The Great Alone (74 page)

“I don’t know.”

“I wouldn’t need a place to sleep. I can take a blanket with me and sleep in a chair or some corner. And I can bring some bread and food from home, so I won’t have to pay for any meals. What else will I need?”

“You’ll need warm clothes and a heavy coat. The Klondike’s cold in the winter.” Part of him was excited by the possibility of having Marisha Blackwood accompany him, even though he knew it was no place for a woman.

“Some sturdy shoes, too. How soon before the ship sails?”

Shielding his eyes, Justin tried to gauge the sun’s angle in the sky. “A little more than an hour,” he guessed.

“I have to go home and pack my things.” Quickly she began tying the scarf over her hair once more. A smile broke across her face. “Only it’s not going to be my home any more. Will you wait for me at the wharf?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” she promised and took off running along the path back through the woods, her long skirts flying.

Justin stood at the bottom of the gangway and scanned the town’s nearly deserted streets. Behind him, the steamer’s whistle blasted its final call to board ship. The girl was nowhere in sight. He felt a little disappointed, although he was convinced it was for the best. From all the stories he’d been hearing, life was pretty rough in the Klondike. There was no sense adding to the problems by having a woman along. Maybe she’d had second thoughts, too. Or her aunt could have caught her. There was no telling.

“Wait!”

He heard the distant shout and turned, pausing halfway up the gangplank. He spied her running down the street toward the wharf, her arms laden with several large bundles.

“Come on, mate. We’re shovin’ off.” One of the deckhands standing by the mooring lines motioned Justin up the ramp with an impatient wave of his hand.

“Don’t cast off yet. You’ve got another passenger coming.” Justin ran down the ramp to meet her and quickly relieved her of two cumbersome bundles.

“I thought I wasn’t going to make it.” She was panting, her cheeks glowing pink from the exertion of the run, but her smile was wide and shining.

“You almost didn’t. Come on. Let’s get aboard before they leave without us.” He nodded for her to precede him up the gangway.

“I haven’t paid my fare.”

“They’ll take your money on the ship.”

As the vessel steamed out of the harbor, Marisha stood on the stern deck and gazed at the dock, recalling the countless times she’d stood on the old wharf and watched other ships leaving the harbor, wishing she was on board. Leaving Sitka was just about the only thing she’d dreamed about these last few years.

It was barely more than a ghost town. Sometimes when she’d walked along the street, she’d felt like the empty buildings around her—all boarded up and shuttered, alone and forgotten as the world passed by. For so long she’d yearned to escape the strictures her aunt had imposed—strictures that seemed to have only one purpose, and that was to deny her any little pleasure, whether it was a pretty dress, a simple flower, or the companionship of a friend.

Marisha stared at the green-painted spire of St. Michael’s Cathedral, where her aunt Eva worked, and wondered if she’d heard the blast of the ship’s whistle signaling its departure. She doubted it.

At the very last minute, she’d scribbled a note to her aunt and left it on the table, telling her that she was leaving but carefully omitting where she was going. Not that she expected her aunt Eva to come after her. She didn’t. And she knew her aunt wouldn’t understand her reasons for leaving. But no matter how much she hated her aunt’s oppression, she felt no hate in her heart for the woman herself. Because of that, Marisha hadn’t been able to run away without leaving a note for her.

Now she was going. After dreaming about it for so long, she was actually leaving that ugly, drab town with its monotonous rains, that dull, plodding existence, that narrow, lonely life without laughter or beauty. And she was going to have everything she ever wanted—bright satin gowns, pretty trinkets, and beautiful flowers. She was so excited she felt like shouting.

“Having any regrets?” Justin’s voice broke her reverie.

Marisha turned and gazed openly at Justin Sinclair, free now from all her aunt’s strict rules. Justin’s hat was pushed to the back of his head, revealing the dark curly locks of his hair. She liked his face, the strength of his heavy jaw, and the way his hazel eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled—as he was doing now. Constant exposure to the elements had browned his face and burned away much of its youthful softness, but hints of it remained in the smoothness of his cheeks and the gentleness of his lips.

