Harper's Bride (7 page)

The two miners both smelled like cow flops on
a riverbank at low tide—not a lot of washing went on at the claims.
In fact, not a lot of anything but digging and sluicing went on.
Frantic to make good on the claims they'd filed, the miners often
worked twenty hours a day, especially during these periods of
almost total daylight. Thinking about that reminded Dylan why he'd
chosen to open this store.

"How's it going out there?" he asked them,
not really wanting an answer.

One of the miners, a rough cob with a
grizzled beard and a battered hat, replied, "Me and my pard over
there, we've been digging night and day for a little color." He
indicated the other man, a mild, simple-looking sort who stared at
the bushel basket of oranges serving as a doorstop. The first man
eyed Rafe suspiciously, who appeared not to notice anything beyond
his cards. But Dylan knew he was listening avidly. These two were
probably prime examples of what Rafe called man's greatest folly.
Then the miner leaned closer to Dylan and whispered confidentially,
"I just know I'm gonna strike it rich, but I have to keep an eye on
old Jim. He tries to pretend that he's simple, and he does a good
job of it. But given half a chance, I know he'd stick a knife in my
gullet while I'm asleep and steal my poke." He squinted one eye
venomously.

"Is that a fact?" Dylan backed away from the
stench of his foul breath and unwashed body. He sensed Rafe's
suppressed laughter as he continued to pitch cards at the chamber
pot.

The gold rush had brought all kinds of people
to the Yukon, and funny things happened to some men's minds in the
face of such great potential wealth. He knew of one stampeder who
had come up in '97 and mined thirty thousand dollars. But the money
had given him no pleasure. Anxiety about being robbed had driven
him to the edge of reason, until he was overcome by worry and shot
himself. Another one, rotting with scurvy and almost lame, grew so
obsessed with finding gold that he wouldn't take the time to
betreated. Gold wouldn't buy much in the grave, Dylan thought.

A sizable pile of beans, coffee, nails,
tobacco, and other supplies was assembled on the counter, and the
men handed over their pokes to Dylan to weigh the payment.

Gold dust was the common legal tender in
Dawson, and gold scales were as much a part of everyone's
possessions as shovels and whiskey. Except for those rare occasions
when he received coins or paper money, all of Dylan's transactions
involved weighing raw gold. As he sprinkled dust onto the one pan,
the rough cob suddenly grabbed his wrist.

"I seen what you're up to," the miner erupted
angrily, revealing blackened teeth. He reached for a knife from his
belt. "I never seen such a place—there ain't an honest man up here.
Well, nobody's going to cheat me, by God! I wish to hell the
Mounties would let a man carry a gun. I'd—"

Stunned, Dylan jerked his hand away and
grabbed the meat cleaver beneath the counter. The miner yelped.
"You'd be on the floor now, bleeding your guts out because I would
have shot you. I don't cheat anyone," he said in a low, clear
voice. He swung the cleaver down, narrowly and purposely missing
the man's hand. It caught the corner of his grimy shirt cuff
beneath its blade and drove it deep into the planks, trapping his
arm. From the corner of his eye, Dylan saw Rafe rise from his chair
and edge closer.

The miner's eyes looked as big as flapjacks,
and his mouth opened and closed like a fish's. But no sound came
out. His dim-witted sidekick, Jim, merely looked puzzled.

"You should be glad the MP don't allow
firearms in Dawson, mister," Dylan said in the same low voice.
"Where I come from, you falsely accuse a man of cheating and you
find yourself in a world of hurt. But this is your lucky day, and
I'm going to let you keep your hand. Now you take Jim and get out
of here. And don't come back."

Dylan left the cleaver in the counter, and
the miner yanked and yanked on his shirtsleeve, like an animal with
its leg caught in a trap, until the fabric finally gave way.

"You're a crazy son of a bitch!" the man
panted. He scrambled out of the store, pushing Jim ahead of him,
and Dylan watched them go.

It was then that he saw Melissa standing
there in a new dress, her eyes filled with fear.

*~*~*

Melissa gaped at Dylan, her heart pounding
against her ribs like a hammer on a rock. She had walked in just in
time to see Dylan produce the legendary meat cleaver and sink it
into the miner's arm, pinning it to the counter. At least from
where she stood, it had looked like the blade had impaled
flesh.

