Gold Dust (39 page)

“Aw Katy! Can’t we stay the night?”

“You can’t think of going back to the claim tonight!”
Camilla said in a horrified voice. “It’s almost sunset, and the temperature’s already below freezing. You’d be hiking in the
dark, and Lord knows what you might come across. Just two days ago a man in Gold Bottom Creek was attacked by a grizzly and
half-eaten. You two are staying right here in Dawson tonight! You can put up at my cabin.”

Katy didn’t have the energy to argue. At the moment, she felt like she could give a grizzly the fight of its miserable life,
but she couldn’t risk Andy’s safety because she was in a foul mood.

It was just as well Jonah was gone, Katy told herself. Now she could concentrate on important things—like finding gold. But
it still hurt that he hadn’t said good-bye.

The next afternoon, the pungent smell of woodsmoke reached Katy and Andy as they hiked along the wagon road into the head
of Skookum Gulch.

“Someone’s keeping warm,” Andy commented.

“Yeah.”

Katy and Andy weren’t the only prospectors working Skookum Gulch. There were claims both above and below their claim. The
smell of smoke was no cause for concern, but Katy suffered a twinge of uneasiness anyway.

Half an hour later, when they rounded the bend just above their cabin and saw the curl of smoke coming from the stovepipe,
alarms clanged in Katy’s head. She pushed Andy into cover behind a boulder and squatted down beside her. Hunter crowded in
between them, his ears pricked alertly.

“Omigod!” Katy whispered. “Claim jumpers!”

The smoke rose lazily into the cold air, but all else was still. In the fading light of dusk, Katy could see a shovel lying
close by the rocker—the very shovel that Katy had scolded Andy for not putting in the cabin before they left. Katy had ended
up putting the shovel away herself. Someone had moved it since then.

“Look! Someone started a new trench downstream of the old one,” Andy observed.

“Damn! You’d think claim jumpers would wait until a body had found gold before they moved in and tried to take it away!”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Let me think.” A shotgun loaded with buckshot rode the top of Katy’s backpack, and her hunting knife was on her belt. Andy
had a whittling knife and Katy’s rock sling. All in all, it was a store of arms more suited for dealing with birds and squirrels
than driving off claim jumpers.

A swell of rage rose in Katy’s chest. After all she had gone through to get to the Klondike, some low-down, lazy, greedy,
worthless skunk thought he could just move in and benefit from her hard work. For all she knew, the piece of horseshit had
already found gold in her claim.

“Do you think there’s just one of them?” Andy asked.

“Doesn’t matter. There could be a whole damned army down there, and I’d still find a way to get back what’s ours. You see
that tall pine by the side of the cabin?”

“Yup.”

“Think you could shinny up that tree, lean out, and stuff something down the stovepipe without falling or getting yourself
burned?”

Andy grinned wickedly. “You bet.”

“Then do it. Go up the hill a ways and come down from where you can’t be seen if someone comes out the front.” She slung her
pack to the ground and dug through it hurriedly, extracting a woolen scarf. “Take this for the pipe. Hurry before the light
goes completely, and I can’t see. And give me the rock sling.”

“You gonna pop ‘em with a rock when they come out?”

“I’ve got only one load of buckshot in the shotgun, but there’re enough rocks around here for me to fell an army.”

An army of squirrels or sparrows, Katy amended silently as
Andy slipped away. Unless very precisely aimed, a rock sling wasn’t likely to do much more than annoy a man.

The wait for Andy to appear seemed endless. The light faded fast, helped along by clouds that were creeping across the sky
from the west. They hadn’t left Dawson until midmorning, having indulged the luxury of going to breakfast with Camilla at
a restaurant that reputedly served the best flapjacks in the Klondike. Then Camilla had insisted they take the time to try
on the overalls she had altered for them—the overalls that Jonah had bought from the ACC.

Jonah. The thought of him sent a pang through Katy’s chest. She damned well was not going to let some jackass jump the claim
that belonged to her and Jonah. Her and Jonah together.

