Gold Dust (34 page)

“I’m goin’ to bed,” Andy said, pushing herself off her haunches.

“That’s what you think,” Jonah replied sternly. “Sit down, you little imp of the devil.”

Andy gusted out a rebellious breath and sat. “I suppose you’re riled.”

“I’m getting tired of not knowing whether the people I hire, travel with, eat with, and sleep with are male or female. Annoying
is what it is.”

Katy detected a bit of reprimand in his statement for her as well as Andy. “Now, Jonah…”

“You be quiet, Katy. I’m thinking you two are pretty much birds of a feather.”

The same thing had occurred to Katy. She couldn’t help but feel some kinship with the little scamp.

“Now. Andy. You’re going to come clean, or you’re going to find yourself without employment. Not”—Jonah gestured to the paucity
of their camp—“that we have much left to employ you with.”

Andy gave them both a resentful look and folded her arms and legs in upon herself.

“What’s your real name. It couldn’t be Andy.”

“Alexandra.” She drew out the syllables in a mockery of hauteur. “A grand name, ain’t it, for a whore’s kid? Sounds like some
sorta pissin’ princess. I like Andy better. It fits me.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were a girl?”

Andy laughed sharply. “You think a girl would’ve gotten a job mindin’ Jack Decker’s horses? Decker might hire a female to
do something in his stable, but it wouldn’t be cleanin’ up horse crap and slingin’ hay. You think
that you
would’ve hired me if’n you’d known I squatted to piss instead of standin’ up?”

Jonah cleared his throat. Katy was tempted to laugh. “She’s right, Jonah.”

“You would be on her side!”

“Somebody has to!”

“I seen what happens to girls who ain’t got no folks or money,” Andy declared. “My ma was a whore, and I got
around the streets and the sportin’ houses and saw gals younger’n me workin’ on their backs ‘cause they had no place to go.
Not me, though. I’m gonna find gold in the Klondike, and I’m gonna have all the money I need. I swore I would if it took me
years of working myself to the bone to get there. I shoveled coal in a steamer to get to Alaska, and I spent three months
shovelin’ horse crap in Jack Decker’s stable before you tossed the sonofabitch on his ass and fired him. And now here I am,
almost there, and a damned river spoils it all! Hell! What a time for my stupid tits to start sproutin’!”

Jonah shook his head and lowered it into his hands, from which a muffled, choking sound that might have been suppressed laughter
issued.

“I guess I’m on my own from here on out, huh?” Andy muttered.

“I don’t think this is any time to split up the team,” Katy said.

“What about him?”

Katy grinned. “Oh, we’ll let Jonah come with us, too.”

A slow smile lit up Andy’s face. The kid was really quite pretty beneath that wild mop of hair and under all the scratches,
bug bites, and dirt. Katy was amazed she hadn’t realized before that Andy was a girl.

“You’re really not going to fire me?”

“I promised you a job for as long as I stay in the Yukon,” Katy said. “I don’t break my word.”

Andy looked ready to spring at Katy and give her a hug, but she confined herself to leaping to her feet and executing a couple
of jumps that proved she still had the heart of a child, despite the tough exterior. “You’re a hell of a sport, Miss Katy!
You really are!”

“Yeah. I really am,” Katy said as Andy bounced off to find a sleeping place. She stared into the fire for a moment, feeling
her spirits slip now that she didn’t have to put on a bold face for Andy. When she looked up it was into Jonah’s eyes, which
seemed more black than blue in the shadows that darkened his face.

“Well, sport. How’re you doing?” he asked.

“You weren’t really going to fire her.”

“Did you think I was?”

“Naw. You’ve got a soft spot mushier than a rotten apple.”

“Kind of you to say so.”

Katy sighed and let her shoulders slump.

“Your clothes are still wet,” Jonah noted.

Katy plucked at her damp shirt. She wore a coat around her shoulders, and that was damp also. She’d been cold from the inside
out for so many hours that it didn’t seem to matter any more.

“You’d better get into something dry.”

“I gave what we had to Camilla. Mine will dry if I sit by the fire long enough.”

Jonah grunted noncommittally, got up, disappeared for a moment, then came back to the fire with a blanket. “Get out of those
things and wrap this around you. We’ll lay out your clothes by the fire to dry.

