ALASKAN BRIDES 01: Yukon Wedding

by Allie Pleiter

  Mack stood for a long moment, staring at the forgotten cup and feeling like God’s greatest fool for trying to patch up something as large as the death of a man, the loss of a husband, with a chunk of gold. A golden compass. Gold, you idiot, the very thing that led Jed to his death. What were you thinking?

  As he picked up the teacup and rinsed it carefully, Mack heard the dagger-sharp, chest-splitting sound of his wife trying to cry quietly. He could kid himself only for a second that it was to keep Georgie from waking. He knew that truly, it was to keep him from hearing what a great, heartless fool he’d been.

  Lana held one of her beloved handkerchiefs tight against her mouth and rocked back and forth on the little chest at the foot of her bed. The kind cruelty of Mack’s gift seem to stab straight into the heart of her grief. She’d loved Jed, faults and all. That love had been all but crushed, but this gift made her realize there was still some part of her who loved that broken man. Some remnant of her heart that would always love the father of her child, the adventurer, the dreamer.

  Still, she’d been broken by his love, damaged by his reckless nature, just as Georgie had damaged the brooch. Not malicious, but lethal just the same. To trade one pin for the other seemed somehow to kill the first dream of that dashing adventurous life and surrender it to the harsh realities of her life now. Not that she hadn’t realized that once she said yes to Mack’s proposal, but it seemed so much more real, now that she’d retrieved the bent pin from its place in the back of her jewelry chest and sat with the two brooches in front of her.

  How was it that Jed’s brooch had become such a talisman to her, so potent a symbol of the life she was supposed to have had? The fact that Mack attempted to replace it was a tender cruelty. He must have known the deep meaning of the gift—he couldn’t have picked such a gift without understanding what he’d done. He was strong and could face such harsh truths head-on. To Lana, it seemed to lay her grief and dependency open, exposing her wounds.

  If he’d knowingly lanced the wound wide open, intending to heal, did he know how very deep a cut he’d made?

  Light was already coming into the room when Lana closed her bedroom door softly and padded out into the main room. She had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, wore a simple blouse and skirt and her hair wasn’t done up as usual, but rather tied back in a plain loose braid. Yet still, she had a rare grace about her. Mack had been up for hours, already slumped in the chair by the dying fire, trying to make sense of the rattling in his brain. And failing. Failing to make sense of anything.

  She looked like she’d slept about as much as he did—which was not at all. If marrying Lana was the right thing to do, why was this so hard? Why did trying to make it better seem to only result in more pain for everyone? He had always been inept at romantic gestures, and maybe that was the problem. This wasn’t a romance. It couldn’t be, not with all the water under the bridge between them. Still, he’d hoped the pin would symbolize a fresh start of sorts, but it was clear it hadn’t done anything of the sort. Maybe a fresh start wasn’t possible just now. “Good morning,” he said softly, as she padded toward the kitchen, realizing she hadn’t even seen him sitting in the shadows.

  She stilled and looked up like a startled fawn, her face pale and her lips drawn tight. It only took a second—maybe not even that—but he watched her apply another, more public face and pull her shoulders upright. “I’ll get breakfast started. Georgie will be up soon.” She looked upward, as if plucking a safe topic of conversation out of the air, and asked, “Do I need to have breakfast ready early tomorrow? I don’t know what time you need to be at church. Do you get there long before we do?” Mack was filling the pulpit as best he could, but even his basic skills and strong desire to shepherd this fledgling flock wouldn’t suffice much longer. Especially at the rate Treasure Creek was growing. Men’s spirits broke as fast as their bones up on the Chilkoot, and the town’s spiritual life was too important not to be one man’s sole priority.

  She rummaged through the kitchen with her back to him. It was clear she didn’t want to discuss last night. He thought they should, but as he didn’t yet have the slightest notion what to do about any of it, maybe some time to sort things out wasn’t a bad plan. “An hour before,” he said, rising and pulling his suspenders back into place. One was forever falling down because it was in bad repair.