Andy appeared as if by magic at the tree by the cabin. Agile as a monkey she clambered up, holding Katy’s scarf in her mouth.
Katy held her breath as the girl came even with the top of the stovepipe and leaned outward. Clinging with one hand to the
tree, she stuffed the scarf beneath the tin rain shield that topped the pipe.

“Attagirl,” Katy whispered.

Only a moment passed before smoke started leaking out between the inadequately caulked logs of the cabin. A man inside cursed,
choking as he did so. The door banged open and out walked their claim jumper.

“Shit!” Katy whispered to herself. “He’s got a damned rifle with him.”

In the dusky light, Katy saw him turn and look at the cabin’s roof, at the stovepipe where one end of the sooty scarf dangled.
Andy pressed herself close to the tree trunk, but he was bound to see her. He was going to shoot, dammit!

Panic clawed at Katy’s chest. No time for the sling. She aimed the shotgun and fired. The man yiped as a spray of buckshot
bit into him.

“Take that, you weasel!”

No one else appeared at the door, so Katy concluded the man was alone. He had dropped to one knee and looked frantically
about. But he didn’t drop his rifle. Katy could almost hear him grit his teeth as he pumped the handle to cock it.

“Oh damn!” No time to load the shotgun. Katy fitted a stone to the sling, praying that her aim was true. She had brought down
squirrels and birds with one shot, but then her hands hadn’t shook, and a twelve-year-old girl hadn’t hung in the balance.
Why did things never go as planned?

The man still searched for a target in the near darkness. Katy let fly, and he dropped to the sand like a limp sack of grain.

Andy whooped. Katy gusted out a breath of relief and galloped down the side of the gulch. “Tie him up before he comes to!”
she called to Andy.

As Andy went in search of rope, Katy turned her victim over with her foot and bent down to take the rifle from his hand.

“Oh spit!” Every cuss word she knew came to her lips. The claim jumper wasn’t a claim jumper. He was Jonah.

“Ouch! Goddammit! Put a knife in your hand and you become the Marquis de Sade! Not to mention what you do with a shotgun!
Yow!”

“Hold still!” Katy demanded of Jonah. “Andy, move the lantern higher.” Katy guided Andy’s hand until the lantern light shone
more fully upon Jonah, who lay prone upon the cot, his trousers and long johns around his knees, his backside exposed to Katy’s
knife.

“Crazy woman,” Jonah muttered, then groaned as Katy pried another piece of shot from his buttocks.

“I thought you were a claim jumper.”

“You think some brigand is going to bother with a claim full of useless gravel?”

Katy sniffed indignantly. “Any prospector worth his salt can look at this gulch and know there’s gold here. Brace yourself.
This one’s deep.”

“Yowch! God Almighty! They’re all deep, dammit!”

Katy chuckled mercilessly. “What a disappointment. I’d begun to think you’d toughened up, Jonah, but now I see you’re just
a sissy at heart.”

Jonah gritted his teeth as the knife pricked once again. “Claim jumper, my ass! You’re enjoying this!”

She dabbed the blood away with a cool wet cloth. “It
was
your ass. And a fine one it is, too, don’t you think so, Andy?”

“Best I’ve ever seen,” Andy agreed.

“Ow!” Jonah growled into the mattress of the cot. “I’m going to get you both for this.”

“It was your own fault,” Katy said.

“How does even twisted—ouch!—female reasoning come up with that?”

“Any fool knows better than to sneak onto another prospector’s claim.”

“Half of it’s my claim, dammit!”

“Yes, but I thought you’d gone back Stateside. Everybody in Dawson said you’d gone. Besides, it looked like you were going
to shoot Andy.”

“I wasn’t goddamned going to shoot anyone! You’re the one who did all the shooting. Not to mention nearly suffocating me with
smoke and cracking my skull with a rock.”

“And you thought we ladies couldn’t take care of ourselves!”

“Shit! You’re both a menace!”

“Quit grousing,” Katy scolded. “You’ll survive.”

That he had survived Katy so far was nothing less than a miracle, Jonah reflected painfully as she worked assiduously on his
smarting behind. If he had the sense God gave a sparrow, he’d give up, return to Chicago, and wallow in well-earned praise
for the series of articles he’d sent back to the
Record.
If he’d done that, his backside wouldn’t have gotten peppered with buckshot, his head wouldn’t feel as though someone had
it clamped in a vise, and two imps straight from the devil’s harem wouldn’t be trading comments over his bare arse.