She’d had so little contact with men, especially ones close to her age. Her aunt had seen to that, hardly ever letting Marisha out of her sight when there were men around. But her aunt hadn’t been able to watch her every minute, and on the rare occasions when Marisha had been able to take advantage of an opportunity to talk to a man, she hadn’t understood what all the fuss was about. Men were human beings, not that much different than herself.

As she studied Justin Sinclair, Marisha wondered how much longer she would have stayed in Sitka if she hadn’t talked to him today. The thing that had held her back was not knowing where to go or what to do after she got there. But he’d answered both for her—the Klondike and prospecting for gold. Deep inside, she’d always known that running away wasn’t enough, she had to be running
to
something if she was ever going to realize her dreams.

She also realized that she and Justin were a lot alike. Both had been discontented with their former life; both had wanted more than it could ever give them; both had left family behind; and both had embarked on an adventure to the unknown to find their pot of gold.

“Not a single regret,” she declared unequivocally. “This is the happiest day of my life.” Impulsively she kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

But as she drew back, his hands caught her. The scarf lay loosely about her neck, letting the sea wind blow freely through her hair. Marisha looked at him curiously, observing the stillness of his expression. Then he bent his head and kissed her lightly on the lips.

She said nothing when he released her, and instead faced the ship’s stern. But she was very aware of his presence by her side. She’d never been kissed by a man before. She hadn’t found the experience as revolting as her aunt had intimated it would be. In fact, the kiss had been very pleasant. Her lips still tingled with the warm sensation of his mouth on them.

CHAPTER XLI

As the ship steamed up Lynn Canal, the steep coastal mountains seemed to draw closer and become more jagged and forbidding, like hoary sentinels observing the passage of intruders below. Here and there, blue-faced glaciers lay nestled in the gorges and chasms; an occasional giant ice mass reached all the way to the deep water.

“There it is.” Justin pointed to a long, narrow valley just coming into view off the port bow.

Marisha craned her neck to catch a glimpse of the settlement that had been built on the gravelly delta at the mouth of the river by a former riverboat captain, trader, and prospector named William Moore and called Mooresville after him. She could see the wharf and the long row of buildings that ran parallel to the watercourse responsible for carving out the narrow canyon between the mountains.

“I see it.” It looked bigger than she had expected, and her excitement grew in proportion. Until now, she’d never been out of Sitka in her life, but here was a new place with new people. Her old life was well and truly behind her—and this new one was just beginning.

“The trail to the Klondike leads right up that canyon to White Pass,” Justin told her as he pointed it out. “It’s longer than the route over Chilkoot Pass, but I was told this isn’t as steep or as treacherous.”

Beyond those snowy crests lay Canada and the Klondike—gold nuggets and all that they could buy her. She pulled the wool scarf from her head and stared for a moment at its coarse, dark threads, remembering all the years it had covered her head and scratched her skin. She hated it and the drab life it represented. She threw it over the side; she felt she was casting off all the strict conventions with which she’d been raised. As she watched it flutter onto the dark waters below, she felt free.

“Why’d you throw that away?” Justin protested. “You’ll need it to keep your head warm.”

But Marisha laughed. “No, I won’t, not ever again.” Tied inside her bundle of clothing was an old hooded cloak of her mother’s, lined with black fox. The fur was worn thin in places, but the garment would provide all the warmth she would need.

Justin pushed away from the rail. “We’ll be docking soon. Let’s get our belongings together so we can be ready to leave the ship as soon as they lower the gangway.”

The other passengers on the steamer seemed to have the same idea. As the mooring lines were thrown out to tie the vessel up to the wharf, Marisha was pushed and shoved by those behind her trying to get closer to the front of the line.

