Northern Lights Trilogy (133 page)

She turned away to leave him, determined not to watch as he walked out of her life again, but then she paused and spoke over her shoulder without looking.

“What hurts the most,” she said through her tears, “was that we were not enough, Soren. Your wife, your children. And we still are not.”

She walked away, not looking at him, even as he yelled, “I’ll be back, Kaatje. For you and our girls.”

“No!” she cried, turning. “Don’t bother! Don’t bother to come back. If you go away, stay away!”

“It’ll be all right, Kaatje,” he said, ignoring her words. “Because I’ll be rich. It’ll be all right! I’ll be back!” She let the kitchen door swing shut behind her. Christina and Jessica stared up at her, tears in their eyes, obviously having heard most of the argument. They moved as one—as if to go to Soren—but Kaatje held them back. She pulled them into her arms, embracing them, wanting them to feel her determination to never let them go, even if their father did again and again.

“It’ll be all right,” she oddly found herself saying, crying with them, stroking one head of hair and then another. “It’ll be all right.”

James watched as Soren left the roadhouse and jogged over to the mercantile. In half an hour he was out again, with a satchel of supplies in his hands and new boots on his feet.

It had begun. And as suspected, Soren was running to the gold mine like a grizzly to a fat salmon. James kicked the boardwalk on the opposite side of the street and waited for Soren to see him, but the man did not see anything other than his own visions of sugarplums. He hurried down the street toward the ferry gate, apparently intent upon buying his way to Skagway and then hiking over the pass.

James smiled for the first time since his days with Kaatje in Ketchikan. The dog was leaving town! But his smile quickly fell. Soren’s departure didn’t clear his way to Kaatje. On the contrary. To remain faithful to his decision in Ketchikan, he would need to steer clear. The thought made him ache inside. She would need support now, but he couldn’t be there for her. The thought of it threatened to pull him into parts like a man drawn and quartered.

He clenched and unclenched his hands as he paced along an alleyway, wanting to be away from prying eyes. He needed a task, a vision, something to keep him busy and away from Kaatje while Soren was away. While Soren was away! Suddenly an idea came to him—James would follow the man back into the Interior. Every panting breath, every aching step, every decision of Soren Janssen would be echoed by James Walker until he knew the truth.

With luck, he would be the one to show Soren the new deed to the mine and the name on the paper.

By the third day on the trail, Soren knew that he was being followed. On the second, he had decided that it was a coincidence, that another party had simply departed Skagway the day after him, as he had the day after the party before him. But on the third day he knew. He could sense it, as he could sense a claim-jumper working his mine. And he could guess who it was. James Walker.

The man was like a flea on an alley dog’s hind leg. Soren had not been able to take a decent drink while in Juneau, to say nothing of satisfying his pent-up frustration from being without a woman for too long. He could see why Walker would shadow him while in Juneau, waiting for him to trip up, so he could lay claim to Kaatje. But why here along the trail? What would Soren’s journey mean to the lout? Walker didn’t care anything for him. Unless he was in cahoots with the Indian who’d stolen his claim. If anything, Soren’s departure could have been his chance to move in on Kaatje, to tell her what a fool Soren was for leaving her. Why not stay with Kaatje and make the most of the time he had with her before her husband returned instead of trailing him? And Soren was not meandering along the trail. He was moving along, like a man possessed. But James was matching his speed.

And he kept matching his speed, day after day. Somewhere between Lake Laberge and the river, Soren lost him. Perhaps Walker had turned back or taken ill. He cared not. All he cared about was getting to his mine and returning with his fortune. With some gold nuggets in his pocket, he could win Kaatje back with pride. What did James Walker have, after all? Years in the Interior? Superior hunting skills? Ha! As if that could satisfy a woman. No. A woman needed fine things to wear and a husband of whom she could be proud. He was going to make Kaatje proud, build the finest mansion Juneau had ever seen, and buy his daughters anything they wanted. He stayed up
nights, thinking about all that he could finally accomplish with the wealth he would bring home in shimmering gold.

James passed Soren one night along the end of Lake Laberge and, by hiking into the night, assumed he was gaining at least a half-mile on him each day. If he calculated it right, that would put him a day ahead of the man in reaching the mine, more than enough time to find out what had transpired in the mine and prepare for the confrontation that was as sure as the river’s flow.

He passed familiar sites—where he and Kadachan had saved Kaatje from the grizzly, where he had pretended to ignore her as she gathered early berries but could do anything but, and finally, the mine, where he had first come to care about Kaatje’s tender heart. Even the glimpse of it as he rounded the bend of the river made his heart palpitate and his lips clench together. Hadn’t this place been the place of incredible pain to Kaatje? Where she saw the evidence of an ill-begotten love, a family abandoned? As if it were the same day, he could remember following her deep into the woods, her slim form racing through the trees and columns of light cascading from the canopy above. He could hear her guttural cry of anguish.

It made him want to shake his fist at God, those memories. But for now, he willed himself to follow the direction he had found in Ketchikan—to remain Kaatje’s silent protector, to flush out the truth in Soren before leaving her alone with him He spent his frustration on the effort of getting the skiff to the river’s edge, which was no small task in the spring ice melt. The whole journey had been trying, as difficult as last year’s, except that now he missed Kaatje, so it was much lonelier.

Kadachan was at the river’s edge as he approached, and James caught his attention with an owl call. It was a poor imitation, and Kadachan thought it hilarious each time James tried. The Tlingit Indian was a master at it, as he was at ten other bird calls. The man smiled broadly and lifted one large hand in greeting. He waited for James to
float near, then waded to thigh depth to help bring him to shore. Once there, they clasped hands and walked toward the makeshift shelters the men had built of cedar boughs and small logs, not wanting to wait any longer than necessary to get the mine up and running.

