Gold Dust (38 page)

Andy was in no better mood than Katy as they worked to repair the rocker. Dirt clung to her chin and cheeks, which were red
from the cold. Wispy strands of bright red hair escaped her cap and straggled into her face, where they clung, despite Andy’s
irritated blowing them away or scraping them back with dirty hands. When they finally got the rocker erect again, she searched
through the box of tools that sat on the sand beside them.

“Where’s a knife, goddammit? Gimme a knife.”

Katy handed her the hunting knife she kept on her belt. “What do you need a knife for?”

Andy pulled the grimy cap from her head and let her hair tumble down her back.

“I’m gonna chop off this goddamned dirty ugly mop! That’s what I’m gonna do!”

“Andy! Don’t!” Tangled, dirty, and pushed under a cap as it always was, Andy’s wealth of red hair was hardly her glory, but
given a little attention, it could be.

“I’m gonna!” The knife neatly severed a knotted tress. “It’s nuthin’ but a bother! I don’t know why I didn’t cut it before.”
Another thick red strand fell to the ground.

“You’re going to look like your hair got caught in a sawmill.”

“Don’t make no never mind to me.” She continued to saw and chop until most of her hair lay in a curling red pile at her feet.
What remained on her head looked like a fiery nest built by a drunken bird. It was promptly smashed flat as Andy pulled on
her cap. “There! That’s better!”

“Now you do look like a boy.”

“Good! A body’s safer being a boy.”

“Well, you can’t be a boy forever, Andy. Sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with being a girl.” Katy grimaced as
the irony of her words struck her. She was a fine one to lecture someone on femininity!

“I don’t see why!” Andy objected. “You’re a female, and you got past it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you don’t go simperin’ around in no dresses, or curl your hair or paint your face. You don’t swing your hips at the
men or push up your tits with one of those corsets that make a lady look like she’s suckin’ in her breath all the time.”

“I’ve never pretended to be anything but what I am,” Katy protested. “Besides, there’s more to being a woman than those things,”
she said, somewhat surprised at herself.

“Yeah. Like cookin’ and cleanin’.”

“Most women enjoy caring for those they love.”

“Gigglin’ and simperin’.”

“There’s a lot of women on this earth who’ve never giggled or simpered in their lives.”

“Yeah. Like you and me.” Andy gave Katy’s back a comradely slap. “I wanna be just like you, so no one can tell I’m a girl
unless he gets close enough to feel. And you can bet no one’s gonna get that close to me!”

Mood apparently much improved, Andy picked up her shovel and started tossing gravel into the repaired rocker. Katy looked
at Andy, then down at herself. There really wasn’t that much difference, she acknowledged. She looked no older than Andy,
and every bit as disreputable in baggy overalls and a frayed wool sweater. Her arms were covered with scratches and bug bites,
her fingernails were ragged and dirty. Bothersome wisps of hair that had escaped her braids blew in her face. Her lips were
dry and cracked, and she didn’t even want to contemplate what her face looked like.

What would Olivia say if she could see her now, after all her work teaching Katy how to dress and act like a lady? Worse,
what would Jonah think?

What did she care what Jonah might think? Katy asked herself. Gold was what she should worry about, not her damned appearance.
Gold and independence.

Not an hour passed before a cart drawn by a bony, broken-down bay horse arrived in camp. Climbing out of the trench, Katy
recognized the poor piece of crowbait that pulled the cart as one of the two horses let out by the livery in Dawson. The woman
perched on the seat was Camilla.

“Hello, Katy!” Camilla greeted her with a happy wave.

“Camilla! What brings you out here?”

“Jonah told me where to find you. Actually, Jonah sent me. The Alaska Commercial Company was selling overalls cheap. Jonah
bought some and gave me the commission of cutting them down to fit you two.” She glanced around the claim. “Oh my! Isn’t this…
ah… picturesque.”

“No,” Katy replied with a laugh. Only the kindest person would name Skookum Gulch, with its tumbledown shack, piles of gravel,
trenches, and diverted stream, anything but ugly. “It’s a pit. But it’s going to make me and Jonah and Andy rich.”

“Have you found gold yet?”

“Not yet,” Katy admitted as she helped Camilla from the high wagon seat. “But I will. Uh… what’s Jonah doing these days other
than buying the ACC out of denims?”

