[Alaskan Quest 02] - Under the Northern Lights (3 page)

‘‘Some folks are like that,’’ Jacob admitted. ‘‘I know I’ve had my hardheaded moments. Still, it’s difficult to imagine two such different brothers.’’

‘‘Like I said, my other brother and my sister are no different. Eloise always acted like she had somehow been robbed in being born a woman instead of a man. She was the firstborn, treated like a pampered pet. I remember she actually talked of going to college to simply irritate and offend our mother. I knew nothing would ever come of it, however. Eloise was lazy and concerned only with finding a wealthy husband who could spoil her as father had done.’’

‘‘What about your other brother?’’

‘‘Clyde? Well, he’s really just a more subdued version of Eloise. He demands his own way, but he’s more subtle in controlling situations.’’ Jayce shifted, as if the ground had suddenly become unbearably hard. ‘‘I don’t suppose it really helps matters now to speak ill of any of them. It’s enough to say we weren’t close. I envy you the relationship you’ve had with Leah.’’

Jacob smiled. ‘‘Leah is loyal to a fault. She will never bear you a grudge or desert you. You’ve got a good woman in her. I will miss her, but I couldn’t be happier for her to have found true love in you.’’

Jayce only missed Leah more at Jacob’s warm description. ‘‘I wish I hadn’t wasted so many years.’’ His words were laced with regret.

‘‘You can’t go around bemoaning the past,’’ Jacob said sternly. ‘‘It won’t serve any good purpose. God had a plan in all of it.’’

‘‘I suppose He has a plan in all of this, too, but it’s sure hard to see it for myself.’’

‘‘I really admire you for your willingness to go after your own brother, Jayce. I know I’ve said it before, but I figure you deserve to hear it again.’’

‘‘Well, at least a dozen times a day I find myself wanting to turn around and head as far away as I can get from Chase.’’

‘‘You know, I can go on without you,’’ Jacob suggested. ‘‘After we get back to Last Chance, you could stay there with Leah and care for the dogs and store—maybe get in some good trapping. I can go on and find Helaina and Chase.’’

Jayce considered the proposition for only a moment. It was tempting, but he knew he couldn’t leave Jacob to bear a burden that was clearly his responsibility. ‘‘No. I have to do this. I’m grateful for your help, but if you want to stay in Last Chance, I wouldn’t hold it against you.’’

‘‘No. I’m in this for the duration. This likely isn’t a surprise, but Helaina . . . well, I’ve come to care for her a great deal. I don’t know what her feelings are, but I feel I must try to save her from Chase.’’

‘‘I figured as much, even without Leah mentioning it,’’ Jayce said, smiling. ‘‘But Helaina’s not like us. I seriously doubt she’ll ever stay in Alaska. Are you prepared to go to the States for her?’’

Jacob shook his head. ‘‘I don’t know how to live down there anymore. I can’t see myself doing that.’’

‘‘So what will you do?’’

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Jacob answered honestly. ‘‘I suppose I’ll let her go once we find her. I just pray she’s safe and that Chase hasn’t . . .’’ His words faded off, but Jayce understood the fears Jacob had. Chase had proven he had no regard for life; what would stop him from assaulting a woman’s virtue? Still, that had never been Chase’s style in the past. No one had yet accused him of such things.

‘‘I don’t think Chase would . . . hurt her.’’ He drew a deep breath, pondering his further response. ‘‘Everything Chase has done up until now has been against men. Helaina got in the way and made herself an easy target. I’d honestly be surprised if she’s even with him now. I figure Chase has probably set her free somewhere along the way. As soon as he felt safe and out of the reach of the law in Nome, I’m thinking he probably dropped Helaina off at the nearest village. He wouldn’t want to be bothered with her— she’d serve no useful purpose. He’d probably just consider her inconsequential.’’

‘‘Not if she ran her mouth,’’ Jacob said, frowning. ‘‘You know Helaina. She holds no fear of men like Chase. I think she actually gets her energy from encountering them. If she goes on telling him about her connection to the Pinkertons and how she’s there to catch him, Chase might get the idea that he can hold her for some kind of ransom. He might even believe the Pinkertons would trade him his freedom for Helaina.’’

‘‘I suppose it’s possible. I can’t be sure from one minute to the next what Chase will get a mind to do.’’ Jayce wondered what he could say that would offer his friend some measure of comfort.

