She turned back to camp. She couldn’t see any more of this. She lost what remained in her stomach beside a large tent. She looked up only to see men hauling avalanche victims inside that very tent.
Hurrying away, she sought refuge in her mind as she repeated the Twenty-Third Psalm. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” Shadows couldn’t hurt her, but the dread they brought with them stifled her hope.
She stumbled into the hotel. The smell of hot coffee wafted from the stove, and though the proprietor didn’t seem to be around, Charlotte helped herself. She sat down at one of the plank tables, resting her head in her hand.
Sometime later, Michael came through the main tent opening, dragging two backpacks. A man who looked vaguely familiar followed him. Michael set the packs down before he noticed her.
“Dear Miss Charlotte, I didn’t expect to find you here,” he said. “This is Mr. Jarvis, who is with Gabe’s party.”
Charlotte nodded at the men but didn’t voice any of the questions that most pressed her.
Michael moved around the table to her side and cleared his throat. “Mr. Jarvis believes Gabe left camp before dawn to pack a load to the summit before light. A Ken Davies of their party also went packing.” Michael pointed to the pile of backpacks. “Some of this has been confirmed as belonging to Davies.”
Charlotte felt numb from the tips of her fingers to the core of her heart. How could this be? Why would Gabe have taken that climb under such conditions?
She pushed past the tingle of tears in her throat and said, “When can we leave? I don’t want to be here when they haul his body into that tent.”
Michael pulled back. “We…we don’t know Gabe will be among them. This town is full of men who came back from the Scales ahead of the last slide.” He seemed to silently seek Mr. Jarvis’s opinion. “Besides, I feel obligated to Philip to find out for sure.”
Charlotte couldn’t speak. She just nodded as the men excused themselves and returned to their duty.
What now? What was there for her to do?
She should pray, but the pain was so intense, she couldn’t form legible words. So she laid her head in her arms and wept.
When she finally raised her head, the hotel proprietor quietly worked beside his stove, putting together food for the dinner hour. Looking up, he offered her some beef broth and potatoes.
After nibbling at the fare, Charlotte headed outside, steering clear of the morgue tent. She aimed for a sign that had caught her attention the day before.
With each footfall, she became more determined that Gabe could not be dead. She pressed her chest where the golden heart nugget rested between her blouse and coat. He must be at the top of that summit.
She stepped inside a small tent where a man sat at a desk made of two crates labeled as provisions. He raised his brow in question when he saw her.
“You sell outfits for the Yukon?” she asked.
“Certainly. That’s what the sign says,” he replied.
“I…how much?”
He frowned at her, then named an outrageous price.
She withered. If she had that kind of money, she would have returned to California by now.
Turning, she pulled back the tent flap to leave as a man stepped in. Tall and broad, he had a beard covering his face.
“Excuse me,” Charlotte mumbled.
“Ma’am.”
She glanced up into arctic-blue eyes. Though the skin around them appeared chapped and leathery and the bones looked more pronounced, she recognized him.
“Gabe!” She flung her arms around his waist and squeezed with all her might.
“Well…I…Charlotte.” He stared at her as he pulled her away from him. “You’re the last person I expected to see here.”
Charlotte sobered as she gazed at him. Trail life had aged him, yet he looked so good in his rough garb.
“How did you get here?” he asked. “What was Philip thinking, letting you leave Dyea?”
“He blessed my trip and sent Michael with me.”
Gabe shook his head. “What for?”
“To find you.”
“But…why?” Gabe gazed at her beautiful face, tinged red by the wind. Her eyes nearly danced as she looked up at him. She had never looked more lovable, and a fierce need to protect her swelled within him.
“You can’t stay here. This trail is much too dangerous for—”
She placed both of her hands on his chest and pushed. He back-stepped out of the tent and away from the shopkeeper’s eyes. A determined look settled on her face.
“Gabe Monroe, you brought me to Alaska, and you will see me out. I’m not going anywhere without you.”
He felt a grin twitch at his mouth even before his brain could register his thoughts. Her feisty attitude surprised him, but he knew he just loved her all the more.
He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “What will I do with you?”
She shrugged and glanced away, giving the first indication that she might not be so sure of herself.
He reached out just to touch her cheek, but he couldn’t stop from pulling her into his arms.
“My dear Lottie.” He cradled her head against his chest, and she wrapped her arms around him. “So much has happened to me in the two months on this trail. I discovered all that is really important is that I surrender my stubborn will to God….”
She squeezed him.
“And that I can love again.”
She pulled back and gazed up at him. “Truly?”
“For real this time,” he whispered as he leaned down to touch her lips with his own.
The touch stirred the embers of his lonely soul to a flame. He clutched her tightly to him. If God put this woman in his life—as only God could—then he would never let her go.
They walked hand in hand through the camp town. Though still bustling with thousands of stampeders, a solemn attitude permeated the atmosphere. The highest risk taking had just been played out in front of them all.
Charlotte leaned into Gabe’s arm. “Your partner said you made that climb this morning. Why?”
