第 4 页

She immediately thought about the two trunks she'd packed so carefully. Then she looked back at the rusty hooks and groaned. Her closet was a hook. It was worse than she could have imagined. Much worse. She scanned the room for a bright spot, a ray of hope. There had to be some redeeming quality. She forced a tight-lipped smile. Maybe, with a little elbow grease...

She glanced to the left and froze. Every hopeful thought fled her mind. Her mouth dropped open. The word "no" hung soundlessly on her lips. "It can't be..."

"Yes," came Stone Man's gloating declaration. "That1) the bed."

Her eyes rounded in horror. There was only one bed. big, rough-hewn bed with a splintery partition down the middle.

One bed for both of them.

She forced herself to meet his triumphant stare."You mean to tell me that if I had been a man, I would have slept there? With you?"

His grin expanded. "Yeah. All us miners sleep that way. It's warmer." He turned back to the others. "Go to the log cabin and get her things, Cornstalk, the lady's going home."

The tone of his voice struck her with mallet-hard force. Anger surged through her blood. "Don't move, Cornstalk," she yelled. "And you," she hissed at her partner, "you wait a minute."

"I'm just helping out."

"Don't help me," she snapped. "It's your help that got me here. Your help that has me standing in the middle of a darn tent, faced with the prospect of freezing my... gentle parts for months in a rathole. So don't help me anymore."

"No, you're not."

"I'm not what?"

"You're not going to freeze your butt off until spring in my tent."

"Our tent," she corrected grimly.

"My tent."

She whipped the letter out of her handbag again. "It's our tent. Unless you're planning to build me one."

"Quit flinging that damned letter in my face like it was a presidential decree. I wrote it. We both know it."

Unfolding the letter, she held it up and read aloud, "As stated in my advertisement, you will be made my equal partner in the trading post immediately upon your arrival. The position requires full day work approximately eight months a year and includes room and board."

Folding the now-muddy letter back into precise quarters, she placed it in her handbag and glanced up at him.

His face looked hot enough to explode. "Lady..."

Devon rammed her slim forefinger in his barrel chest and net his hard-eyed gaze head-on. "You don't scare me, Mr. MacKenna, not with your bear voice or your giant size or your eagle eyes. I don't scare easily.

Now answer me: Is this ůr tent, or do you intend to build me one?" I can't build you a tent."

A frown darted across her brow. "Why not? It seems the simplest solution."

"There aren't any more stoves up here. Nothing gets to the Yukon that wasn't carried on somebody's back." He eyed her with contempt. "And I don't suppose you packed anything as useful as a stove in those precious trunks of yours."

"I brought everything you told me to," she shot back, "and a stove was not on the list."

"A man wouldn't need one. And I never thought a woman would be stupid enough to answer my advertisement."

At that Devon's whole body sagged. Suddenly she felt every one of her twenty-nine years. She'd come halfway around the world to live in rat-infested squalor with a craggy-faced, foul-tempered mountain of a man. "Criminy sakes," she muttered. "It was stupid."

"Don't worry lady," he said eagerly, "we'll get you home."

"Home?" she said dully. "If I had a home, I wouldn't be standing in this dump."

"You've got a home. Everybody's got one."

She lifted her face to his. "Do you?"

He shrugged uncomfortably. "This is it."

"It's not much."

"Maybe not, but it's mine."

"True. It's more than I-" She stopped. She'd been about to say it was more than she had in St.

Louis, and that wa true. The farm she'd grown up on now belonged to Colleei and her husband.

There was nothing for Devon in St. Loui: except bad memories, and if she went back now, defeated she knew she'd spend her whole life as good-old-spinster-aunt Devon.

No. She stiffened her spine. She might not have much but she did have half ownership in a trading post. An although MacKenna's post might not be much now, it had potential. With a little hard work it could be the bes post around. "This home was yours," she said reso lutely, "now it's ours. I'm moving in for the winter."

"Then I'm moving out."

She brightened. "Perfect."

He snorted. "How does a person so stupid keep breathing? It wouldn't be safe for you to live alone up here. Thesi men haven't seen a white woman in years. And not one'd care if you were willing."

She nipped nervously on her lower lip. That wasn't something she'd considered. "Then you're staying."

"Yeah. You're the one who's-"

"Staying." She stuck her head out of the tent and yelled, "Cornstalk, could you bring me my valise and trunks?"

"Sure, ma'am!" he hollered back, his feet already moving.

Stone Man grabbed her by the wrist and swung her back into the tent. "What do you think you're doing?"

She smiled up at him. "A lady needs her things around her."

"Ladies"-he spat the word-"don't live in the Yukon."

"They do now, Mr. MacKenna."