“It is as they say?” James asked. “You have struck gold?”

Kadachan smiled again and went to a corner trunk. He opened it and then tossed a huge nugget, twice the size of the one Kaatje had found, to his old friend. James whistled under his breath at the weight of it. “And there are others?”

The Indian bent and then, with some effort, carried the small trunk over to James, who whistled again, at a loss for words. The trunk was filled mostly with smaller nuggets, but here and there were other sizable rocks, of similar diameter to the one Kaatje found in the water. James shook his head. “I thought it would be a ruse. I truly thought it would only be something to flush Soren out of the thicket, not a real mine.”

The other men sat around, smoking Indian cigars and watching their boss appreciate their work. “You all have done a fine job. You will be compensated as promised.”

“How about now?” grumbled the fat man.

“How ’bout it?” James repeated with a smile. He searched the trunk for seven nuggets that were comparable in size, then tossed one to each of the men. “You need to understand that what I say is true,” he said quietly. “I will treat you fairly. This is not a bait-and-switch game. You will get what I promised you.”

They hooted and swore and laughed, looking at their individual prizes. They had accomplished all that James had hoped and more. And he would fulfill his promises to them as he had said.

And in thanks, they would back him up when Soren came the next day. He was sure of it.

Soren grew excited as the shoreline became more familiar. He was nearing home or the closest thing to it that he recently remembered.
He loved these deep forests of cedar and pine and maple. Yet he would have to be careful. He had not left on good terms when he had spirited Natasha off to distant lands. Her father would still like to have words with him, he was sure, if not a good flogging. They were a fairly peaceful tribe, but Soren knew that he had crossed the line in taking Natasha away from her family.

Briefly he thought of his son and his beautiful brown eyes. His quick smile. But Soren put him out of his mind. His first obligation was to his elder children. When he was rich and Kaatje and the girls had all they wanted, then he would go back to care for the mother of his son. But that would be a quiet affair—he never wanted his affiliations with another woman to hurt Kaatje again. The pain was deep in her eyes, and Soren knew he was close to never winning her back again. This was it. As a fellow Irish miner once said to him, if he did not find the gold at the end of this rainbow, there would certainly never be a rainbow again.

He rounded the last bend in the river and scowled as he saw a group of men encamped on shore. Prepared for the worst, he paused and strapped on a gun belt, a Colt .45 secured low on each hip. Both were loaded, as was his shotgun that lay across the center seat of the rowboat. He thought about getting it, bringing it closer to him, when a man rose and pointed in his direction. He had been discovered.

Setting his chin in determination, he poled toward the encampment. This was his land, his claim. It would be harder if they had indeed struck gold on the property. They would be infinitely more reluctant to depart. But nonetheless it was his. He was feeling fairly confident until he saw the form of James Walker edge out of the group and walk to shore. Right behind him was Kadachan. He swallowed his surprise at seeing James ahead of him when he had thought him behind.

The skiff ground into the pebbles, and Soren walked to the end, hopping out and turning to pull it more firmly onto shore as if the men were not there. Then he turned and walked right to James, his heels sinking in the soggy ground with each determined step.

“You’re on my land.”

“No, we’re not.”

“Yes, you are.” He walked past the men toward the cliff side where he had left tracer mine materials. “These are my tools you’re using.”

“You left them behind. We have made this claim our own since you abandoned it.” James’s expression bothered Soren. He was too confident.

“I left them behind only for a season. Here I am again,” he said, pulling his arms out to the sides as if greeting old friends. “Now it is time for you all to go.” His hands came down to rest on either pistol. “And you are to leave any gold you have found.”

The men stayed where they were, a formidable lot.

“You did find gold, right?” Soren asked. “It was my mine that was reported in the newspaper? There aren’t many others up and running yet that I’ve seen, unless things have changed since last year.”

“Oh, we found gold, all right.” James turned, picked up the heavy, small trunk, then dropped it to the fine gravel before him and lifted the top.

Soren fought the urge to gasp. He let a thin smile split his lips. “Do not worry,” he said to the other men around James. “I will reward you for your work. You will be paid.”

“With what?” James asked, his voice little more than a rumble.

“With this.”

“This is not yours.”

“It most certainly is.” He picked up the biggest gold nugget in the trunk as he searched his vest pocket and produced a land deed for James to read. How could the man be so stupid? Did he think he could send a group of men here to rob him blind and Soren would not see? He held it out to James, and the man calmly took it.

“Yep,” he said with a nod. “You have a serious problem, Soren.”

“Oh?” Soren bantered back.

“Yes. This deed here expired some months back. The land claim has been refiled under another name.”

Soren’s eyes shot up to meet James’s laughing gaze. James didn’t drop his eyes as he reached into his own vest pocket and took out a leather case. Gingerly, he removed a pristine white document and read it, as if to remind himself. “Mm-hmm, that’s it. This mine is no longer in the name of Soren Janssen. This claim has been filed in honor of Kaatje Janssen. It looks to me like your wife is a wealthy woman, Soren. And you’re out in the cold once again.”

May 1889

J
ames had watched the blood drain from Soren’s face as his eyes scanned the land deed again and again. It had given him infinite pleasure to watch the man turn away, his shoulders sagging in defeat. But what truly bothered James was Soren’s expression as he climbed back into the boat and pushed off into the river. His eyes never left James’s—and they were cold, so cold.