The Pride of Hannah Wade (47 page)

“It’s a scarf old women in Russia wear. So the word: both scarf and old woman. It’s also a word for grandmother—which I’m never likely to be.” The knot initially defied attempts to loosen it. Using both hands, she finally to free the ends and pul the scarf off her head.

“Glory be.” Justin stared in surprise.

Her hair was a bright yellow-gold that glistened in the suniigni; it was neither orassy nor tarnisnea witn dark streaics, but pure and rich. The contrast between her dark, almost black eyes and brows and her golden-blonde hair was staking and dramatic. The feeling of shock was stow to leave him even though he noticed how amused she seemed to be at his

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, unable to get over it.

She smiled wryly and moved away from the rock, absently swinging the scarf’ in her hand. “Beauty is a curse. That’s what Aunt Eva says.” Despite her attempt at lightness, Justin detected an underlying bitterness to her tone. “A girl shouldn’t be concerned about her looks. She should dress plainly. Wanting to took pretty is vain, and vanity is a sin. This is the only kind of clothes I have, but someday I’m going to have beautiful gowns to wear. Someday,” she repeated with a determined lift of her chin.

“I don’t care what your aunt says, she’s wrong. Nobody with hair like yours should cover it up. My mother always said a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.”

She touched her hair, smoothing the strands back to the golden knot at the nape of her neck. “Her crowning glory. I like that,” she murmured thoughtfully, then seemed to dismiss it from her mind. “Let’s walk this way. There’s something I want to show you.” She followed a feint trail that paralleled the shoreline for a ways, then led into the woods. Justin was too intrigued by her to care where they were going.

Huge trees towered all around them, their overtopping branches shutting out any direct light from the sun. A high humidity made the air seem heavy as they walked along the path through the forest, their footsteps mating hardly any sound, cushioned by the soft, composted soil.

“Have you ever seen gold? Real gold, I mean.” She didn’t wait for his answer. “I saw some once. Blue Pants Kelly—he’s an old prospector from around, here. He used to be in the army, but even after he got out, he still wore the blue pants from his uniform. That’s where he got his name. One time, he showed me a piece of ore that had thin slivers of gold running through it.”

“They’ve found gold around here?”

“Some.” She nodded. “There are a couple of mines over on Silver Bay and a stamp mill, but I guess they haven’t recovered any large quantities of gold.” She walked a few steps farther in silence. “I’d like to find some gold.”

“It’s up there in the Klondike. Only there it’s placer gold—loose gold. All a man has to do is pan it out of the streams. You don’t have to dig tunnels or have a lot of machinery to crush it free from the rocks. You just put some
gravel in your pan and pick out the nuggets. It’s so easy a child could do it.”

“Or a woman,” she murmured as if to herself.

Through a break in the trees just ahead of them, Justin saw the shimmer of sunlight reflected off the surface of water. The towering spruce thinned out where the ground sloped down to the water’s edge, the finger of tend claimed by a tangle of tall brush and bushes. The graveled shoreline was strewn with huge drift top, some almost as tall as a man. As they rounded the point of land, Justin’ saw the mouth of a river.

“That’s the Indian River,” Marisha Blackwood stated. “The Russian name was Kolosh Ryeka. See that bluff of land back in the forest?” She pointed it out to him. “The Kolosh, or Tlinget Indians, as everyone calls them today, had a large fort there. This is the site of the big battle between the Russians and the Tlinget. The Russian ships ancnored in this bay to bombard the fort with their cannon. My great-great-grandfather, Zachar, was married to a Tlinget woman. Her people had attacked the first fort the Russians built on Baranov Island and killed all but a few men who managed to escape. My great-great-grandfather was one of them. He was on one of the ships in the bay when the Russians came to retake the island. He didn’t know it, but my great-great-grandmother—his wife—was in the fort with their young son. They escaped into the forest before the Russians overran the fort. It was several years before she and my great-great-grandfather were reunited.” She turned, looking into his face, then gazing again at the water. “I find it interesting to know that § her son had died that day—my great-grandfather —I wouldn’t be here now to tell you about it.”

“Are you the last of your family?”