“Well, I went up before dawn to mark my cache and was at the summit when the avalanche let go. I hiked down the long way.” Gabe glanced at her. “You see, I had already decided to sell my outfit. I was labeling it for the buyer, and…I was going back to Dyea…for you.”
She looked up at him through her tears. “I couldn’t wait long enough. I had to find you.” Heat touched her cheeks.
Gabe threw back his head and laughed. “I love you, Charlotte Vance.”
Her heart did a giddy dance, and a smile pushed back her cheeks.
“What’s your middle name?” he suddenly asked.
“Uh…Ruth.”
His laughter rang again through the valley, and people turned to stare.
“Well, Miss Charlotte Ruth.” He stopped walking and pulled her around to face him. “I will be your Boaz, if you will be my Ruth.”
He had never seemed so happy to her. Seeing him so did more to thrill her soul than the proposal she had for so long pined.
“Gabe, you…” How could she be at a loss for words now? “I…you are a wonderful man, and I love you so.”
She rose on her toes and boldly planted a kiss of promise on his smiling lips. His arms engulfed her as he picked her off her feet and swung her around until they both turned giddy with dizziness.
He set her back on her feet. “What now, my dear?”
“Now?” She reached up to feel his short beard. “Well, my love, I’ve been wondering what the other side of that mountain looks like. In fact, I was in that store to price outfits…just in case I had to pursue you all the way to Dawson—seeing as how I couldn’t accept the idea that you could be dead.”
Chuckling, Gabe linked arms with her and started them down a grade. “I would have packed you up and taken you with me when I started this trip if I had thought gold country was any place for a lady. Now—though I’d love to see
if all the grand tales are true—the real reasons for going don’t exist anymore.”
He pulled a watch from his pocket, and Charlotte admired the old design.
“It belonged to my father. He sent it to me with a letter that I just got yesterday.”
Gabe stared down the valley, and Charlotte waited for him to finish his thoughts.
Finally, he said, “We can head back to Philip’s store. Maybe I can help him out for a while, until…until I’m sure I’m ready to go home—back to California and the family business.”
Charlotte patted his arm. “I’ll go anywhere with you, Gabe…even to gold country.” This hike up the Chilkoot Trail had flared a sense of adventure in her she’d never known she possessed.
“It’s not necessary….”
“I heard your grandfather was a gold miner. Don’t you want to see what drove him?”
“Sure, that’s what started this whole adventure…until I mixed in some of my lesser motives.”
“Then let’s go,” she said, having made up her mind.
He looked down into her eyes. “But Philip will likely make more money in his store than I can dredge out of any creek bed.”
She shrugged. “Let’s just do it for the adventure,” she stated, then stopped. “But I don’t have an outfit.”
Gabe thought awhile, then said, “Davies died in the slide. He didn’t have a wife or anything. We’ll use his supplies and mail his folks a fair price.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight. “I’m not forgetting the risk we would be taking by continuing the trail. And it’s a shame that kid had to die when his dreams were so strong.”
“We can’t know why things happen the way they do, but I’m so thankful God spared you.”
They strolled along for a while, then Gabe said, “Now about the marriage business. Don’t you think you’ve waited long enough to become a Monroe?”
Charlotte laughed. “Long enough to be sure I marry the right man.”
He gazed lovingly down at her. “Think there might be a reverend in this unusual town?”
“We’ll find one.” Charlotte smiled broadly.
Four days later, on April 7, 1898, Gabriel Black Monroe married Charlotte Ruth Vance on the summit of the Chilkoot Trail. The wind whipped at the little customs shack where a small party huddled together for the occasion. At first word of the upcoming wedding, Michael had returned to Dyea so Philip could make a quick trip up the trail to stand as his brother’s witness.
As Gabe made his vows to her, Charlotte knew she had never felt so cool on the outside while so warm and content on the inside. She relaxed against the arm of the man she looked forward to being with for the rest of her life—a life full of promise.
Rebecca Germany considers herself an old-fashioned kind of girl who loves old-fashioned kinds of romance. She was hooked from a young age, and it was a natural progression when she chose to devote her life’s work to books and writing. Heartsong Presents inspirational romance series and book club started in October 1992. Rebecca joined the Heartsong team exactly one year later and was named managing editor in 1995 and senior fiction editor in 2002. She has written several things, and her first work of fiction was a novella published in a collection from Barbour Publishing. She now has five novellas in print along with a few compiled gift books. Single, but contentedly enjoying life on the old family farm, “Becky” has several hobbies (like reading, singing, gardening, crafts, quilting, and so on) to keep her very busy.
Band of Angel’s
by Cathy Marie Hake
Dedication
To Deb.
We went to countless museums and libraries, toured a mine, and even panned for gold. The real treasure of it all has been your friendship.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, and Bill Jones at the Old Hundred Gold Mine in Silverton, Colorado. They generously provided guidance, information, and encouragement as I researched prospecting.
Chapter 1
Colorado, 1893
Gold!
Jarrod McLeod stared at his pan in disbelief. The very first time he’d slipped his pan in the creek, and he’d struck gold. Oh, this was no fool’s gold. Then again, it wasn’t a nugget or a few bright flakes. There, gleaming in his rusty, secondhand pan, was a small wedding band.