Dylan turned his gaze on her, and the
frightening blank fury on his face nearly froze the blood in her
veins. His eyes seemed as hard as green bottle glass, and his jaw
was so tight, she could see the muscles working in his cheek. This
was the man she'd heard about, the man with an icy rage that most
knew better than to cross. Dear God, she had to live with him,
sleep with him in the same bed.

Dylan stepped out from behind the counter.
"What are you doing here, Melissa?" His fists were clenched.

He seemed enormous, as big as a mountain, and
tension radiated from him in waves. She could hear the anger in his
voice, and her eyes fell to the tendon and muscle in his
forearms.

She cast a panicky look at Rafe Dubois, but
he merely nodded and smiled. "Mrs. Harper," he acknowledged
pleasantly, "you look very nice this afternoon." Then he sat down
in a chair and began fiddling with a deck of cards. She took a step
backward and laced her fingers together to make one tight fist over
her heart.

"Thank you. I-I just came for some flour and
the other things . . . like-like we talked about earlier." She
heard the quiver in her own voice and hated it. "But I can come
back—this is a bad time."

Dylan came closer and reached for her,
closing his big, warm hand around her upper arm. His long fingers
encircled it easily. She uttered a little squeak and tried to pull
away, but his grip was sure.

"No, it's not a bad time." He exhaled, as if
discharging a bit of the rage that was percolating inside. "Now and
then I get a surly customer, or one who's not quite right in the
head."

And it was sane to nearly chop off a man's
hand? she wondered foolishly, feeling a swell of hysterical
laughter fill her chest. Realizing that he wasn't going to let her
leave, she said, "I just need one or two things to cook dinner."
Maybe she could make a quick escape, she thought, and leave him
down here with his temper.

He released her arm with seeming reluctance,
and she immediately stepped back. "All right, take whatever you
want to make a good meal. You might as well look through this
stuff, too, before I put it back on the shelves." He gestured at
the supplies still heaped on the counter. "If you need help taking
anything upstairs, I'll carry it for—"

"Oh, no, I don't want to trouble you," she
said quickly, avoiding his intense gaze. "If you'll just give me a
gunnysack, I can manage." She glanced up, and he watched her for a
moment longer. Then he nodded and walked away.

Melissa had trouble keeping her mind on her
task; she picked up and put down the same tin of baking soda three
times before she realized what she'd done. In the end, she'd
collected a few potatoes, coffee, sugar, a piece of ham, some dried
apples, and a couple of other staples. It hadn't seemed like much.
When she filled the burlap sack Dylan gave her, it turned out to be
heavier than she'd expected. She gripped it tightly, but when she
dragged it from the counter to lift it, the sack dropped to the
rough floor with a thud, bending her with it.

"Melissa, let me bring this upstairs for
you," Dylan said. His frown dipped to the bridge of his nose,
giving her no confidence.

Worried that he would simply grab it away
from her and take it himself, from her bowed position she
protested, "No, please don't bother. I just lost my grip on it."
With supreme effort she lifted the sack and stood upright, then
dragged it toward the door. Her arms and shoulders, already stiff
from lifting the rice last night, flared with pain, but she refused
to let him see that.

"I'll have dinner ready in an hour or so,"
she panted and hauled her groceries through the open door, glad to
have made her escape.

Dylan stared at the outside wall as he
listened to the sound of her slow steps going up the stairs on the
side of the building. It sounded as if she were dragging the weight
of the world with her.

From his post by the chamber pot, Rafe Dubois
looked first at the now empty doorway, and then at Dylan. "Hell,
that girl is scared to death of you. She probably fears you more
than she does the devil himself," he remarked with casual
surprise.

Dylan shrugged, wishing Rafe hadn't noticed.
"She's got a safe place to live here and more food than she's
probably seen in three months. I can't help it if I scare
her—that's her problem."

But he knew that was a lie, and Rafe's
quirked eyebrow told him that he knew it, too.