‘‘We may have made a mistake in leaving those Pinkerton agents in Nome.’’ Jacob leaned out the tent opening and tossed the remains of his coffee. Cold air rushed in, causing Jacob to hurriedly close the flap. ‘‘There’s strength in numbers.’’ He secured the tent and crawled back to his pallet.

‘‘True, but they would have become a liability to us. They’re not cut out for an Alaskan winter. They weren’t even wearing decent boots. They would have slowed us down—or worse, died on us.’’

‘‘That’s probably true, but I can’t help feeling we would be better prepared to deal with your brother if we had more men.’’

‘‘There’s no way of telling what we need in order to deal with Chase,’’ Jayce admitted. ‘‘But I know we’ve made better time on our own. Those agents will be just as happy filling in for those deceased officers, and the police chief seemed real happy to get the help.’’

‘‘I suppose you’re right.’’

Jayce laughed. ‘‘Of course I’m right. After all, this is the same argument you gave me back in Nome.’’

‘‘Thought it sounded familiar,’’ Jacob said with a smile. ‘‘Besides, I guess the objective is to stop Chase. I can’t keep second-guessing everything else or I’ll never be focused enough to get the job done.’’

‘‘Chase has a way of stealing a man’s attention. It’s like . . . well . . . sometimes I swear he can read my mind—even from a thousand miles away.’’

‘‘Hope not. That would give him too much advantage in this situation.’’

Pulling up a thick wool blanket and heavy fur, Jayce settled in to go to sleep. ‘‘You know, I remember a time when Chase wasn’t so bad. He was about eight years old and he’d come down with the measles. He was pretty sick. I guess we all thought he might die. Chase was pretty scared, but he kept telling our mother that he didn’t want her to take care of him because he was scared she’d get sick and die too. Mother was undaunted by the threat, telling Chase that he was her child, and she would see him through this crisis as she had seen him through others. Chase told her that if he lived, he would be a better boy.’’

‘‘So what happened?’’ Jacob asked, nestling into his own pallet.

‘‘He was good for a time. Really seemed to have a changed heart. Up until his bout with the measles, he’d often lied and cheated at school, was even given to petty thievery and assaults to get what he wanted. My father was at his wits’ end trying to figure out what to do with him. I think Chase was close to being sent to a military academy.

‘‘For a few months after his recovery, Chase walked the straight and narrow. Then one day he just seemed to put it all aside. He grew angry and hateful, and none of us ever knew why. It just got worse after that. Father threatened him, Mother cajoled him, Mrs. Newfield, our cook, promised him her best goodies. Nothing worked. Chase just seemed to go bad.’’

‘‘Something must have happened to make him that way. Especially if he had been good for a time. He had to have seen that being good accomplished more than being bad,’’ Jacob countered.

‘‘But see, that’s the thing,’’ Jayce said, shaking his head sadly. ‘‘I don’t think it did merit him more. I think people still treated him like the same old Chase. They expected the worst from him, and I think after a time, he just decided to meet their expectations.’’

‘‘I guess I can understand how that would happen. Expectations are hard to live up to—or live down, in this case. It’s always hard to imagine what causes a person to choose the wrong path. I know even for myself, some choices just seemed a little short of good—not really bad. You know what I mean?’’

Jayce nodded. ‘‘I’ve been on some of those paths myself. I knew a decision wasn’t completely in keeping with what was right, but it wasn’t really all that bad. Just tilted the wrong direction a little.’’

‘‘Yeah, and you can convince yourself that they aren’t tilted at all if you try hard enough. I know when I ran away to go find my father, I convinced myself that it was a good thing I was doing. See, we’d gotten word that a man killed in an avalanche might be our pa, but we couldn’t be sure. People carried letters back and forth for folks all the time, and this man had a letter from our father. I needed proof—one way or the other—of whether our father was alive. Never mind that I had to defy all of my authority figures to do it, and hurt my sister. She confronted me about it too. Leah was never one to just let you out of a situation—not if she thought it was for your own good. I gave her a necklace and told her I didn’t want her to give up on the dream. I needed for her to keep dreaming, because all of my dreams were gone.’’ Jacob sighed.

‘‘I’ll never forget the way she looked at me the day I left. I knew she’d forgive me in the long run, but there was such a sense of betrayal in her expression that I very nearly didn’t go. Still, I left because I felt I had a good and righteous mission. Maybe a lot of bad choices are made that way.’’

