spend it.”

  He took a forkful of beans, chewed and swallowed, then nodded. He helped her clean the plates with snow and packed the kitchen box. She gave him a wary look at first, but allowed him to do as he liked. After supper they settled with their coffee by the fire, Lily with an arm around Nala and Jack on her other side. Lily no longer used her dog as a wall between them, allowing Jack closer at meals. He liked her company. She didn’t talk drivel, but kept them on practical matters. Every so often she spoke of her plans. He liked that best, for she looked off at the horizon when she spoke, her body finally still, her hands at rest and her face holding a look of such longing, it about did him in. He admired her dreams and her drive.

  They set the tent and Jack loaded his stove with wood to keep them warm at night. The next day they began the descent to Crater Lake. The trail was difficult but at least downhill. It was unfathomable that the distance between the Scales, below the Chilkoot Pass, and Crater Lake was less than five miles. They were well and truly into the mountains now. The wind bit deeper and the snow fell faster. They used Lily’s sled for all the gear, making short trips and shuttling forward, bit by bit. Jack worried every step that they would not reach Lake Bennett in time to make a proper shelter before the real cold hit. It was November already and still they had not reached that last great lake. The nights were twenty hours long now, so they traveled by moonlight and by the shimmering Northern Lights. When they stopped they huddled together, the three of them, dog, man and woman, in their blankets by the fire, and still he never felt warm.

  When the cold grew so deep that the coffee froze in his cup before he could drink it, Lily finally convinced him to cache some of his gear so they could move forward. And still it was January before they reached Bennett. This would be the launching point for the boats, because it was the first of the connected lakes that became the Yukon River.

  As they descended the final incline, the narrow lake seemed only a bare expanse among the trees, surrounded by an odd assortment of structures, hastily erected and shoddily made. Lily signed on to help a woman run her kitchen, which did a better business feeding men than any other in the vicinity. Instead of pay, she received food and shelter for them both. That freed Jack from having to build a cabin, so he had time to retrieve the remainder of his gear, using Nala and Lily’s sled. On each return trip he found more and more men building their boats on the shore so as to be ready for the break-up when they would sail to Dawson. When, at last he had all his belongings, he turned his attention to constructing their boat.

  Jack planned their conveyance carefully, since it had to carry more weight than most. It needed a reinforced hull, which would make it heavy and unwieldy. He took the problem to Lily. She did not understand construction but he trusted her opinion.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see past the gear piled in the middle.”

  “Make it longer, then the gear won’t go as high.”

  “I’ve made it the length of the pines here. It will be sturdier that way.”

  She nodded at the logic of that and then considered his drawing, pointing to a spot in the bow. “If I stood here, I could see for you.”

  “You’d spot for snags and rocks.” He nodded, liking the idea, for it kept him from having to construct a raised steering deck and extending and weakening the rudder. “Yes. That might work.”

  They shared a smile, which Lily ended when Jack tried to stroke her cheek.

  “Off to work with you. You can’t build a boat while standing in my kitchen.”

  He spent the next hour looking through his gear for his whipsaw and tools, finally returning to Lily.

  “I think they’ve been stolen.”

  “Don’t be silly, I’m a better watchdog than all that.” She paused, coffeepot in hand on her way past a long table of seated men. “I rented the saw to George Murphy and his brother, Tim. Larry Kristen has your hammer, but no nails. Those he has to buy elsewhere. Martin—”

  “You rented my tools?”

  “Well, you didn’t need them to haul freight. Now that you’re back, I’ll only rent them at night, or would you prefer to work nights? I can get more for them in the day.” Lily must have read the answer in his darkening expression for she lifted a hand. “Days then. The sun is only up for two hours a day.” Jack grumbled. “I’ll see you have them all tomorrow, first thing.”

  She headed toward the kitchen and he stormed behind her, frustration boiling over. Why must he stand in line to use his own tools?

  “You had no right to rent what is mine.”

  That stopped her in her tracks. She thumped down the heavy pot on the sideboard and pressed her fists deep into the folds of her skirt.

  “And whose dog and sled are you using?”

  Jack ground his teeth together at her point. The fact that her point made perfect sense only annoyed him further.

  “Lily, you said we’re partners and we share what’s ours.”

  She nodded, but her expression remained uncertain. “That’s so. You shared my sled. I shared your tools.”

  Jack scowled, finding no ready answer to this and wondering why her logic made him even madder than before.

  “We’ve a need for money to buy the fittings and hardware for the boat,” she said.

  That was also true, and he should have accepted her reasoning, but he found it did nothing to assuage his annoyance. It seemed he couldn’t be near her at all lately without picking a fight and most of those fights made no earthly sense afterward.

  And then it struck him. He wasn’t here about the tools or hardware. His heart was not pumping and his skin was not flushed out of ire. He came back again and again to fight, because this was as close as he could come to satisfying the emotions she stirred in him. He was here looking for a fight when what he really wanted, what he really needed was—Lily.

  He took her by the shoulders. Her mouth dropped open in surprise as she recognized what he was about to do an instant too late. This time he wouldn’t let her slip away. This time he’d have what he came for.

  Jack drew her in, slanting his mouth across hers, taking possession of her. She stiffened at the contact and then threw her arms about his neck, pressing her body tight to his.

  Finally, Lily was in his arms.

  Chapter Seven

  Her fingers tugged in Jack’s hair, demanding more as he met her soft lips. The desire he had smothered each day and every night now roared within him. He pressed down hard, feeling the heavenly softness of her lips crushed against his. He opened his mouth, silently demanding she do the same. Her lips parted and he thrust inside, savoring her wanton little moan and the slick, silken texture of her mouth. Her tongue danced with his as he cradled her against his body, pressing her back. At l
ast, he supported her weight and still she clung to him with all the fierceness of a tigress. He’d known she would be just this way and the proof fired his blood and aroused his fantasies. Lily’s surrender held the sweetness of honey and the heat of a branding iron. No matter how closely he held her it was not enough.

  Somehow, he had surmounted her barricades and he basked in the delight of her soft body, full breasts and thrilling little cries of excitement. He laid her across his arm, wishing he were alone so he could take off her top and cup her lovely full breasts in his hands. How many times had he imagined holding her like this— And here was a battle he could win, a battle that made sense, perfect sense.