  “If you give those to me, I’ll get them fixed for you,” she said, gesturing toward the suspenders with the spatula she held. “We should have gotten you a new pair in Skaguay. Seems silly to have done all that shopping for only Georgie and me.” The mention of Skaguay and shopping, however, seem to pull the conversation toward the gift, and neither of them wanted that. She sliced off a bit of bacon and with a slight shake of her head, switched topics again. “I’ve written down what folks need to know about the session of school. I can give it to you after breakfast. That way you’ll have plenty of time to think about how you’ll announce it.”

  “I’ll announce it,” he agreed. He’d come to see that the trial school session was in fact a very good idea. Worth trying, even if it did make him uncomfortable about how Lana’s involvement and the logistics would work out. “I’ll be out most of the morning.” It was odd, having to let someone else know his plans for the day. He still couldn’t decide if he liked it—part of him enjoyed the company, part of him wasn’t eager to have to share things, even small things, all the time.

  Breakfast was a tense affair, made easier by Georgie’s babbling and antics. Mack found himself saying a prayer of thanks for the child’s innocence as he walked to the shack that was still serving as the first general store. The trouble with moving the General Store to its new, expanded location was that he could never afford the luxury of closing during the move. People needed everything, all the time, and Mack’s was the only decent place to get provisions.

  “Everything okay?” Mack called to Danny Whitehorse, the young Tlingit man who served as store clerk, who was already putting out new stock for the day on makeshift shelves and boxes. Mack ducked behind the shack’s open front to the small stockroom in the back. He took a moment to scan the ledgers, checked a few crates of incoming supplies and then filled a small box with a pen, writing paper and a collection of other supplies. Mack usually spent Saturday mornings at home preparing his sermon for the following day, but he needed more privacy than home allowed this morning. As such, the church would become his “study” for the day. The sermon wouldn’t take long—it was already well settled in his mind, thanks to the sleepless night. It was his other project that demanded peace and quiet.

  Chapter Nine

  Lana was grateful for the quiet Saturday morning in the cabin. She gave Georgie a bath, took some meat out of the icebox in the cabin floor for dinner—the Alaskan ground, which never really thawed, made keeping food amazingly easy and convenient up here—and set about scrubbing a nasty stain on the cabin floor she’d noticed earlier. It looked like the greasy black spot had been there for years instead of the few months she knew Mack’s cabin had stood. “That’s what happens when you let things go,” she told Georgie as she scraped at the thing with a knife. “Always solve a problem before it becomes a bigger one, Georgie. That’s what your grandfather used to say.”

  Georgie replied by using one of his new blocks to scrape the spot of floor he was sitting on, mimicking her. When she grunted, he did. The imitation made her laugh in spite of her frail mood.

  She’d just removed the last of the spot when Mack returned from his morning errands, or wherever it was that he went. She had no right to be bothered by the fact that he hadn’t given her details, only an “I’ll be gone,” but Jed had always spent hours and hours outlining his plans and schemes to her. Lana found it sadly ironic that she knew Jed’s schedule every day, but never knew how badly he’d managed their affairs. Sitting up from her spot hunched over the stain, she blew a lock of hair from her forehead and asked, “Mack Tanner, whatever hit this floor?”

  “Tar,” he
said calmly. “Never did come out.”

  “Till now. Did you scrub this? Ever?”

  His silence convicted him of the crime. “Who knows what else I’ll find if I look under the rugs in this place?”

  He seemed to wince at the remark, as if it had been the worst thing to say. Come to think of it, he had the look of a man with a lot to say. A furrowed, reluctant brow. He was going to make them talk about the brooches, she knew it. She wasn’t ready for that. Things were still jumbled in her chest and she didn’t want him to see her cry.

  “I don’t rightly know how to do this, but God’s been after me all morning.” He pulled out a chair at their table for her. “Can we talk?”

