Part 3 (2/2)

She laughed. It was brittle and made his heart sink. What had made this young woman so fierce? So unreachable?

She laughed again, this time making light of it. With a shrug of one shoulder she turned back to her rice and asked, ”What do you want to know?”

Noah felt his throat constrict. How could she change like that, from one moment to the next, into someone else? He grappled with a hundred questions, half wanting to run out into the familiar territory of his frozen land. But he couldn't give up. There must be some key, some way to unlock her barriers. ”What kind of family did you have?”

She stiffened, almost imperceptibly. Had he not been focusing on every nuance of her stance he would have missed it.

”Oh, you know. Just the normal kind.”

Noah pressed on. ”How old were you when you lost your parents?”

Her head was bent over the pot in apparent concentration. She had knotted up her dark hair and some curls had fallen, making the back of her neck look vulnerable in its graceful beauty. He wanted to kiss her there more than anything he could ever remember wanting. His body ached to take her into his arms and kiss her.

”I don't remember. My grandparents raised me. We lived on a farm in Illinois.”

”I thought you were from Seattle?” he managed from a tight throat.

Elizabeth turned from the pan, brus.h.i.+ng past him and busying herself setting dishes on the table. ”I am from Seattle. I moved out west after my grandparents died.”

”All alone?”

”Yes, well, I had friends. And I made a decent living for myself.”

”Panning gold?” he asked with more heat than he meant to express aloud.

”Yes, and doing other odd jobs. I was a seamstress at a dress shop in Seattle.”

”At least that was a respectable job.”

Elizabeth snapped, ”I am sorry to offend your high moral standards, but I did what was necessary. I couldn't pay the boarding house and feed myself on what they paid me to work fourteen-hour days, sewing until my eyes were so blurred I could hardly see to get home at night. When I heard about this gold rush, I jumped at the chance to make a real future for myself.”

”And risk your life in the process!” He was nearly shouting, shouting at the unfairness of it all. That she had to be so strong all the time. That she didn't want him. That he might never be able to scale the walls she'd constructed around her heart. But she didn't know that.

”Because I'd have to risk my life in the process,” she said low and fierce and whisper-thin. ”I had nothing else left to lose.”

He shoved away from the table, not knowing how to answer that except to say, ”Dead people don't have futures, Elizabeth.”

What did it matter to him what she did with her life, anyway? It wasn't as if he could do anything about it. Stalking over to the hook on the wall, he pulled his coat down and shrugged into it.

”I'm going to feed the dogs.”

ELIZABETH WATCHED HIM go with an angry glare. How dare he try to tell her about her life. If he knew about the things she'd done, he would be finished with her. She imagined the shock and even disgust on his face had she told him of the agreement she'd struck with Ross. She shook her head slowly. She couldn't think of that.

There were many other, lesser transgressions to shock him with that she knew by heart, like a creed, the mantra of her existence: the subtle lies, the petty thefts, the calculating maneuvers to get what she wanted, what she needed to survive to the next day, the men on the goldfields a lonely men, who were so easy to take advantage of. She'd grown overly confident, thinking she could play the game without paying a price. And she'd been very successful, until Ross.

No, Noah could not possibly understand hera”he was from a different world. He certainly wouldn't want her as his business partner, and she needed him to believe she had agreed to his plan. She needed the help of his friends to get through the winter. Never mind that for the first time she felt the emotional upheaval of a dull pain in her chest and enormous guilt when she looked into his clear blue eyes as he, hopeful and excited, spoke of their partners.h.i.+p come spring. She squashed the emotions. A conscience was something only the rich could afford.

Throwing elk steaks onto the hot skillet, she attempted to cook the meat. The steam and sizzle coming from the blackened pan sounded like she felt. Why must he probe and poke at her? He knew nothing about the black, empty hole that gaped inside her where his questions lurked. What had happened to her parents? As if she hadn't wondered that a thousand times and then determined to wonder about it no more. Why did he have to make her think of it again? But she couldn't seem to help it. The one memory locked deep in the recesses of her mind, a place she hadn't visited in years, mercilessly surfaced. A woman a soft, warm, comforting, motherly embrace. A smile that had beamed at her. Eyes that had glowed with love. Had she imagined it? She was afraid to dwell on it, that it might disappear into nothing but a wishful daydream. No, it must have been her mother. Her real mother.

Then the memory of alonenessa”feeling so utterly alone and frightened, with no one to come when she called. Dark rooms and loud voices and children crying, all blurred together for the first years. She'd learned the value of disappearing into silence those years.

The memories were clearer around age five when, she had since concluded, she must have been moved to a different orphanage. She'd received a good education and plenty of food, simple and repet.i.tive though it was. The girls were like girls anywhere, she supposed, some kind and loyal, some spiteful and mean. It hadn't been bad, really, but it would take more humility than she possessed to tell Noah about it. She didn't want or need his piteous stare.

The real trouble had started later when she was adopted. She ground her teeth, turning the meat over in the pan, stabbing at it with a sharp fork, as she thought back on pinch-faced, evil-eyed Margaret Dunning and her s.h.i.+ftless husband, Henry. She repressed a shudder, remembering how they had inspected her, making her stand and turn around, examining her teeth and then her body before taking her home with them. It didn't take long to figure out what the Dunnings had really wanted. With them, she'd learned all the colors of dirt, how hard clay was and full of rock, how little by little even a skinny girl could move mountains. She learned to hide food in her pockets and then, when they'd found that, in underclothes and broken-down boots. She learned the sting of a switch, the sound it made as it slashed through the air depending on its thickness, and the haphazard aim of blind anger.

