The Snowflake (2 page)

“Come on!” Buck turned toward the opening in the doorway. “The ship may be damaged. We can’t stay down here.”

The three of us rushed to the top deck.

It was true. The steamer was locked in ice, inescapably gripped in the cold fingers of winter. I looked around at the collapsed faces, mirroring misery, the tall and lanky down to the short and stocky, all on the verge of a full-blown panic.

I wanted to say, “I told you so,” to try and tell Jonah in a hundred different pleading ways before this God-forsaken journey began, but knowing better, knowing it wouldn’t change the next time he got that stubborn, tight-lipped look. I kept my mouth closed. Silly men. Silly dreaming baby-men. Always wanting to conquer, to kill, and then build it up all over again. A tiny laugh bubbled up into my throat as I studied them from the edge of the crowd—hating them, loving them, scoffing and admiring.

Captain Henry Conrad stood at the bow of the steamer looking smaller than his six feet and 250 pounds, diminished by the simple law that in certain conditions water turns to ice. He gestured at the crumpled map in his hand while the moaning wind whipped red into our cheeks. The men crowded around him, knowing the truth but wanting to hear it explained. Their dreams of riches, for the duration of this Alaskan winter at least, were over.

Sinclair, a man who wore his father’s idealism on a chubby-cheeked face, cursed a violent streak. “That Yankee in Seattle promised we’d make it. I knew we shouldn’t take a Yankee’s word for it.” He slung his hands into the pockets of a pair of expensive trousers, causing the seam to strain against his backside, and scowled at the broad, whiskered face of the captain.

“It ain’t anybody’s fault the Yukon River freezes up so early,” put in the tall, lanky Zeke Robbins. “We were straddling the seasons, pushing as far and as fast as we could, and we knew it.” Zeke only needed a stalk of wheat to chew on and a floppy hat to complete the picture of the middle-American farmer.

“We may as well face it, gents.” The captain intervened before a full-fledged fight could break out. “We’ll be sitting out the winter right here, huddled together on this pile of wood, unable to move an inch until spring thaw.”

What would that mean to the lone woman of the expedition? Should I be afraid? Would my brother protect me? Or would he only accuse me of self-absorbed romanticism should I voice any hint of my scandalous concern?

Several voices cried out in stubborn rebellion to the idea of giving up until the clean voice of another quieted them. “As I see it, gentlemen, we have one other choice.”

They turned in eager silence, necks craning, bodies leaning in, straining for a way out of the certain despair that would engulf them at the end of this meeting. If any man could salvage this mess, it was Buck Lewis, and they all knew it. They’d heard such in bits and pieces of stories that made him out a hero and a legend.

I studied him. What was it about him that held me so entranced? He had a weathered face, bold with a hint of recklessness, intelligent blue eyes that could cause a lesser man to turn away, a lean-muscled body with reflexes that could save a life, and an easy common sense that made him the voice of reason in turbulent times. The young men idolized him. The older men respected him.

I had tried, for the first few weeks of this journey anyway, to ignore him.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel his presence the moment he neared or didn’t feel as if I knew him every time our gazes locked. Oh no. Everything in me wanted to follow that pantherlike stride as he walked by—with my eyes and my feet and then reach toward him with my hands and my lips. And then he’d spoken to me and all was lost.

Buck stared each man in the eye. “You should know what you’re in for. If you plan to stay, you’ll be looking into the face of starvation, hoping it doesn’t look back. Hunting parties will go out daily with the threat of sudden blizzards and wild animals to hound your heels. When the food runs out, the unfathomable will start looking pretty. It may come down to the strong surviving, but the means of that survival might not be something you can go to bed with. Might be something you have to wrestle over for the remainder of your days.”

He paused, scanning their collective gaze, taking stock. “For those who don’t like the sound of that and still want to reach Dawson City before spring, they can trust in dogs and sleds and pray for enough good weather to mush overland.”

“What are you going to do, Buck?”

“How many miles to Dawson?”

“When will the food run out?”

Buck answered the first question. “I’ll be going to Dawson.” He paused, then continued with a flat slap to his voice. “It won’t be an easy trip. It’s a good two hundred miles. That’s a week’s worth of walking in bitter temperatures with the food running out.”

“But we’d make it, right, Buck?” A freckle-faced young man from Iowa squinted up at him. Buck could have said the sky was made of cotton candy and this boy would have nodded in agreement.

Buck gave him a hard look. “I don’t know, but you are welcome to join me and see.”

A grim contemplation fell on them as each considered the odds.

Sinclair was the first to speak. “I didn’t come this far to cool my heels all winter on this ice barge. I’m coming with you.”

Buck nodded, but his eyes said he would rather take a marauding grizzly along. Ronnie Nelson, George McCallister, Adam Walker, and Randy Olsen volunteered, all young and strong and capable.

“I’ll be going with you.”

My head jerked up as my gaze swung toward the familiar voice. Why would my ragged, haunted brother want to take on something so dangerous?