He couldn’t leave, though. He’d told Katy he was going to marry her, and he’d be damned if a load of buckshot would stand
in the way. Life without her might be calmer, safer, and longer, but he didn’t want calm and safe; calm and safe were dull.
He didn’t want to live until he was a doddering 105: he’d
rather die riding a wild river with Katy, or perish of a heart attack making love to her when he was eighty.

“Katy?” he said through a grimace.

“Hold on, Jonah. Almost through.”

“You really thought I’d leave you without saying goodbye?”

Silence reigned for a moment, punctuated by the careful forays of her knife.

“Did you?” he insisted.

“Well…”

She had, he heard in her voice. And she hadn’t been happy about it.

“You thought I’d abandon this… this…” He waved an arm to indicate the tumbledown cabin, the lonely gulch, the waterlogged
trenches and rocker full of useless quartz and feldspar gravel. “… this beautiful piece of freezing, windblown, useless streambed?”

“I’ll admit it was hard to believe.”

He heard the wry smile in her words.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to come out?” she asked.

“I wanted to surprise you.”

Andy chuckled. “Surprising Miss Katy ain’t a smart move.”

“Andy!” Katy scolded. “Quit laughing. You’re making the light move. Go get that bottle of whiskey on the shelf.”

“You have whiskey out here?” Jonah asked hopefully.

“Whoever built this shack left the dregs of a bottle. I hope it’s not the good stuff, because it’s going to get poured over
your backside.”

“I’d rather drink it.”

The whiskey would have felt much better pouring down his throat than over his buckshot-cratered rump, and Jonah did not endure
in silence. He could be stoic as the Sphinx if the situation called for it, but at this moment he didn’t care if every grizzly
bear in the Klondike heard him.

Katy merely patted his shoulder and pulled a blanket over his bare parts. “You’re done,” she announced.

“Done in is more like it,” Jonah said with a groan. He allowed himself to drift to sleep on the thought that Katy gave a new
meaning to the term shotgun wedding.

Katy ran her hand along the riffles of the rocker. Her fingers came away coated with tiny grains of black, shiny magnetite
and a few dark fragments of some other mineral she couldn’t identify. No golden flakes relieved the dark color.

“Where the hell is that gold? I know it’s here.”

Andy emptied another shovelful of gravel into the rocker, and the stream of water began bouncing rounded pebbles down the
chute.

“How long have we been digging?” Katy asked, disgusted. “A week at least. Three trenches.”

The first had threatened to collapse at twenty-five feet and had never reached bedrock. The second, dug mostly by Jonah, had
actually collapsed at thirty feet, nearly burying Katy in a flood of sand and gravel. Only Jonah’s quick grab for her and
determined strength in pulling her free of the sand had saved her. The third trench they were digging wider to improve stability.
It was down to fifteen feet, and still there were no shows of gold.

Katy wondered if she should start making contingency plans for not being rich.

In the trench, however, Jonah did not look equally discouraged. Katy nearly got a faceful of flying gravel as she peered over
the edge.

“Watch out!” he called up to her, grinning.

“Anything new?”

“Got a layer down here I haven’t seen before. The gravel’s coarser.”

“There’s lenses and pods of that stuff all through here. I’ve seen it.” She allowed herself the tiniest bit of hope. “See
anything in it?”

“Gravel. Dirt. Sand. More gravel.” He chuckled. “What a surprise.”

How could he sound like he was having a good time? Katy wondered. She paused at the lip of the trench to watch him work, unable
to take her eyes from the play of muscles in his shoulders and back as he plied the shovel. Cold as it was, he’d discarded
his parka and flannel shirt and worked in only his long-sleeved undershirt, which hugged the contours of his back and arms
as muscle bunched and rolled in effort. He’d tied the straps of his overalls around his waist. The loose garment was the only
clothing Jonah could tolerate on his healing wounds besides a very soft and worn set of long johns.