to be up to anything good, that’s for sure.”
Meg started to turn away, then paused. “Doesn’t it ever get old, Frank? Constantly knowing that there’s somebody out there who wants to kill you?”
“I’ve been living with that almost ever since I got back from the war,” he said. “All I wanted to do was come home, marry the girl I loved, maybe someday have a ranch of my own. It didn’t work out that way, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter, so I try not to lose any sleep over it. I figure it was meant to be.”
“You didn’t choose the life you’ve led. It chose you.”
“Something like that.”
“But doesn’t that seem awfully…random? Don’t we have any control over what happens to us?”
“Sure we do,” Frank said, thinking that this was a mighty odd conversation to be having in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, with wolves howling in the distance. But then, Meg Goodwin was sort of an odd young woman. “Life pushes us one way, then another, and sometimes we push back. When we do, sometimes we win and sometimes we don’t. It’s all part of the game.”
“That’s what life is? A game?”
“The biggest one of all,” Frank said.
Meg stepped closer to him, reached up, and rested a mittened hand on his cheek. She brought her mouth to his and kissed him. When she stepped back, she said, “Then I’m all in.”
Then she grinned at him and turned to walk to the other side of the camp and stand her watch on guard duty. Frank stood there for a second, wondering what the hell had just happened, before he said, “Dog, go with her. Guard.”
The big cur loped off into the darkness.
In the morning, Meg didn’t say anything about what had happened, and neither did Frank. The group got started early again, heading toward White Pass. Frank hoped they would reach it today. Once they did, they wouldn’t be beyond the reach of Soapy Smith, but Frank figured the odds of an attack would go down.
Around midday, they came to a valley with a long, tree-dotted slope on each side. Salty brought his team to a halt and the others followed suit, with Meg calling to Jennings, “We’re stopping, Bart!”
Frank had been at the rear of the little convoy, talking to Pete Conway. As the sleds came to a halt, he rode forward to see why Salty had stopped.
The old-timer pointed at the bottom of the valley. “Down yonder is Eight Mile Creek.”
“I don’t even see a creek,” Frank said with a shake of his head.
“That’s ’cause it’s froze over and covered with snow.” Salty stepped off the runners at the rear of the sled and went to the piles of supplies. He started un-strapping a pair of snowshoes that were lashed to one of the bundles. “I’m gonna have to go down there and check the ice ’fore we can drive these sleds over it.”
“I’ll come with you,” Frank said.
Salty shook his head as he started fastening the snowshoes on his feet. “No, you stay here with the others. This here’s a one-man job.”
When the bulky snowshoes were fastened securely to his feet, he started tramping down the hill toward the creek. The snow wasn’t so deep that Salty really needed the shoes, Frank thought. The old-timer could have handled it just in his boots. But it was quicker and easier with the snowshoes, Frank saw as he watched Salty moving down the hill in a peculiar, gliding stride.
Several of the women got off the sleds to move around, and they came up to the lip of the hill to watch Salty’s progress, as well. Meg stood beside Stormy and asked Frank, “Will we just drive right over the ice?”
“If it’s thick enough to support the weight of the sleds and everything on them,” he replied. “The ladies probably ought to get off and walk across, just as a precaution.” Salty hadn’t said anything about that, but it just made sense to Frank.
The dogs sat there watching as well, tongues lolling from their mouths and their breath fogging the air in front of their faces. Dog had followed Salty down the hill, and the old-timer hadn’t sent him back.
Frank took off his mittens and rubbed his hands together, trying to get some warmth back in them. He could handle the reins just fine wearing the mittens, but he couldn’t hope to draw and fire a gun with them on, so he left them off part of the time and wore them at others. His knuckles had begun to chap from the cold, but that was a small price to pay to be able to slap leather if he needed to.
Fiona walked up on the other side of Frank’s horse. “Will we reach White Pass today?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Salty said that’s called Eight Mile Creek, and I’ve got a hunch it got the name because it’s eight miles from here to the pass. That’s the way things like that usually work. If I had to guess, we won’t be able to cover that much ground in the time we have left today before it starts getting dark, but maybe we’ll be there by the middle of the day tomorrow.”
Fiona shook her head. “I’m not sure why I’m anxious to get there. From what Mr. Stevens said, it’s just going to get worse on the other side of the pass.”
Frank was about to nod when he saw that Salty had reached the creek. He moved out carefully onto the snow- covered ice, pausing for long seconds between each step with his head cocked slightly. Frank knew that Salty was listening for the tiny telltale noises that meant the ice was cracking underneath him. If he heard them, he would have to pull back to the bank.
That would also mean that they couldn’t risk driving the sleds across the ice. They would have to find a way around the creek, or a section where the ice was thicker and sturdier. Either alternative meant adding more time to the trip, and with every minute that went by, they were that much closer to the first real storm of the winter.
Salty kept moving slowly until Frank was sure he must be getting close to the other side of the creek. Suddenly, he lunged ahead, snowshoes flashing now instead of moving deliberately. Frank leaned forward in the saddle in alarm, knowing that Salty’s frantic reaction meant the ice was giving way underneath him. The old-timer had known better than to turn and try to come back, though. He was closer to the other bank, and reaching it was his only