Katy sighed. Depression was making her almost numb to the cold.

“Hop to, Katydid. Do as I say.”

“I’m fine! Just leave me be.”

“You’re going to get sick, and then I’ll have to take care of you. Get out of those wet clothes.”

“Oh all right! Give me the blanket.” She doffed her wet coat and started to fumble with the buttons to her shirt.

“Not here,” Jonah said. “Come with me.”

He led her to a little shelter made from brush, spruce boughs, and saplings. The floor was carpeted with dry leaves, boughs,
and blankets.

“You built this?” Katy asked.

“With my own two hands.”

“You’re getting to be a real frontiersman.”

“That’s me. Mountain Man Jonah Armstrong, at your service.”

Katy managed a weak smile, then shivered. Jonah handed her the blanket. “There’s plenty of dry blankets. Everyone camped here
must have brought over at least two.”

Katy fumbled with her shirt buttons. Her fingers were stiff and awkward with cold.

“You’re going to take all night like that,” Jonah told her. “Let me do it.”

She slapped his hands away out of pure instinct.

“Shy, Katy? There’s no part of you that I haven’t already seen.” His eyes caught at hers, and a shiver traveled down her spine
that had nothing to do with the cold. “Seen, and touched, and kissed. Now, let me help you.”

His deft fingers made short work of her buttons, and with seeming detachment he helped her pull off the soggy boots that had
tightened upon her feet and worm out of the damp britches that clung to her hips and legs. When she was dry and naked, wrapped
in a warm blanket like a butterfly in its co
coon,
she finally began to feel a hint of warmth relieve the ici-ness that cut to bone.

“We should share this shelter with Andy,” she murmured sleepily.

Jonah chuckled. “Since when has Andy slept anywhere but exactly where she wants to sleep? That kid’s wild as a little wolf
cub.”

“Mmm.”

While Jonah took her wet clothing away to lay out by the fire, Katy surrendered to weariness as warmth relaxed her body. She
gathered more blankets around her and curled up on the floor of springy, pungent spruce boughs. Hunter wandered in and curled
at her feet.

Jonah had done a very good job in constructing the little shelter, she thought as she drifted into a doze.

Katy had scarcely closed her eyes before she was roused by a warm body burrowing into the blankets beside hers.

“Jonah,” she whispered groggily.

“Go to sleep,” he advised. His breath was warm in her ear.

She came fully awake then. “Jonah! What are you doing?”

His arm clamped around her bare middle in comfortable possession as he fitted their bodies together spoon fashion. “The least
you can do after I built this dandy shelter is to help keep me warm in it. Be still, Katy. All I’m after is a little warmth
and a few hours’ sleep.”

She believed him, partly because she was too tired and discouraged to argue. For some perverse reason, the thought that Jonah
wanted nothing more than her body heat to warm his sleep sent her spirits sliding into the final downhill tumble. She turned
her face into the blanket beneath her. Lordy but she’d never cried as much in her life as she’d cried since meeting Jonah
Armstrong.

“Katy, are you all right?” His voice was soft and low, and Katy felt it reverberating in his chest as much as heard it with
her ears.

“Of course I’m all right.”

His arm tightened around her middle, drawing her back more closely against him. “You’re crying.”

“Hell yes, I’m crying! Why shouldn’t I cry? Patrick Burke drowned. Camilla’s lost her entire family. We’ve lost everything
but the clothes that are scorching by the fire, and we’re miles from where we want to be with no boat, no food, and very little
money. The only thing we have left is a sack of soggy flour, your spare underwear, and a couple of cooking pots.”

“That’s not all we have, Katy.”

The warmth in his voice made her cry even harder. It was a vicious circle. She hated women who cried, but the madder at herself
she grew, the harder she cried.

“Katydid…”

She expected him to do the manly thing by telling her not to cry, but he didn’t. He shifted her so that she could bury her
face against his chest and flood his forest of chest hair with her tears.

“Go ahead and cry, Katydid. Cry all you want. You’ve got more than one good cry owed to you.”

Katy took him up on it with a vengeance. Strangely enough, she felt safe crying within the circle of his arms with his big,
hard hands moving in slow caresses up and down her back. Crying kept her so busy that she didn’t think so much about their
predicament; it took the last morsel of her energy and drained her of the will to do anything but sleep. She scarcely knew
it when she stopped crying and snuggled against Jonah to absorb his warmth and strength, and then slipped quietly into slumber.