  Lana smoothed her skirt and sat down. Mack folded his hands in the manner of a man about to have a serious conversation. Lana swallowed and tucked her hands onto her lap.

  “I’m a man of privacy, Lana. Too many folks up here would snap up any bit of information they thought was useful, and use it no matter who it harmed. And you know as well as I that most people up here can’t be trusted. Not all, but most.”

  “I am not ‘most folks.’”

  He paused before answering. “I know that. It’s just…well, much as I think the less you know the better, God won’t seem to let me alone about the fact that you do deserve to know some things. I realize Jed’s made that a bit of a sore spot for you, having kept things from you.”

  It was a sore spot, all right. “Yes. I don’t deserve to be kept in the dark, Mack. Least of all by you.”

  “I suppose that’s true. But, I’m a man used to keeping things to myself.”

  Lana could almost manage a smile. Keeping things to himself was an understatement. Mack Turner was the most private man she had ever known. The man was like Atlas, trying to hoist the world on his solitary shoulders. He’d aged five years in the last two months, from the look of him. Hadn’t they both? “I suppose life’s handed you good reasons not to trust,” she admitted, surprising even herself with the sudden bit of sympathy.

  “That’s not an excuse for not trusting…my wife,” he said it as if God had spent the morning pounding it into his head with a thunderbolt. A reluctant realization. She knew a thing or two about those. “So, like I told you, I’ve got a plan about what to do with anyone who decides to follow in Jameson’s and Nicky Peacock’s footsteps.”

  Lana brought her hands up to the table. “And you’ve decided to tell me about it?”

  “I figure it’s best you know. Given what’s happened and all.”

  That was a huge admission for him, and she knew it. She realized right then how much effort this marriage required of him. Under normal circumstances, love would have compelled a loner like Mack Tanner to share with someone else, to be a true life partner. In their situation, Mack was forced to do it without the pull of love. She’d been wrong thinking she’d be the one to have to do all the adapting in this marriage. He was trying to be a true husband to her. The fact that it took such an effort for him tugged at a corner of her heart far more than she wanted to admit. “Thank you,” Lana said, hoping the words did her thoughts justice.

  That seemed to give him the toehold he needed to press on. He pulled a piece of folded paper from a pocket and placed it on the table. “The way I see it, folks will keep looking for my gold…your gold…our gold, whether we want them to or not.”

  She laughed at the irony of that. The truth was, she’d brought no gold to this marriage, save what was left in her jewelry box. Folks thought otherwise of course, assuming they’d now combined their considerable wealth. He was right about one thing, though: their married financial state posed as many problems as it solved.

  “Gold is why they’re up here. And if they can’t find their own, they’re quick to go looking for mine. Or anyone else’s for that matter. And the bankers? They can’t be trusted at all—you’ve already seen that. I refuse to put my gold in the bank, which means how I protect my gold is on my own shoulders.”

  “How we protect the gold is on our shoulders.”

  He nodded almost imperceptibly. “I figure the best way to keep them from hunting for mine is to give them another target. A distraction. Other gold to find.”

  “Whose?”

  Mack put his hand into his coat pocket and brought out six sizable gold nuggets. Gold was mostly found in dust from around these parts, and nuggets were prized property. These were large, too. Lana guessed most of the men up on the pass would see the gold in front of her as a fortune worth hunting down.

  “No one really cares whose gold this is,” he said. “That’s the thing of it. I’ll hide this somewhere just outside of Treasure Creek, drop a few carefully crafted clues about a new mystery treasure into the rumor mill, and suddenly everyone’s looking for this instead of bothering you. There’s enough here to throw even Jameson off your trail.”

  There was. A man could live well for a year on what Mack laid in front of her. “A decoy treasure.” She couldn’t help but ask the question. “Can you spare this?”

