Gold Dust (6 page)

“Well forgive me for not bowing, Your Highness. I didn’t know your command was law.”

“I gave you money—”

“Which you owed me.”

“Dammit, Miss O’Connell. You—”

“Watch your language, buster.” She grinned. “You’re with a lady.”

“A lady, is it? I don’t think so. A lady does not offer her services as companion to a single man traveling alone. A lady
does not go running off hell-bent for leather on a wild-goose chase to the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness.”

“Hell-bent for leather? Very good, Mister Newspaper Writer. Did you use that expression in one of your stories about the Old
West?”

Jonah’s eyes narrowed. He really could look intimidating when he tried, Katy noted. Usually, his smile and the
resident
sparkle in those blue eyes drew attention away from the breadth of his shoulders and obvious fitness of his physique.

“What’s more,” Jonah said through clenched teeth, “a lady does not patronize saloons or brawl with the scum therein.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call you scum, Mr. Armstrong.”

“I wasn’t talking about me!”

“Oh. That’s right. It was you and me against the scum. I pulled your bacon out of the fire. Remember?”

“I remember, Miss O’Connell.”

“You can call me Katy.”

He seemed to make an effort to control himself. She could see a muscle at the hinge of his jaw flex in rhythmic agitation.

“Your turn,” she prompted. “I can call you…”

At the expectant lift of her brows, he sighed in resignation. “Jonah.”

“Not bad. Better than some other names I could call you.”

He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Look, Miss… uh… Katy, I admit that I’m responsible for the misunderstanding that brought
you here. I will accept that you offered your services in good faith.”

“I did!” Katy confirmed emphatically.

“And if you say that you had no intent of deceiving me as to your gender, I will believe you.”

“Big of you. If I was pretending to be a boy, I’m sure I wouldn’t have gotten on the train in this getup.” She spread her
arms to better display her feminine attire. Jonah’s gaze traveled in a single instant from the top of her coiled black braids,
over her face, down her neck, and then seemed to hesitate for a split second at each and every brass button on her tailored
jacket. He blinked and shook his head slightly. Katy suddenly felt exposed. Heat crawled up her neck and into her cheeks.

A waiter—one other than the fellow who had shown them to their table—chose that moment to ask for their order. “The lamb and
beefsteak are both very good tonight.”

“The lamb for both of us,” Jonah said.

“Nope. I want the beefsteak,” Katy insisted. “Rare.”

Jonah’s mouth drew tight. “And wine. Red.” He lifted a brow at Katy. “You do drink wine as well as whiskey, don’t you, my
dear?”

“I do. But it was cold tea. Not that I don’t drink whiskey,” she said as the waiter left.

“I’m sure you do,” Jonah sighed. “Katy, as I was saying, I admit that this situation is not your fault. And it’s not that
I have anything personally against you—or… or women in general. I’m very fond of women, in fact.”

“I’ll bet.” Katy suffered a sudden and inexplicable vision of Jonah Armstrong’s eyes warm with passion, his long, blunt fingers
caressing a woman’s face, his mouth descending to a woman’s waiting lips… Her face flamed, and she felt an urge to strike
out. “You have the look of a man who has flocks of women clucking around you.”

“That’s not what I meant!” Jonah denied sharply.

“Then what did you mean?”

“I meant that I respect women. But a gold rush is not a place for a female.”

“Horsefeathers!”

“Katy, men are dangerous animals when they run in herds, and they’re at their very worst when they’re in a herd running after
gold. And the goldseekers would be the least of your worries. Think of the natural dangers: wild animals, storms, treacherous
rivers, insects, mud. Not to mention the lack of privacy. Natural feminine delicacy requires a certain accommodation, and
a rough trail in the wilderness alongside thousands of men is not a place to find it.”

Katy snorted her contempt.

“The difficulties are legion!” Jonah insisted. “Only one kind of woman would subject herself to that kind of peril.”

“Peril! Hmph! You’re the one going to be in peril!”

“We’re talking about you, not me. You might shoot like a Wild West show sharpshooter. You might have the courage of a bear
and be able to outdo Daniel Boone in the woods, but the Klondike is still no place for a woman. It’s not safe. It’s not proper.
There are things that a woman can do that a man can’t do—having babies, for instance. And there are things men can do that
women can’t.”