It had taken six long years before the Dunnings had finally realized that, even with her, they still couldn't make a living off the dirt. Henry came home one day, drunker than usual with more than whiskey. He'd been struck by gold fever. He'd heard of a strike in San Juan, Utah. The next instant, it seemed, they were moving west. It had been her first ray of hope. Out west she could run away. There would be opportunities and, like the prairie schooners she watched sail by, she intended to float away on the first one that came along. But the unexpected happened: Elizabeth caught the fever. Gold was all she thought about. The next big strike was always just around the corner, hope a heavy aphrodisiac. And it was contagious. All three worked doggedly to find the mother lode. Elizabeth had been sure that gold was the answer to all her problems.

One day Henry had shown up in camp after a long absence with a toothless, ear-splitting grin, as excited as she'd ever seen him.

”Where you been? What you been up to?” Margaret had asked suspiciously, eyes narrowed. ”You're hidin' somethin', I know you.”

Henry shook his head, grinning, something he rarely allowed himself to do because of his blackened, rotten teeth. He dug into the pocket of a pair of faded tan pants. What he pulled out left them both speechless. It was the biggest chunk of gold they had ever seen, laying right in the center of his dirty palm.

The air whooshed out of Margaret as she s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of his hand. ”Where'd you get that?” she demanded, looking at it with amazed glee in her eyes.

Henry's chin rose up and his chest puffed out with pride. ”I found me a new claim, woman. Gold showing on the surface, thick as my wrist.”

Elizabeth was aghast. Henry never spoke to Margaret like that, as if he demanded her to respect him. Margaret quickly burst his bubble.

”You? A new claim?” she shrieked. ”Why you no-good, lying thief. You stole that or did somethin' evil to get it.”

Henry shook his head but didn't look her in the eyes. ”N-no,” he stammered. ”I didn't do nothin' wrong. Now you two pack up. We got to get back to that claim afore' someone else takes it. I covered the gold, so's I could come back for the both of y'uns. Didn't have to do that, ya know. I could'a left you, woman. Gone off and got rich on my own. But I didn't. I came back for you.” He turned suddenly toward Elizabeth, eyes mean and hard. ”And you, girlie. We got plenty of work for you to do, so be quick about it and get this camp broke up.”

Elizabeth turned away before he could see the flare of rebellion in her eyes and began gathering supplies. Had Henry really struck the mother lode? It seemed impossible that he'd had such luck. Like Margaret said, he had probably done something bad, terrible even, to gain possession of that nugget. But maybe, just maybe, something had finally gone their way.

They packed up that morning and started west, Henry muttering about a dirt trail head that he had marked with a large rock. Three long, exhausting days later they came to the new claim. Elizabeth could not believe what her sight told her. Under an overhanging cliff, there was a vein of gold showing on the surface of the rock that trailed in a glittering path from their feet to higher than Henry's head with no end in sight. It promised to be a fortune.

She hadn't been fooled though. A person didn't stake a claim on a spot that had already been mined as this one had, especially if gold was showing on the surface. Only an idiot would part with a claim like thata”or a dead man.

Margaret must have thought the same, for she accused Henry of murdering a man to jump the claim. Henry had at first denied it, for days stuck to his story and then, in a sobbing, drunk fit, admitted to the deed. What Elizabeth overheard later that night had sent the first real, chilling fear for her life coursing through her entire body. Husband and wife had talked at length of how they would blame the murder on Elizabeth and concocted an elaborate story to support their claim. She'd known then that she had to escape. They would never share the wealth with her anyway. She forced herself to see the trutha”that they would use her, use what little strength she had to help dig out the gold, and then horde it for themselves and blame the murder on her.

In the end, she heard that a man's body was found downstream from the claim. The body had a bullet hole in it, and some men had recognized the miner. They were looking for the killer. All she knew at the time was that Henry had suddenly become nervous. The end had finally come. Elizabeth had to get away from the Dunnings and whatever law would eventually catch up to them. That's when she'd escaped. The man and woman had been so distracted by the gold that it had been easy.

At seventeen years old she had crept away in the middle of the night and joined a family going to Northern California, telling them her parents had been taken by typhoid. It was a common enough occurrence and they hadn't questioned her.

Reaching California, Elizabeth had finally broken out on her own. She'd mined here and there for as long as the gold lasted, alternately panning and sewing for a living. Then she'd gradually worked her way to Seattle and the edge of the continent. After settling into a meager existence as a seamstress, she'd met Ross and learned that the Dunnings were looking for her. The knowledge terrified her, wearing grooves of fear into her mind. What if they were still trying to convince the law that she was responsible for the murder? Miners hung men for stealing, much less killing. It wouldn't matter that she was a woman, either. Both Henry and Margaret were experts at lying and swindling. If they had made it look like she'd done it, then her only chance was to get as far away as possible. And she could never see Ross again. What he had done to her a no, she couldn't think of that.

Then, in the middle of July, just before her twentieth birthday, her salvation came. Word of gold in the Yukon Territory of Canada reached Seattle. Gold was waiting, hidden in the streambeds of a place so vast, so treacherous, so forbidding that she could lose herself. Something told her, in the pit of her stomach, that she would find what she was looking for here, in this icy wilderness laden with streams of gold.

January 5, 1884.

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