  His face grew serious before he answered. “I could spare three times this, easily.” So he was as wealthy as everyone suspected. He’d been a wealthy man even before striking the gold he found with Jed. And unlike Jed, he’d kept most of their claim rather than lavishly spending it. Lana guessed Mack had never told anyone the extent of his fortune. There were rumors everywhere about how well-off Mack was, but even Jed had never offered specifics. It struck her that this was as close to an admission of his wealth as Mack ever gave anyone. The realization must have showed on her face, for Mack added in earnest, “You and Georgie will never want for anything, Lana, ever again. I promise you that. And if it took ten times this to buy the safety of my family, I’d do it.”

  There it was again, that declaration of protection that seemed to cut straight to the center of her heart. It wasn’t a flashy, dashing affection—the kind Jed had offered—but it hinted at something deep and trustworthy. How long had it been since she felt she could rely on another human being? Felt taken care of? She stuffed the ambush of emotion back down into the dark corner of her chest where she kept her grief, and resumed the conversation.

  “How will you do this?”

  “There’s a spot back by the waterfall where the Indians used to hide food. A deep hole shaped like a diamond. Hard to see in winter, but visible now, if you know where to look.”

  “Sounds like something out of a storybook.”

  “Exactly. Just hard enough to present a challenge—this can’t look too easy—but not so hidden that folks can’t figure it out. I figure it’ll take them all summer. Buy me some time to get a little more authority in place around here—morally and legally. This town needs a preacher and a sheriff as fast as God and I can manage it.”

  He still hadn’t explained the folded paper. “What’s that?”

  “That,” Mack said slowly, “is for you and Georgie. If anything should ever happen to me, I want you both provided for.” He took in a deep breath, as if steeling himself to say the words. “It’s a map to where the rest is.”

  The rest. As in Mack’s true fortune. The weight of the information pressed onto her shoulders, heavy as a yoke. “I’ll hide the map somewhere on the property. I haven’t worked that bit out yet.”

  Some part of her knew that wasn’t the whole truth. He had worked it out—Mack never did anything without having it completely worked out in advance—he just couldn’t bring himself to tell her everything. Yet. But he had told her some—it would be unfair to discount that. After all she’d heard today, could she really fault him for not shedding years of mistrust all at once? Mack didn’t trust her fully, and that hurt, but Mack trusted no one fully. And the few he had trusted—his brothers, Jed and goodness knows who else—were dead from their foolishness. No, the world had schooled Mack Tanner well in the value of secrecy, and new skills took time to learn. He was trying—hard—and the least she could do was keep an open mind and be patient. They were both learning how to do this, after a
ll.

  “You’ll work out the best place for it,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s a very clever plan.”

  Mack took the map, still folded, and slipped it inside his shirt. “You’ll need more wood tonight. It’s looking cold. I’ll go fetch some from the pile.”

  Lana realized, after he left, that they’d never once discussed the brooch he’d given her.

  Three days later, Lana stood before her first Tuesday morning class and willed her knees not to fail. Mack’s Sunday announcement about the “trial” school classes had been impressive. Despite the resistance he held for her role as teacher, Mack had made a strong plea for students. She valued that.

  She was staring at the result of that plea right now—ten eager faces, most of whom has been signed up within hours of Mack’s announcement in church. Treasure Creek families were indeed eager to get an education for their children. It would have been a lost opportunity to wait until fall. However ill equipped she felt at the present moment, starting now had been the right choice. Especially when one of her students’ parents was so grateful for the classes she’d offered to watch Georgie—something Lana had not yet figured out how to solve.

  Some students she had expected, others were surprises, but none more so than Leo Johnson, Caleb Johnson’s son. Leo sat nervously in the last church pew, looking like a giant compared to the collection of younger students. While most ranged in ages from eight to fourteen, Lana suspected Leo was closer to eighteen—old enough to be up on the trail with the other stampeders, if it weren’t for his slow nature. The Ladies’ Aid Society back in Seattle often raised charity funds for what were called “the feebleminded,” but the term didn’t fit Leo at all. He could think, reason and follow directions, but facts came together like molasses in his head. As if his thoughts were stuck in mud.