“Like going to the Klondike to find gold?”

“That’s right!”

“That’s the biggest load of bullshit—sorry! garbage—I ever did hear, Jonah Armstrong. You’re not as smart as you look.”

He flashed white teeth in an infuriating grin. “I’m smart enough to dump a load of trouble when I see one.”

Katy gave him a sour look, but the waiter came just then with their dinner, so she held her tongue. Not that she conceded
the fight. Armstrong’s whole line of reasoning—if one could call it reasoning—seemed silly to her. She eyed him speculatively
over her plate of beefsteak and beans and wondered if reason was the proper fighting tactic with this man. Her pa had told
her once that a woman who knew what she was about could get a man to do just about anything. All the woman had to do was use
her natural assets, he’d said with a twinkle in his eye, and not give the poor sucker a chance to think.

He was right, most likely. Katy had seen Olivia twist her pa—who was stubborn as only an Irishman can be stubborn—around her
little finger more than once. Katy’s twin sister Ellen, too, was gifted in such a way. Katy remembered their second Fourth
of July town picnic in Willow Bend, when she and Ellen were fourteen, and Ellen had broken a big jug of lemonade while showing
off her slingshot to Toby Riley. She had made sad doe eyes at poor Toby, and the idiot had fallen all over himself taking
the blame for her. Of course, Ellen had confessed before Toby had gotten whupped by his pa, but it had been an impressive
display of feminine magic if Katy had ever seen one.

Perhaps the same kind of magic would work on Jonah Armstrong. Katy recognized she had a bit of catching up to do if she was
going to try it, for her effect on the man so far had been anything but enticing. She might have the same natural assets as
Ellen, but she didn’t have the same talent or inclination for using them. But hell! Getting to the Klondike was worth the
effort.

Katy darted a look at her dinner partner and caught him staring at her while he toyed with his lamb. She offered a tentative
smile. He didn’t return it.

“Scowling like that isn’t good for your digestion,” she chided. “Don’t be in such a temper, greenhorn. If you insist on firing
me, at least we can be civilized about it. It was just a misunderstanding, after all.”

Jonah’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Indeed?”

“Indeed?” she mimicked his dubious tone, then smiled. “I’m tired of arguing. Having food in my stomach has put me in a much
better mood. Maybe if you ate some of yours, you’d feel better, too.”

He resumed poking at the lamb. Katy watched him. Other than his fancy tailored clothes, he didn’t have the appearance of an
Easterner—or at least Katy’s image of an Easterner. His face looked as though it spent a lot of time in the sun. Fine lines
creased the skin around his eyes when he smiled, making the smiles seem to start deep in his eyes instead of his mouth. His
shoulders were broad; his hands were large, and though the palms were not horny with calluses, as a ranch-hand’s would have
been, the fingers were long and blunt and looked capable of hard work.

Katy decided that sharpening her womanly wiles against Mr. Jonah Armstrong wouldn’t be so bad.

“That must not taste very good,” she suggested sympathetically. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“This meat is tough as shoe leather.”

Katy’s instinct was to comment that his fancy Chicago taste just didn’t appreciate real food, but realized that such a gibe
would hardly be charming. “My beefsteak was good, but maybe we should go someplace where you can get better food.”

He shot her a wary glance.

“Besides, I think you owe me a night on the town for all the trouble you’ve caused me.”

“All the trouble
I’ve
caused?”

She smiled.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind getting something else to eat.” He pushed away his plate in disgust. “Missoula is scarcely the place
I’d choose for a night on the town, but it’s the place we
are. The hotel clerk told me there’s a dance at the Freemasons’ lodge just up the street. I’m a Mason, so why don’t we go
up there and take a look?”

“Why don’t we?” Katy said blithely. She looked at the lamb on his plate. “If you don’t want that, I know someone who does.”

Katy took a few minutes in her hotel room to wash her face, fiddle with her hair, and try vainly to brush the dust from her
clothes—the clean clothes in her valise were too wrinkled to wear without being hung out.

“You don’t know how lucky you are not to worry about such things,” she told Hunter, who was enjoying Jonah’s leavings of lamb.
She gave a final pat to the braided coil atop her head and sighed, ready to ooze charm as she would ever be. “Don’t wait up
for me,” she advised the wolf. “I have a social engagement with a gentleman.”