*~*~*

Upstairs, Melissa's cooking efforts were
hampered by Jenny. She had fed and changed the baby, but for some
reason her usually quiet and happy child would not settle down. In
fact, she had started getting fussy as soon as Melissa had fed her.
It was as if her own nervousness had telegraphed to Jenny. She put
the baby in her makeshift bed, but after a few minutes she started
crying, and Melissa picked her up and walked with her, anxious to
quiet her. She checked the little girl's diaper for open safety
pins and felt her for fever. She found nothing. But when she tried
to lay Jenny in her crate again, the baby recommenced her howling,
forcing Melissa to pace the room with her.

"Hush, now, button, hush," she urged
feverishly. "We have to be quiet, just like before when your father
was with us, remember? He's gone, but we still have to be
quiet."

Between moments of walking with the baby,
Melissa managed to put together a meal of boiled ham, mashed
potatoes, and apple pie. There was no butter, and only canned milk
for the potatoes, but then she hadn't tasted fresh milk since she
passed through Seattle, months earlier. Butter was something she
had not often seen in her life.

She caught herself listening for the slam of
the door downstairs in the store, for Dylan's footfalls on the
stairs. The sight of him with the meat cleaver in his fist wouldn't
leave her mind. How far would that rage go?

The most frightening part of his anger had
been the deadly cold of it. Coy would rant and swear and carry on,
yelling and throwing things. A lot of noise had accompanied his
fits of anger. Coy's outbursts had been no less frightening, but
they hadn't sneaked up on her. Dylan's fury made her think of a
cool and deadly snake, sliding up from nowhere.

Dylan was so different in every way from Coy,
or her father and brothers. At least he seemed so in her few
dealings with him.

But a temper was a temper, and she imagined
that one slap or punch hurt just as much as another.

Her heart, though . . . she had learned to
keep it safely out of reach. The bruises healed, but a broken heart
would not fare as well.

*~*~*

After Rafe left Harper's to search out a card
game at the saloon, Dylan decided to lock up for an hour or so and
go eat dinner. He thought he detected the aroma of ham and hot
apple pie drifting down through the ceiling. It smelled better than
any saloon food he'd tasted in Dawson, maybe better than anything
he'd eaten since he left The Dalles, his hometown in Oregon.

He stood outside on the duckboard and flipped
the hasp over the door, then secured it with a padlock. Despite the
hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold dust deposited here in
Dawson, he knew a lot of business owners didn't bother to lock
their doors. The Mounties's presence was so respected, and the
threat of banishment from Dawson so real, genuine crime was a
rarity here. No one wanted to be forced to leave town and forfeit
his one big chance to strike it rich. Men were arrested for using
obscene language, or cheating at cards, or for selling whiskey to
saloon girls. Theft, robbery, and assault were surprisingly rare;
towns with far fewer people living under calmer circumstances
experienced much worse. But Dylan had been burned by tempting fate,
and he kept his place locked.

Dawson's low instance of crime wasn't the
chief subject on his mind, though. His thoughts kept drifting back
to Melissa. It wasn't difficult for him to picture her standing at
the stove in that new dress he'd seen her wearing when she came
into the store. It had looked nice on her, with its narrow
blue-and-white stripe, and high white collar that made her neck
look like a swan's.

More than her dress, though, he remembered
her expression of pure, ashen terror when he'd glanced up to find
her standing over there by the basket of oranges. Fierce annoyance
had been his first reaction; why the hell had she chosen that
moment of all moments to walk in? If the miner had decided to make
the situation uglier than it was, having a woman in the mix could
have complicated things considerably.

But he knew that Rafe was right. She feared
Dylan more than anybody else. He felt certain that she'd seen her
share of violence in her life. And in a town like Dawson, where
everyone was struck with gold fever, scrapes like the one with the
miner were bound to occur. Still, he didn't want her to be afraid
of him; how would she share that small living space upstairs—how
would she even work for him—if she feared him?

Settling his hat, he recalled that Elizabeth
had been afraid of him sometimes, but she had seemed to relish the
fear. It had excited her. In turn, she had aroused in him a dark,
hot desire that gave him no peace, not even after their clandestine
moments in his bed over the stables. He paused, his gaze fixed
unseeing on the passing traffic. How did she like her life now? he
wondered bitterly, with her wealthy, dull husband—