“Well, now I’ll be!” he marveled aloud as he gently brushed away some silt and pinched the woman’s ring between his fingers. He set aside the pan, carefully rinsed the ring in the icy stream, and squinted to take a closer look at the treasure. Plain it was—a wee bit lopsided from having been on the owner’s finger for many a year. Sun glinted off the smooth surface of the band, making it sparkle all the more.
He read the inscription inside. “AW & JM.”
A mule brayed behind him. Jarrod carefully tucked the ring into his shirt pocket, rose, and headed toward the beast. “You’ll have to be forgiving me, Beulah. Prospecting fever, don’t you know. A man stakes a claim, and he loses most of his sense.”
The mule twitched her ears and danced to the side. The pack on her back held half of Jarrod’s earthly goods. He quickly loosened a rope and relieved her of the burden. She waited as he unloaded Otto, and both mules plodded across the hard spring ground to the stream. After they drank their fill, Jarrod secured them to a line he tied between two sturdy pines. “You beasts behave yourselves, and I’ll be giving you a carrot for supper.”
The bundles on the ground made for a goodly sized mess. Jarrod toed one bundle out of his way and looked about his new home. After spending the last six hours trying to locate the right claim and dealing with prospectors who thought he was a claim jumper, he had little patience for sorting through his gear, but grit and a dream kept him going. Determination would get him through the next several months. Once he coaxed enough gold dust from the claim, he’d head off and buy himself a pretty little start-up ranch. Yes, a nifty place where a man could put down roots, work his back sore and his hands raw, and smile every last minute while doing it.
A means to an end. This plot along the creek was nothing more than a means to achieve his dream. With that thought in mind, the pickax, shovel, and pans looked mighty fine. He’d work himself morning, noon, and night. No foolishness, either—he’d seen his share of men drink away their hard work or get cheated out of it at a card table. Lonely miners and placers went to town and consorted with shady women or paid unheard of sums for a decent meal. Well, not Jarrod McLeod.
He’d walked the length of the creek bank first thing. Quartz rock along it hinted that the area held gold. So did the fine-grained black sand. An occasional greenish streak in the boulders spoke of copper—another good sign since he’d read copper and quartz often lay alongside gold. Hard work and a lot of prayer, and this claim might well yield enough to put him back in a saddle.
The saddest-looking lean-to a man ever threw together sat over on the west side of the camp. Jarrod scowled at it and muttered, “Looks like the keys on a burned harpsichord.” The old fellow who sold this claim to him had boasted it held a solid structure. Solid? Ha. Two logs stuck out of the ground and stood just over four feet tall. Lashed between them was a single, thick, six-foot stick. The whole affair sagged under the weight of about two-dozen logs that sloped against it to form the one and only wall. A stiff gust would probably blast apart the pathetic pile.
The air smelled like rain, so Jarrod didn’t spend time moaning. He’d not be able to take shelter under that—he’d best put his hand to fixing up something habitable. He stalked over to the lean-to’s wall and gave the closest edge a few brutal kicks. Spiders and beetles scuttled away as three of the logs rolled and thudded into the dirt. The other logs jumped to and fro, completely unsecured to the rickety frame.
He stood back and looked at the mess, then felt the wind pick up. Another glance at the sky let him know he had just a few hours of light left, and the rain might well come before dark. “I’d best get down
to business if I want to stay dry.”
Jarrod tore it all apart, leveled the ground, and cut down two lodgepole pines. By notching and stacking the new logs and adding them to the ones from the lean-to, he built a tiny, three-sided hut. He made the side walls shorter, but the seven-foot-long back wall allowed him to lie full length and stack his viands in a place that ought to stay dry. So far, the dwelling—such as it was—barely measured four feet high. Jail cells measured bigger. He’d run out of light and logs, though.
Jarrod hastily draped canvas over a pole he stuck in the center of the floor and weighted it outside the walls with handy rocks as the first raindrops fell. He strode off a few paces to take a quick look at the results of his labor. His “cabin” didn’t look like a jail cell anymore: it looked more like the circus tent he’d seen back East.
Back sore and hands blistered, Jarrod sat beneath his newly constructed shelter. Rain pattered off the canvas and slid outside the cabin. He warmed his hands around a cup of scorched coffee and stared at the flickering lamp. Other men might find it odd that a wee chain of daisies danced about the globe, but Ella had loved that lamp, and it was all he had left of her other than his memories. She’d shared his dream of the ranch, and he wanted to put her lamp on the kitchen table someday in her honor. Until then, with Ella’s memory in his heart and God in his soul, he counted himself a rich man.
Angel Taylor stood by the boiling pot and shaved one more curl of homemade lye soap into the water. She shoved four shirts into the water, thrust in a wooden paddle, and agitated the smelly contents of the cauldron. A few more pokes, and she set down the paddle. Mud caked the pile of britches at her side. She dragged them down to the river, rinsed the worst of the dirt from them, leaned over her corrugated washboard, and scrubbed stubborn dark spots on the seat and knees of each pair.
“I’m hungry, girl. What’re you fixin’ to do? Starve me half to death?”
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