“Only seven miles today,” Jack said glumly, thinking of the four hundred and ninety-three remaining as he came to sit beside the fire. “I’d hoped to reach Sheep Camp today.”
“And I’d hoped to find gold in this river and save ourselves the journey.”
He stared at her, knowing that he could have made that camp if he’d had a male companion to help with the portages instead of doing the job of two men.
She set about soaking dried peaches as she mixed flour, salt and lard. When she rolled out the dough on a planed plank and set it on her cast-iron skillet he recognized what she was about. Sugar went into the rehydrated peaches, as well as cinnamon. The pie was covered with a second sheet and the dough trimmed and fluted. Finally she covered the skillet and buried it in a bed of coals. Jack’s mouth watered at the aroma. Soon there were thirty men gathered, looking longingly at the skillet.
“Would your wife sell a piece of that pie?” asked one.
Jack was about to correct the man’s assumption and send them off when Lily piped up.
“I’ll be auctioning each piece. There’s eight pieces total.” She eyed the gathering men. “Not enough for all, just like the gold in Dawson.”
The greenhorns began jostling to get a look as Lily scraped the coals off the lid of the Dutch oven and peeked beneath. She shook her head.
“Not yet.”
Jack realized that he would have none of the pie, and he was surprised at how much that disappointed him. He had prepared for hardship and deprivation. But his imagining had not included ignoring the scent of cinnamon and bubbling-hot peaches.
The first slice sold for $6 and the last for $14. Lily had made $76 on one large pie. As the auction winners returned their forks and plates, Jack began to resent that skillet, which he had to carry, but received no benefit from.
Their agreement included her feeding him, but he had not specified what the meal might be. He watched Lily soak a large dried salmon in a pot of water, then add oats and set the whole mess over the coals.
“Nala eats better than we do,” he grumbled
“And she works harder than either of us,” Lily countered, patting her dog. “Now stop sulking.”
Lily took the fist-sized scraps she had trimmed from the pie and pressed them into a rough circle then added a cup of peaches she had set aside. She folded the circle into a crescent and placed the covered skillet back on the coals to cook.
“How much will that go for?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Would you rather I sell your half, partner?”
He met her gaze and found her eyes twinkling. They shared a smile.
Lily shook her head in mock admonishment. “Men are all alike.”
“I just wanted a bite.”
She reached out and stroked his hand. “And you shall have it and half the money from the pie, or we can pool it for supplies.”
Before he could stop himself, he had grasped her fingers. She was not quick enough to escape him. The tingling awareness flared again. He leaned forward.
“They thought you were my wife,” he said, finding his voice low and gruff.
“Let them. It will keep them from all manner of foolishness on the trail.” She glanced at her hand, still captured by his, and then at her skillet. “The turnover will burn.”
Jack didn’t care. He wanted to pull her into his lap, bend her over his arm and kiss those red lips. He leaned forward.
“Jack. Let go.”
He did and she went about as if nothing had happened. But her cheeks flushed and her nostrils flared as they had when they had climbed that final slope. So, the brief encounter rattled her, as well. It was both disquieting and satisfying to know that he was not alone in his kindling desire.
She lifted the turnover and carefully flipped it, then replaced the lid and coal topping. A few minutes later Jack was juggling the hot, flaky pastry, trying not to let the thick, bubbly liquid escape to the ground.
He took a bite and burned his tongue. The icy water from the stream kept him from serious harm.
“Patience,” she cautioned, blowing on hers.
He stared at the sight of her, lips pursed as she exhaled and felt the desire rising in him like the boreal tide off the Taiya Inlet. And now, staring at her, patience was the very last thing on his mind.
Just watching her made his insides bubble in molten energy, like the filling he gripped in his two hands. The urge to kiss her was irresistible. Damn, he wanted her more than he wanted the pie.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
She laughed. “No, but I could be.”
He didn’t think it polite to disagree, but Lily was lovely as a cherry blossom, pink and fresh and sweet. “What do you mean—could be?”
“In Dawson, where the women are scarce, I figure, the fewer there are, the better I’ll look.”
Her giggle captivated him. He stared at her, really looking, and he knew she would be beautiful anywhere in the world, but somehow she looked most alluring by firelight under a starry sky. This wilderness suited Lily, her mirth making her cheeks rosy and her eyes sparkle.
Lily finished her half of the turnover and scoured her skillet with sand, then seasoned it with grease before packing it away.
He watched the easy grace of her movements and listened to her soft humming. Somehow Lily made him feel at peace. He wondered again about her and realized he knew next to nothing.
“Did you leave anyone back there, Lily?”
She turned and peered at him.
“Family you mean? Sure, plenty. I’ve got three sisters. And four brothers. I’m the oldest.” Lily lifted her hand to start counting her siblings from bottom to top. “Cory is next oldest and working on the docks, then Bridget, employed as a kitchen maid in a fine house on the hill. Tried to talk her into coming. She’s pretty and has a passable voice, but she has a sweetheart who shovels coal on a steamer in the bay and so she’d not have it. Mary is a fine seamstress. One day she’ll have a shop if I’ve anything to say about it. Grace is working in the same factory. She’s been at it since she was fourteen. Patrick and Joseph are a year apart, but you’d never know it. Linked at the elbow, those two, and hit hard times. They’re out of work and taking what comes. My sisters are looking after them and will see they don’t starve. Donald is the next. Bridget’s lost track of him. He was heading south for work but they haven’t a word.”
She barely paused to draw breath. Her crates repacked, Lily joined him at the fire.
“What about you, Jack?”
“A sister, Cassandra, and my mother. That’s all.”
“Your father?” she asked.
“Gone.” He stared at her wide blue eyes and felt a pang of guilt at the half-truth. “Yours?”
Lily looked away. “Oh, yes, he’s gone, too. I don’t remember him.” Her voice sounded funny, strained, tight. She stood and gave him her back. Something was definitely wrong.
“Lily?”
“Shall we put the bedrolls here or there?”
“Are you all right?”
When she turned back her face was composed and she had that businesslike manner about her. “Of course.”
But she wasn’t, he felt it.
He wanted to ask her again, but it was obvious that Lily was doing her best to put the matter aside. He let her, for now. After all, he had secrets of his own to protect.
He set out their bedrolls.
Jack lay down and waited for her to do the same as he considered bringing her next to him in the night. Lily squashed that plan by calling Nala to lie between them, forming a living wall. Jack smiled. The hound and he were already good friends and he did not fear losing an arm. He petted the dog to test his certainty. The dog closed her eyes to savor his touch. Lily frowned.
Jack grinned. “Nala seems to like it.”
Lily narrowed her eyes, but said nothing to this as she turned from him, lying on her side and giving him her back.
Chapter Six
The following day
they traveled the four gentle miles from Pleasant Camp to Sheep Camp, which they reached as the morning was only half spent. Jack had to give credit to Lily for she was a tireless worker. Despite her inexperience on the trail and inability to carry much weight, the woman had sand.
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 ha
d 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.
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