Buck matched my reaction. “What about your sister? You would leave her on board?”

Jonah scowled. “She’ll be coming with us.”

Buck’s gaze found mine on the other side of the crowd, hugging the outskirts. Why did he care when no one ever had? I wasn’t worthy of attention from a man like Buck Lewis, and it was only a matter of time until he figured that out.

Buck turned back to Jonah. “You explain to her how rough it will be, or I will. Then, if she’s determined, well then, she’ll know.”

My brother’s face turned stony at the rapid-fire orders, but he nodded. He wouldn’t tell me anything of the sort, but Buck wouldn’t know that I would have already thought out every detail, every possibility for success or failure, and planned for it the best I could.

It was my job to take care of Jonah, not the other way around.

As the men scattered into disheartened, muttering groups, Buck watched Jonah grip Ellen’s arm and pull her back toward their cabin. A feeling of fierce protectiveness rose so strong that his muscles leapt to follow them, but he clamped down the urge with gritted teeth and a clinched fist around the rail as a tether. He was on a mission, and Ellen Pierce was not part of the plan. He needed to remember that.

He turned toward the ice-clogged water and squeezed his eyes shut, but the vision of her was even stronger in the dark. He remembered the first moment he’d seen her on the steamer. She’d been just across the deck, not more than ten feet, then she turned around and looked up at him. She was the kind of woman that stole a man’s breath at first, taking a moment for the shock to wear off and his jumped heart to settle down. But he could have grown used to that. He could have resisted the ethereal depths of her dark eyes that spoke pain and passion in equal measure, but then he went and did a fool thing: He spoke to her.

“You’re not traveling alone, are you?” It had been a stupid thing to say.

She gave him a quick smile, a gentle curve of rose-colored lips, and a flash of fearful reticence in her eyes before looking down and then behind her. “No, my brother is with me.”

She was as skittish as a new colt, but she didn’t run away. She stood there, eyes downcast, waiting for him to say something else.

His mind went blank and his mouth went dry. What was wrong with him? He was never this unsure of himself. “You got a name?” Had he really just asked her that? Of course she had a name. A warm flush filled his cheeks and he looked away.

She didn’t seem to notice. She took a step forward and held out a mittened hand. “Ellen Pierce, and you?” She smiled, with just a hint of a teasing light in her eyes. “Do you have a name?”

Buck cleared his throat and reached for her hand. It was small but the grip was comfortable, like two puzzle pieces locking together. “Buck Lewis. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

Ellen gazed up at him through thick, dark lashes, and his heart did a double beat. His wife, whom he had loved more than life itself, had never made him feel like this . . . this floating, dizzy, anchorless unease.

Before he could say something else that would make him look like an idiot, a man strode over with angry, clipped steps, came up from behind her, and grasped her arm, wrenching her hand out of his. He glared at Buck. “Is this man bothering you, Ellie?”

Ellen backed away shaking her head. “He just introduced himself, Jonah. Please don’t make a scene.” She whispered the last in a terse tone.

“You stay away from my sister, got it?”

So this was her brother. A small, wiry man with sunken cheeks and eyes. Physically he presented no threat, but those eyes. . . . A strange darkness possessed them that sent a shiver down Buck’s spine.

“I didn’t mean any harm.” Buck spoke in a low, calm voice as he would to a cornered animal.

“Just stay away from her.” Her brother pulled her away with a jerk on her arm.

Buck curled his hand into a fist. That had been the first of many times he saw Jonah manhandling her, and every time Buck wanted to plow his fist into the gaunt face. He kicked at the side of the ship as he thought back to what he witnessed today.

Her brother was growing more dangerous, demented even. What if he snapped? Killed her? Buck didn’t want to care, shouldn’t care, but he did.
Lord, what can I do about it?

His wife’s face, her eyes, how they’d widened with the shock of the bullet as it entered her chest, flashed before him and nearly sent him to his knees. He hadn’t been able to protect her. He had insisted she come with him to Skagway. Kalage’s death was his fault.

God, why didn’t You stop me? Why didn’t You stop
him?

Buck quieted his mind and tried to hear God’s answer. He closed his eyes and waited.

Nothing.

He heard nothing but the deadness of his laden heart and the moaning of ice all around.

The early morning air had a stinging crispness that felt different somehow, as if we were inhaling crystallized snowflakes into our lungs instead of air. Garbed in my tattered coat and mittens, I followed the fourteen men setting out for Klondike gold and the city in the north that made poor men’s dreams come true: Dawson City. Our only assets were three heavily loaded sleds with motley beasts for dogs and inexperienced mushers for drivers.

I looked at the facts around me and tried to do what Buck told us to do—pray the clear skies would hold—but I choked on the first line. I didn’t pray anymore, hadn’t prayed in years.

What could my brother be thinking to command that we do this? I’d tried to convince him the night before. The memory of him curling into a ball on the bed and rocking back and forth with low moaning swept through me.