‘‘Maybe, but that can’t be Chase’s excuse. He’s broken the law so many times that he cannot doubt his choices are wrong. Maybe when he was eight years old or even a young man of thirteen, those choices were not clearly understood. But a man of nearly thirty-three must surely know the difference. My only hope is that in going after him—in capturing him and turning him over to the authorities—I might see other people safe from his antics.’’

‘‘It won’t be easy when the time comes,’’ Jacob said.

Jayce stifled a yawn and nodded. He closed his eyes. ‘‘I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with potentially killing my brother, but if it saves the lives of innocent people, then there really is no choice.’’

‘‘You’re not the one killing him,’’ Jacob said softly. ‘‘He’s made his own choice to live this life. He’s bearing the consequence of those choices—or will bear it. You had nothing to do with that.’’

‘‘But I have everything to do with hunting him down.’’ Jayce rolled to his side and tried not to see the image that had haunted him since leaving Nome. It was the shadowy picture of his twin hanging from a gallows. Even more unnerving was the fact that the scene only served to remind him that Chase would have allowed Jayce to suffer the same fate and probably have had little regret for it. The thought angered Jayce, but it also gave him cause to check his heart.

This cannot be about revenge,
Jayce told himself.
Chase has caused me
unknown damage and heartache. He’s given me a reputation I did not deserve.
But this cannot be about revenge. I could never live with myself if I found
that to be the motivation of my heart. It has to be about justice and saving
other people from my brother’s threat. Nothing more or less
.

Chapter Three

L
eah finished packing food provisions in a crate just as Chase came into the store. She hadn’t been able to get all of the supplies put away because Chase had forced her to come and help him handle the dogs.

‘‘Are you nearly done?’’ he asked, sounding strangely nervous. Leah looked up as she secured the pack. ‘‘Yes. Did you see to feed for the dogs?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ he murmured, not sounding at all like the confident man she’d been dealing with.

‘‘Good. Take this and load it on the sled. I need to grab a couple of traps and the rest of my things. Then we can leave.’’

‘‘Traps? Why are you taking traps?’’ He sounded suspicious, but Leah could hardly be bothered. If she allowed herself to think for even one moment about the gravity of the situation, she might well back out and expose Chase.

‘‘We’ll need to stretch our supplies as far as we can. Especially where the dogs are concerned. If the pulling gets hard or the distance extensive, the dogs will need more food. Then there are Jayce, Jacob, and Helaina to consider. Have you provided for them? If not, we’ll need to see to that as well. I have no way of knowing where you are taking me or when you plan to let us go. We can hardly survive for long on what we can carry out in one sled basket.’’ She thrust the heavy bag at him. ‘‘This will last us a couple of weeks at best, even a shorter time once we join the others.’’

‘‘Should be sufficient for two,’’ Chase said, easily hoisting the bag to his shoulder. ‘‘I have a place up north. Near Kotzebue. We shouldn’t have too much trouble reaching it before supplies run out.’’

‘‘But what of the others? If this is sufficient for two, what about Helaina, Jayce, and Jacob?’’

He shrugged. ‘‘I don’t figure to take an entourage with me. One hostage will suffice.’’

Leah felt her knees tremble. Somehow she knew she’d be the one hostage he’d choose. She drew a deep breath to steady her nerves. ‘‘Nevertheless, I’ll take the traps. Fresh meat will keep us alive and the furs will be useful for trading or even using in our clothes.’’ She went to where she stored the traps and pulled out two. One larger and one smaller. Checking them for defects or problems, Leah was finally satisfied that she had all she needed.

‘‘Lay-Ya!’’ Ayoona called from the front door.

‘‘That’s what I hate about the north,’’ Chase declared, turning to go. ‘‘Nobody ever knocks.’’

‘‘There’s no need when you care about each other as if they were family,’’ Leah replied. ‘‘Just go load that, and let me deal with business here.’’ He cocked a brow but said nothing.

‘‘Lay-Ya, are you here?’’ Ayoona pushed back the fur. ‘‘Oopick is with me.’’

‘‘Good. I need to go over our arrangement and make sure you have everything you need.’’ Leah watched as Chase allowed the women to come into the room before edging carefully around them.

‘‘You ladies are looking lovely today,’’ he said with a devilish grin. ‘‘If I weren’t already head-over-heels in love with my wife, I would surely come a-courting.’’ Oopick smiled, but Ayoona ignored him. She was far too intent on speaking to Leah.