Standing on the other side of Justin was a dapper-looking gentleman dressed in a dark tweed lounge suit, with a black Homburg sitting squarely on his head, and his handlebar mustache neatly waxed. His suitcase reminded Marisha of the kind that traveling salesmen used to carry their samples. He appeared indifferent to the jostling, but Marisha noticed that he never budged an inch. When his glance strayed to her, she started to look away, then remembered it wasn’t necessary. He nodded and smiled to her, and Marisha returned the gestures.

“Excuse me,” he said, shifting his attention to Justin. “But you have the look of cheechako—a local term for a newcomer to Alaska. I’ve been here before.” He tapped his suitcase. “Ladies’ corsets. Would you mind a word of advice?”

“No.”

“Before you do anything else, get yourself and the lovely missus a room for the night. Otherwise you’re liable to find yourselves sleeping on the ground. There’s few beds in town, and they’ll be snatched up quick.”

Justin hesitated only an instant, then smiled and nodded. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

But he didn’t correct the man’s erroneous assumption that they were married. Marisha thought the mistake was amusing, and almost laughed wickedly when she imagined her aunt’s reaction, then tried to be forgiving. Her aunt couldn’t help being the way she was, but Marisha was determined not to be like her.

As the gangway went down, Justin and Marisha were swept along by the press of people anxious to leave the ship and get that much closer to the goldfields of the Klondike. The flow carried them into the town’s main street. A sign on one of the many false-fronted buildings that lined both sides of the street proclaimed the town to be “Skaguay.”

“Skaguay.” Justin saw it, too.

“It’s a Tlingit word that means a windy place.” Marisha knew that much. And with the long river valley acting as a channel for the wind, it was probably appropriate.

A stout man in a bibbed apron added more shovels to the barrel that sat in front of the general store bearing the sign. Justin went over to him. “How come the sign says Skaguay? I thought this place was Mooresville.”

“It was—up until the first of August. A bunch of men off the
Queen,
led by a man named Frank Reid, decided Captain Moore didn’t have any right to homestead this valley, so they resurveyed it, laid out this town, and sold the lots. The captain’s taking them to court. But in the meantime you’re in Skaguay.”

It sounded to Marisha as if the man was being cheated out of his land. At least now they had laws in Alaska. It hadn’t always been that way. She remembered her aunt telling her how the creditors had taken everything her parents had owned and she received nothing, simply because there was no law by which property could be passed to a person’s heirs. But that had all changed when Marisha was a child back in 1884 when Congress had passed a measure that provided a judicial system in Alaska and brought it partially under the laws of the State of Oregon. There was still no provision for civil government. Alaska still wasn’t a territory, merely a district, albeit an enormous district.

A wagon pulled by a team of horses came clattering toward her. Marisha moved quickly out of its path, then hurried to catch up with Justin as he started up the street. After the relative quiet of Sitka, Skaguay was bedlam. Horse-drawn vehicles, people, and pack animals jammed the busy street. Marisha could feel the fever of the town—contagious gold fever that spread everywhere and infected everyone.

All up and down the street men hawked items designed specifically for the gold prospector headed for the Klondike. There was everything from clothing and gear to newfangled prospecting equipment. Several times Marisha paused to listen wide-eyed to the spiels and extravagant promises.

On one street corner, a man in a checked suit challenged the handful of men clustered around him: “Test your luck. Is the hand quicker than the eye? All you gotta do is guess which one of these three shells that little dried pea is under. That’s right. Step right up here, young man. I can see ya got sharp eyes. How much ya wanta bet. Six bits, a dollar? A dollar it is. Which shell do you say it is?”

Marisha didn’t think the scrawny youth with the peach-fuzz beard and red and black plaid shirt was as old as she was. He pointed to the middle shell. The man lifted the shell and there sat the pea. The man invited him to try his luck again. Marisha watched while the lad continued to play and win. Finally he walked away with ten dollars jingling in his pocket.