Katy woke to see the dawn backlighting the mountains and painting wispy, high-flying clouds in a rosy tint. For a moment she
lay still and inhaled Jonah’s warm scent. The ever-present roar of Whitehorse Rapids seemed more muted in the still morning
air. Above the rumble she heard the whistle of an early-rising bird and a distant shout of someone in another camp. At least
five campfires had burned last night on the riverbanks above the rapids. After Patrick had drowned and all the rest in their
party had lost everything but their lives, the Klondikers had shown very little enthusiasm for making a try at the rapids
themselves. The new day would bring renewed courage and bolstered determination. Most likely everyone would make it through
the white water today, Katy mused. The rapid had taken its sacrifice for the week. What would the remnants of their little
party do when those who had stayed and donated food, blankets, and comfort headed downriver?

Katy pushed the dismal thought aside and disentangled herself from Jonah. What she needed was a brisk bath to scrub away grime
and depression. Wrapped in a blanket, she gingerly made her way barefoot to the fire and gathered up her clothes. Breath puffing
in icy clouds, she pulled on her boots, wrapped the blanket more securely about her, and headed upstream
toward the deep, quiet part of the river that was dammed behind the rapids. Far enough from the campsites that she was safe
from intruding eyes, she shed boots and blankets and slipped into the cold water—as if she hadn’t gotten enough of the river
the day before, Katy reflected grimly. The water was frigid, almost numbing, but the load of depression and anxiety lifted
as she dived into the green depths and let the water wash away the stickiness of sweat and the pungent odor of woodsmoke.
The cobwebs that clung to her spirit washed away with the grime. She surfaced, sputtered and spit, stroked against the icy,
sluggish current, and knew that whatever the odds, she would get to the Klondike, and so would Jonah and Andy, and they would
take care of Camilla on the way.

When she turned for the shore, she saw Jonah standing on the bank.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked.

“I followed you. The blankets got cold after you left.”

With no concern for modesty, he shed his blanket and dived into the quiet river. Seconds later he shot out of the water like
a Fourth of July rocket. He practically walked on the surface in his haste to regain the shore. Katy’s laugh came soaring
up from her belly and cleared the last cobweb from her spirit.

“That water’s like ice!” Jonah wheezed, hunkering naked on the bank and trying to get his breath back. “What are you, a penguin?”

“Come on, greenhorn! Out here there aren’t any big brass tubs and water heated over the fire. If you want to get clean, you’ve
got to toughen up a bit!”

“Toughen up, my foot. Freeze your ass off is more like it!”

Katy tut-tutted and dived again. She surfaced suddenly near the shore, like a killer whale surprising its prey, splatted the
water with both hands, and sent a stream of cold water in Jonah’s direction. Her aim was perfect; he yelped.

“You little miscreant! I’ll get you for that!”

She stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers at
him tauntingly. Then it was her turn to yelp as he dived into the water after her. Before she could leap away, his big hands
closed around her waist and pulled her down into the cold green depths. She struggled mightily, succeeding only in getting
her bare legs tangled with his—a not unpleasant sensation if she hadn’t been three feet underwater with his hand firmly upon
her head.

Just as spots began to swim before her eyes, he let her up. She bobbed to the surface with a fierce growl and tried to dunk
him in turn.

“Huh-uh!” he said, laughing. “Don’t try it, Katydid, unless you want another turn under the water. I’m bigger than you.”

She dived, came up behind him, and pushed him under. When he surfaced in a sputtering fountain of water, she grinned wickedly.
“And I’m sneakier than you.”

“Typical of a woman. Come here and keep me warm.”

“Horsefeathers! If you want to get warm, go back to the fire. I’m here to get clean.”

They fetched the soap she’d left on the bank and managed to work up enough lather to scrub both of them as their faces turned
from the rosy red of their battle to an icy blue. When they were through with their wash, Jonah wrapped Katy in a cocoon of
blankets and carried her to a spot beneath the trees where a soft, dry carpet of needles made a fragrant bed. When he wormed
his way into the cocoon with her, Katy couldn’t help but giggle at his contortions.