I do, I do, I do (45 page)

There was no way to deflect his words, nothing to say.

"Do you know why I've never married?" he asked suddenly.

"I can guess," she said in a whisper.

"A respectable woman wouldn't want a man with my background, and I don't want the other kind." For a minute his voice went soft. "Honey girl, I thought the sun rose and set on you. I thought you were the finest thing that ever came into my life."

Now the tears started, rolling silently down her cheeks.

"But you're no better than me."

"I was no better than you or anyone else even when you had me up on that pedestal, Bear." She raised her good arm and then let it fall back to her lap. "I'm sorry."

"I've never pretended to be what I'm not. I would have bet my life that you were the same way. I guessed from the first that the three of you had a secret. But I thought it was something like maybe you'd run off from your families seeking adventure. Or maybe you were all older or younger than you look. That kind of thing. If your secret was substantial, I figured you would have confided in me when I was confiding in you."

"I wanted to. You don't know how much I wish I had." The tears came faster. She detested it that his last memory would be of her crying, with her eyes red and puffy and her nose running.

" We might have worked this out, Clara, if you'd trusted me and if you'd been truthful. I don't know. Right now I'm mad, and I'm feeling like I've been had. I think you were correct up there on the mountainside when you said you were lucky. All Villette took was your money. I wish that's all you'd taken from me."

When she looked up again, he was gone. And her agony began.

No one slept that night. Eventually they sought the small comfort of warmth and company and gathered together before the fireplace. They wept until their eyes swelled and ached. Until their handkerchiefs soaked through and their bodies felt dry and boneless.

There was nothing compelling enough to rouse them until Tom returned near what passed for dawn in a Yukon winter. Then Clara and Juliette silently rose to offer Tom and Zoe privacy.

"There's no cause to go. Stay seated," Tom said gruffly. He directed his next remarks to a spot directly above Zoe's head. "When Villette returned to Dyea, he left his outfit at Chilkoot. My Indians decided it was more of a priority to pack our customers over the pass than to cause them delay by bringing back the outfit of someone giving up. Before Villette boarded the
Annasett
for Seattle, he directed me to ship his outfit to Loma Grande, California, on the next steamer out. Which I did."

"California," Juliette murmured with a sigh.

"How ill was he?" Clara inquired.

"I've seen men a whole lot sicker climb Chilkoot and go on to Dawson," Tom said in a flat voice. "But Doc Popov did diagnose consumption, and Doc did advise Villette to be on the next steamer out." He shrugged and pushed his hands into his coat pockets. "Frankly I don't care if Villette had a foot in the grave or if he exaggerated a cough as an excuse to go home."

Zoe turned her head toward the fire. Juliette touched her temples as if she had a headache. Clara cradled her sling next to her body.

"How soon do you want to leave?"

They all stiffened and stared at him with startled expressions.

"I guess there's no reason to continue on to Dawson," Clara said finally, breaking a lengthy silence.

Juliette raised shaking fingertips to her lips. "No reason at all."

"I suppose we can leave as soon as Clara's shoulder and side are fully healed and she's up to running behind a sled," Zoe said, speaking to the fire.

Tom stood before them, a handsome weathered man, tall with authority, his expression as hard as the ice on the lake.

"Since you won't be staying in Dawson, you don't need a year's worth of goods and foodstuffs. You can lighten the sleds considerably by selling off everything you won't need during a rough fast run for Dyea. If you lighten your outfits sufficiently, we can put Clara in one of the sleds. You could depart as early as tomorrow morning."

Zoe looked at the others, then gripped her hands in her lap. "I guess we could be ready by then." The others nodded. She gazed up at him, her heart in her eyes. "Will you take us back?"

"No. Luc will be in charge of getting you to Dyea and on board the next ship out." Tom's gaze locked to hers. "Good-bye, Zoe. When you see your brother Jack, give him my regards."

He hesitated as if there were more to say, then he muttered beneath his breath, nodded to Clara and Juliette, and tipped his hat on his head. The door closed softly behind him.

"We're going home," Zoe whispered when the silence became too much to bear. "Tomorrow." A tear hovered on her lashes and then zigzagged down her cheek.

Juliette pressed her handkerchief to her face. "I thought I couldn't cry anymore. I thought all the tears were gone."

Clara walked to the window and leaned forward as if she could see through the ice. "I'd hoped it wouldn't end like this. This is too abrupt, too… I don't know." Despair choked her voice. "One minute I am someone's sun, and an hour later I am his darkness. How can that happen so fast? How can I survive this?"

Clara was touched by the number of people who gathered to see them off and wish them well. Mrs. Eddington and her husband came, and most of the women on the trail. She recognized the men she had beaten in the arm-wrestling tournament, exchanged grins with a couple of men she had laid low during the infamous brawl. But the face she longed to see wasn't there.

She kept hoping Bear would appear until Luc locked the straps over the thick blankets covering her and shouted the order for the sleds to move out. Only then did she allow herself to admit that Bear wouldn't stop her from leaving.

Then, once they were under way, she hoped he would come after her. Their pace was set by Juliette, the slowest member of their party. Bear could easily have caught up. But he didn't.

Her last hope was to find him waiting at their evening campsite, impatiently looking for the first sled, intending to surprise her.