The Freemasons’ lodge was an imposing stone structure only five minutes’ walk from the hotel. Once Jonah’s membership in the
fraternity was established, they were made welcome. Tonight was Saturday night, and the Missoula Masons and their wives were
enjoying a dance and buffet.

Katy and Jonah enjoyed it as well. Fortunately for them, the dance was not a formal one, though Katy did feel rather out of
place wearing the same skirt and jacket that had endured the stifling heat and dust of the train car. She felt the curious
glances of the other women—all rosy and bright in their summer ginghams and crisp, freshly ironed shirtwaists, bows decorating
their braids, ringlets carefully wrought with a hot iron, hair neatly pinned, tamed, braided, and tied.

The buffet spread on a table along one side of the hall was simple: cold chicken and fancy little sandwiches provided by Mason
wives and daughters, who obviously were as at home in a kitchen as Katy was on the back of a horse. Jonah, having donated
his roast lamb to Hunter, didn’t hesitate to stuff himself. Katy had just consumed a beefsteak at the hotel, but she made
room for more. If tonight’s strategy didn’t work, her
next meal might be a long time in coming. After eating two of the delicious little sandwiches and a drumstick of chicken,
she felt almost too full to be charmingly feminine.

Jonah gave her the opportunity, however, when he asked her to dance. For the first time in her life, Katy was grateful that
Olivia had insisted she learn. Unfortunately, she hadn’t learned very well, for the notion of fancy-stepping around a room
with a man had seemed quite useless to her at the time. The little band in one corner of the room was playing a Strauss waltz
when Jonah led her onto the floor. He was an excellent dancer. He did not step on her toes, or push her this way and that
out of time with the music, as did some of the boys she had danced with at Willow Bend’s infrequent socials. Katy was not
as accomplished, however, and her partner’s toes suffered for her lack of practice.

“Sorry,” Katy mumbled as she trod on Jonah’s feet for the fourth time.

“Don’t mention it.”

“I’m afraid dancing isn’t one of my talents.”

“So I gather,” he admitted with a smile.

When the waltz ended, Jonah guided her to the punch bowl, where he ladled sarsaparilla punch into two glass teacups and handed
her one. She smiled sweetly and thanked him. Ellen would have batted her eyelashes, but Katy couldn’t bring herself to go
that far.

“How long have you been alone?” Jonah asked.

“Alone?”

“You said your whole family was gone.”

“Oh. Yes. Not long. A little over a month.” She hadn’t bothered to tell him her family was gone only to take her sister to
school in New York and then travel on to Paris to visit with some of Olivia’s medical school chums.

“Your bereavement is so fresh?” His tone was full of sympathy, but his face and eyes were unreadable as he looked down at
her. “You’re bearing up rather well.”

Unwilling to tell an out-and-out lie, Katy merely lowered her
gaze and let her lashes shield her bravely hidden grief. “My family are… were… the best people in the world. They would want
me to meet the world head-on and make my way in it. My pa once dug a fortune out of a hardrock mine above Elkhorn.” Katy didn’t
have to struggle to produce a warm smile as she remembered those good/bad days when her father had been a fugitive—before
Olivia had come to them. “Gold and silver in veins of quartz. I helped Pa dig it out. Elkhorn was more than a day’s ride away,
and the only close neighbor we had was on old rogue grizzly we named Old Bruno. That was one nasty bear. I aimed to kill it
someday, but I never did. It killed a whole litter of wolf cubs once just for the hel… the heck of it. That’s when I got Hunter,
my wolf.”

“Ah yes,” Jonah said with a smile. “The wolf in the baggage car.”

“In my hotel room, now. He appreciated the lamb, by the way.”

“They’re playing another waltz. Shall we dance?”

They danced, and Katy continued the effort to be feminine and appealing, to use those natural assets her pa had told her could
make a man’s will turn to clay. She recounted stories about the summers that she and Ellen had spent with the Black-feet,
how she had learned to track from Crooked Stick, how Squirrel Woman had taught her to tan hides and build cozy lodges of saplings
and brush, and how Shadow on the Moon had taught her the skill of catching trout with her bare hands. While she was charming
the man out of his stubbornness, Katy reasoned that reminding him of her talents couldn’t hurt.