“He’s writing a long article for his newspaper—all about Dawson and the shortage of food and lamp oil and how so many people
are still living in tents with the winter coming on. He says he wants the story to go out before the river freezes and we’re
cut off for the winter.”

“I suppose Jonah will be going out on the same boat that his article does.” She glanced up at the bright blue October sky.
“He’d better hurry. There’s more ice than water in that stream over there. When we woke up this morning, the rocker was frozen
solid.”

“Yes. I imagine it’ll happen soon. The people in Dawson are trading bets on the day.” Camilla looked hopefully toward
the curl of smoke that rose from the cabin’s chimney. “Your cabin looks snug. If we go inside, I can fit these to you.”

“Yeah. Sure. Come on, Andy.” Katy led Camilla to the shack and watched her lay out the work clothes that Jonah had sent. Hunter
curled up contentedly beside the stove, and Andy clattered about warming coffee and biscuits. Camilla talked about her growing
business in Dawson. The Irishwoman had five other seamstresses working for her and enough work to keep them all busy.

“Isn’t it amazing how quickly the days are growing short?” Camilla said. “It feels very strange to think that we’ll be almost
completely cut off from the rest of the world once the river freezes.”

Katy nodded and commented, scarcely aware of what she heard or said. Her mind was occupied with the picture of the last boat
steaming down the Yukon for the north Alaskan coast, and Jonah standing on the deck waving good-bye.

Of course Jonah would go. Why would he stay? He’d held up his part of their bargain and then some. He’d
never
planned on staying the winter, and unless he took a boat downriver before the Yukon froze, he’d be stuck here. Katy certainly
hadn’t offered him any incentive to stay.

He wouldn’t have stayed if you had offered him the moon,
a voice inside her head told her.
He was itching to get back to Chicago, to his city streets and fancy job.

He would have taken her with him, she reminded herself. He would have married her.

And what the hell would you do in a place like Chicago?
the voice chided.

“Andy, quit squirming!” Camilla admonished for the fifth time. “How do you expect me to take these in if—oh my!” She jerked
her hands away from where she had been pulling up the overalls to adjust the shoulder straps. “Andy?”

Andy turned crimson as a Klondike sunset. Camilla glanced at Katy, her eyes wide.

“Shit!” Andy commented.

“No cussing,” Katy scolded. “There’s a lady present. I told you that you couldn’t stay a boy forever.”

“Andy is a… a…”

“An Alexandra,” Katy finished for her.

“Oh my!” Camilla lowered herself gingerly onto one of the stools by the camp stove. “Alexandra…”

“Call me Andy!” Andy shed the overalls and flung them aside. She headed for the cabin door, but on the way Katy plucked the
cap off her head and grabbed her arm, turning her back into the cabin.

“An Alexandra with a temper as hot as her hair.”

“Oh! You poor child! What have you done to your hair? And why would you want people to believe you’re a boy?” Camilla’s eyes
were beginning to light with interest.

“Girls are sitting ducks unless they got some stupid man to take care of them.”

Camilla smiled sadly. “That’s what I used to think, but I’ve been doing very well on my own. And look how well Katy does for
herself.”

“Katy’s got me to help her.” Andy’s mouth curved downward in a pugnacious bow.

“But you aren’t a man, are you?” Camilla insisted gently. “It just goes to show how well we can do when we help each other.
Just look at you. Let me get my shears and see what I can do for that awful hair.”

Both Andy and Katy were gently bullied into doing exactly what Camilla wanted. Andy sat with only minor squirming while the
Irishwoman patiently snipped and brushed her hair, and Katy heated water to wash it after the trimming was done.

“Now look at you!” a satisfied Camilla finally said. Still wet from being washed, Andy’s hair crowned her head in soft curls
of dark red. The absence of the ever-present stocking cap softened her face, which glowed from the vigorous scrubbing Camilla
had given it. “You’re as lovely a lass as I’ve ever seen.”

Andy turned almost as red as her hair.

“It’s true! Katy, bring a mirror. Let her see what a pretty girl she is.”

“We don’t have a mirror.”

“Well, then, Alexandra, you’ll just have to take our word on it.”

“No. I want to see!” Andy sprang up, grabbed her parka, and shot out the door.

Katy and Camilla wrapped themselves against the cold and followed Andy to the undiverted portion of the stream, where the
girl peered into a quiet pool by the bank.

“Look at me!”