"I know what you're hoping," Juliette said sadly after she'd arrived and inspected the site. "But they aren't coming."

"Look." Zoe's voice sounded peculiar. "The Chilkats are setting up our tent, and it appears that Henry is going to cook."

Overhearing the comment, Luc walked toward them with a smile. "Mr. Tom told us to take very good care of you ladies. Treat you like rich clients."

Zoe's face paled beneath the ash and grease, and she abruptly walked away.

"It isn't a reference to Jean Jacques," Clara insisted later when they were on their cots with their stove heating the cramped space inside the tent.

"Of course it is."

"No, Clara's right." Juliette lifted on an elbow. "Tom loves you, Zoe. He wants the trip back to be as comfortable as it can be, so he instructed his Indians to treat us like rich people. He used a phrase to help his Chilkats understand what he wants them to do. That's all."

"I don't want any favors from him," Zoe snapped. She flopped down on her cot and stared at the tent ceiling.

"Well, I do. I want every favor I can get," Clara said, covering a yawn. "I wonder if Bear paid the Chilkats for this portion of the trip, too."

Juliette cleared her throat. "I paid our way." Fire burned on her cheeks." Tom didn't say anything about the cost of getting us back to Dyea. But I thought…" She shrugged. "By now Mrs. Eddington will have given him the envelope I left."

Zoe bolted up on her cot and swore. "Damn it, Juliette! I don't want your charity!"

"Just say thank you and shut up." Clara lifted her head and scowled.

"It won't kill you to accept a gift or a favor from Tom and me."

"Not only are you forcing charity on me, but you're talking in that prissy little voice! I don't know which I hate more!"

Juliette paused with her brush in her hair. "Did you hear a thank-you in any of that?" she asked Clara.

"I wasn't listening. I was thinking about the ship and putting up with her dying again." She sighed heavily. "Remember cleaning her up, and scrubbing vomit off the floor, and washing her nightgown in a basin the size of a thimble? Compared to saving her life, making this journey more endurable is hardly worth a thank-you. The way I see it, she'll never be out of our debt so we might as well continue to annoy her with gifts and favors."

"You're making me sound foolish and ungrateful!"

"Yes," they shouted in unison.

Zoe glared and then suddenly burst into laughter. "Oh, lordy, just listen to me. I'm angry at Juliette for paying Tom. I'm furious at Tom for making this awful trek a little easier. That
is
foolish." Jumping to Juliette's cot, she gave Juliette a fierce hug and then she embraced Clara, careful not to jostle her sling. "Thank you both."

Clara smiled. "I sure didn't think any of us would be laughing tonight."

"Or ever again," Juliette added.

"I wouldn't have laughed if it weren't for you two." Zoe fumbled for her handkerchief. "I'm such a mess. First I'm laughing, and now I'm crying. Is this how it's going to be?"

It seemed so. Every night for the next four weeks, they tumbled into their sleeping bags at night, exhausted from the day's labor and worn out by conflicting and quickly changing emotions. Sometimes they began conversations with, "Do you remember?…" and ended by laughing until their sides ached. Then someone would sigh, and the tears started.

At the beginning of their sixth week on the trail, Clara insisted on taking a turn running behind a sled and insisted that they rotate riding. As a consequence of a day of rest every third day, they weren't as bone-weary as they had been traveling in the other direction, and their pace improved on the days Juliette rode in the sled.

" Luc says we'll cut at least two weeks if the weather holds and we continue the present pace," Zoe remarked, lowering her face over a steaming cup of coffee. They stood near Henry's cookstove, stamping their feet occasionally to warm their toes. The long hours of darkness did nothing to dispel the frigid temperatures. At night the mercury dropped to thirty degrees below zero. The daytime high might rise to fifteen below.

Clara waved steam at her face. "I'll never forget how beautiful it is up here. The mountains, the snow… It takes my breath away. And the wildlife. Today I saw an eagle and a moose and a wolf."

"Spring must be lovely," Juliette said through her muffler. Her eyes rolled toward them. "What are we going to do when we get back to Seattle? Are we going to keep looking for Jean Jacques ?"

"I don't have the stomach to kill him. Not now."

"I'd like to get my money back, but he probably doesn't have it anymore."

"I've thought about it, and I'm going to Loma Grande." Juliette nodded to herself. "I don't have anything else to do. So I'm going to find him, and I'm going to spit in his face."

"Well,
mein Gott
!" Clara stared. "If
you're
going to Loma Grande, then I'm going, too!" They looked at Zoe.

"You know," she said, "I'm getting mad again. Maybe I do have the stomach to shoot Jean Jacques. Because of him, the man I love turned and walked away. I know, I know. I lied to Tom. But I wouldn't have had to lie if it weren't for Jean Jacques." She threw her coffee on the snow. "Yes, I have a few things to say to that rotten bastard. And yes, I'm going with you to Loma Grande!"

"We'll line up, and we'll all spit on him," Juliette promised. "I can't believe I ever thought I loved that liar and cheat! I didn't know what love really is until Ben."

That's when they learned that crying outside was not a sensible act. At thirty degrees below zero, tears freeze on a woman's cheek.

Chapter 22