“No. I have a cousin, Dimitri. He’s a fisherman out of Wrangell. From things my aunt has said, I think he does some smuggling, too.” Her hunt smile seemed to indicate approval of his illicit activities, no matter what her aunt thought. “Most of my aunts and uncles left Alaska shortly after the Americans took over. Nobody’s heard from them in years. I guess in the Russian days, Sitka was quite a city. When I was a little girl, my momma used to tell me about the fancy dress balls they had at the castle. And the concerts and the plays.”
Pausing, she crooked her mouth in a wry slant, “My aunt sap that the minute they raised the American flag over Alaska, everything here changed for the worse.”

“It doesn’t sound like she has a very good opinion of Americans.”

“She doesn’t. A few years ago someone suggested to her that she should apply for citizenship papers. I thought she was going to explode. She still considers herself to be Russian. I don’t think she likes that I was born an American.”

“And a very beautiful one.” He still marveled over that, and he suspected that the trace of Indian in her ancestry was responsible for her incredibly dark eyes and well-defined cheekbones ... maybe even the recklessness he sensed she felt.

“Now you’re trying to flatter me.” She gave him an accusing look, then quickly turned away. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?” Justin frowned.

“A girl shouldn’t took a man in the eye. My aunt says that’s brazen.” She cocked her head in his direction. “Is it?”

“I don’t know.” He was slightly taken aback. It was something he’d never really thought about. “Some might consider it bold.”

“I don’t see how you can talk to somebody without looking at them once,” she declared, then giggled. “Of course, my aunt doesn’t want me to talk to men.”

“I’m glad you don’t do everything as your aunt tells you.”

“I know she has her reasons for feeling the way she does. She’s told me some of the things sometimes I think she’s just jealous because she’s so homely no man would want to talk to her. She won’t even let me plant towers in the garden. Vegetables, that’s all we’ve got. ‘You can’t eat flowers, so why waste the time and space growing them,’ she says. Someday I’m going to have a garden and grow nothing but flowers in it. I’m so tired of everything being so ugly and drab and never being able to talk to anyone. I hate it!”

“That’s the way I felt about fishing. Ever since I was eleven years old, I worked on my father’s fishing boat. I got sick of the smell and the slime—of my clothes being so stiff and caked with ocean sat that they could walk without me—of
working a ran until you dropped, then unloading your catch at a cannery and going back out for another.”

“And you left—walked out just like that?” She snapped her fingers.

“Yup. I happened to be {town on the waterfront when the
Portland
docked in Seattle. I saw them unload the shipment of gold from the Klondike—seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth—a ton of gold. And I knew I wanted to get some of it. Eight then and there, I booked passage on the first ship I could get sailing north. Once I made up my mind, I just did it. Here wasn’t anything to think about. I wanted to go, so I left.”

“I want to go, too,” she stated. “Will you take me to the Klondike with you so I can pan for gold? I swear I’ll do whatever you tell me if you’ll only let me go along with you.”

Justin was momentarily stunned. “Hey, you’re welcome to come along, but you’ll have to pay your own way. I’ve got a little money with me but that has to buy supplies for the trek over the pass and on to Dawson City. The trail is going to be rough.” He doubted that a woman could make it—or that he wanted the burden of a female, no matter how pretty she was.

“I’m strong. I won’t slow you down,” she assured him as if reading his mind. “I’ve got a little money put by. I’ve been thinking about taking the mailboat to Juneau and seeing if I couldn’t get a job there. But I’ve heard that unless you work for the Treadwell Mining Company, there aren’t many jobs to be had. If all you have to do in the Klondike is pick nuggets out of a gold pan, then I shouldn’t have to worry about a job.” She paused, but he could see her mind was still working. “How much do you think a ticket on your ship would cost?”

“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 comer. 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 tiled to pup 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 anymore. 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

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 hi 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

“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 green-painted spire of St.Michael’s Cathedral. She’d left a note for her aunt, telling her that she was living but carefully omitting where she was going. Not that she expected her aunt 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 strictures, she felt no hate in her heart, for the woman’ herself. Because of that, the hadn’t been able to run away without leaving a note for her.

But she was going. At last she was 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 bruned away much or its youthful softness, but faints of it remained in the smoothness of his cheeks and the gentleness of his lips.

Marisha was glad she’d met him today; she wondered how much longer she would have stayed in Sitka if she hadn’t. It was after she had heard him express the same discontent with his former life that she felt, and his decision to abandon it to find something better, that she had made up her own mind to leave. She was not sorry she had left; she was glad.

“Not a single one,” she declared unequivocally. ‘This is the happiest day of my life.” Impulsively she kissed him on the check. “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 uncertainly, 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 teed 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.