Camilla smiled.

“I really am pretty!” Andy’s bright eyes dimmed and her wide grin fell. “I can’t go around looking like this!”

“Certainly you can!” Camilla told her. “You’re not alone anymore, Alexandra. You have friends. Katy and I would never let
anyone take advantage of you.”

As the smile slowly came back to Andy’s face, Katy suffered a pang of jealousy. Andy had literally come to life under Camilla’s
gentle hand, and Katy envied her friend’s maternal instincts.

Camilla left in time to reach Dawson before dark, taking the overalls with her and promising to return when they were cut
down to size. Katy and Andy went back to work. Katy noticed that Andy braved the cold without her hat and paused every once
in a while to gingerly finger the curls that capped her head.

That night it snowed. The snow continued into the day, but they worked anyway, wet, cold, and miserable. When the sun came
out the following day, the stream trickled through fanciful dams of ice that glinted in the light. Icicles turned the everyday
spruce and pine into a fairy forest, and the water in the gravel was frozen so that shoveling was nearly impossible. Katy
noted the snow-blanketed fairyland around them no more than she noted the harder work. The cold and ice filled
her mind with the certainty that Jonah would leave on the next boat, if he hadn’t left already.

Long after Katy should have been asleep that night she lay listening to Andy’s soft snores. She could think of no good excuse
to delay their work by going to Dawson, but she had to see Jonah again. One more time before he left. Just once more.

Katy blinked at the unfamiliar figure who answered her knock on Jonah’s cabin door. He was plump, with a round reddish face
chafed by the wind and a fringe of mouse-colored hair around a shining bald pate. He definitely was not Jonah. “Who’re you?”

The man cocked his head at her and glanced uneasily at Hunter, who sat attentively at her side. “I might ask the same of you.”

“Where’s Jonah?” Katy scowled. Manners and patience were not high priorities after a six hour hike through mud, ice, and snow.

“Who?”

“Jonah Armstrong. The newspaper writer.”

“Oh. The chap from the
Chicago Record.
Big fellow? Brown hair? Clean-shaven?”

“Yeah. Where is he?”

“Gone.”

Katy’s heart plummeted. “Gone wnere?”

The man shrugged. “Out of this hellhole would be my guess. He didn’t say; I didn’t ask. I was glad enough to get this cabin
from him. Been living in a tent for a month.”

“He didn’t leave a message? A letter? Anything?”

The man’s eyes softened. “No, lady. I’m sorry. He was in a right hurry, it seemed to me. I guess he had a deadline to meet.”

Gone. The word echoed in Katy’s heart as she made the rounds of Dawson asking about Jonah’s whereabouts. No one had actually
seen him get on the steamer that left the day before,
but that didn’t mean anything. The steamers were always full to overflowing both when they landed and left; he easily could
have been missed. At the ACC his account was paid in full. Only one barkeeper knew him, and he said Jonah hadn’t been in the
saloon in four days at least.

He was gone. In spite of seven thousand people living in tents and cabins, Dawson seemed empty. The whole damned Klondike
seemed empty because one damned newspaper writer had finished his job and hightailed it back to Chicago.

“I just can’t believe he didn’t even say good-bye!” she complained to Camilla. The seamstress shop was the last shop and the
last hope, but Camilla didn’t know where Jonah was, either.

“I thought he was partners with us,” Andy said. She’d come to town with Katy but elected to visit the Irish widow instead
of doing the rounds with Katy.

“We are partners. Half the claim is Jonah’s. Seems like he wouldn’t leave without knowing if he was rich or not.”

“I’m sure he trusts you to see that he gets everything that is coming to him,” Camilla said.

Katy kicked at the leg of her stool and morosely watched two of Camilla’s seamstresses pin a pattern on a tailor’s dummy.
She’d like to give Jonah what.was coming to him, all right.
Men called women fickle! Two proposals! Or was it three? And then, without saying so much as a “see you later,” he leaves.
Her stomach churned.

“He did show me the article he wrote about Dawson,” Camilla said. “He seemed very glad to have it finished in time to get
it back to the States before winter closed in. It was very good. Jonah’s a talented writer.”

“Yeah. I bet.” That wasn’t all the skunk was talented at. He could take a perfectly stable, satisfied girl and turn her into
a mucky swamp of confused emotions with one goddamned kiss. “Come on, Andy. We’ve got to get back.”