Chapter Three

Stone Man shoved past Devon. She stared at him in disbelief. He was leaving her-just like that!

Lunging after him, she yelled, "You come back here, Mr. MacKenna. We're not finished with this."

He pushed through the narrow door and plunged into the mud beyond. His stride didn't waver, and he didn't look back. Like an angry bull he charged forward, his massive shoulders hunched against the pelting rain, his face tucked into the fleece collar of his mackinaw.

Devon shuddered to a halt at the doorway, her gaze glued = to the disgusting quagmire of a street.

God, she didn't want j' to step in it again...

"I mean it!" she shouted.

He kept moving.

"Darn you," she cursed under her breath as he stormed through the trading post's flaps and disappeared from her view. Whirling around, she stomped inside her new "home" and slammed the door shut behind her. The rusty hinges screamed in agony, and the "clothesline" strung above her head shimmied. Muddy work boots, slung over the sagging rope by knotted laces, clunked together, and a pair of wet, filthy red socks fell to the floor with a squishy plop. With the door closed, the tent's stench engulfed her. She smelled wet wool, unwashed feet, human sweat. The disgusting odors wormed into her stomach. Gagging, she clamped a hand over her mouth and flew to the door. Flinging it open, she gulped greedily of the fresh, rain-sweet air.

"Oh, God," she moaned between breaths. She wasn't going to make it. She wasn't strong enough...

Oh, yes, you are. She jerked upright, ramming the heels of her hands into her watering eyes. She refused to be sick.

She patted her soggy, mud-splattered hair and lifted her chin. Determination glittered in her eyes.

It was time to start making the best of it. Grimacing, she plunged into the mud and started slogging toward the post.

Stone Man felt sick to his stomach. "Quit staring at me!"

Midas's fist slammed onto the cold Yukon stove. The sheet metal jumped and rattled. "Dang it, Stoneyman, say something."

"What?" he demanded. "We all know she can't go anywhere."

Midas shot to his feet. "She sure as hell can-and she'd sure as hell better!"

"Aw, Midas," Cornstalk chimed in, "she don't seem so bad. Maybe if you'd just give her a chance..."

"Don't seem so bad? Son, she's death in a long skirt. And you!" he shouted at Stone Man,"you're the one who oughta hate her the worst. The witch'll talk you into an early grave."

Stone Man's bushy eyebrows drew together, melting into a solid black line. For once the old fart was right. Little miss levelheaded had spent ten minutes in his tent, and not once had she closed her mouth for longer than it took to breathe.

He had to do something to get rid of her. And fast.

"All right, boys," he said, staring right at Midas. "Put your money where your mouths are. It'll take two hundred bucks to get her out of here. How much money have you got?"

Cornstalk pulled out his small buckskin drawbag and Peeked at the gold dust inside. "Maybe ten bucks."

Bear patted the lump in his breast pocket then shook his head. "Less."

Midas slammed his scrawny arms across his chest. "We can't send the princess home by water. A boat wouldn't make « more'n halfway to St. Michael before the river froze, and there ain't a man up here'd talk to us again if we stranded 'em with a woman for the winter."

Bear jammed a toothpick in the gap between his front teeth and rattled it around. "He's right, Cornelius."

Stone Man dropped his chin into the rough cradle of his palm and sighed. "I know," he muttered.

"Shit."

Midas kicked the stove. The metallic clang echoed through the tent's silence. "Dang it! Don't you go gettin' all bleary-eyed, Stoneyman. Her high and mightyness can walk like ever'body else."

Bear tossed the toothpick over his shoulder. "Naw," he said. "That skinny thing wouldn't last ten minutes by herself. Hell, someone'd have to shoot her halfway to the Chilkoot."

Midas spat a huge glob. "Stoneyman oughta do that anyway. It's the only sensible thing. She's the plague. We oughta kill her now 'fore she has a chance to spread and multiply. Christ, she could infect some of the Injun women with her uppity ways."

"I'm not going to shoot her," Stone Man answered.

"I'm glad to see you draw the line somewhere," Bear remarked blandly.

Stone Man's mouth compressed. "It's not a firm line."

"She's probably paintin' your bed pink right now," Midas mumbled.

Bear grinned. "Tell you what," he said. "I'd be willin' to take her to Circle City. She could winter there and catch a boat out in the spring. I'll take her if she'll leave tomorrow."

"Yee-ha!"

"Don't break out the hootch yet, Midas," Bear said quickly. "I'll only take her if she's willin'. I won't have no woman kickin' and screamin' around my fire."

"She won't go," Cornstalk said to no one in particular.

Bear shrugged. "I don't think so neither."

"Oh, she'll go," Midas promised. "I bet if one of us tried to get a little lovin', a proper lady like her'd run for cover."

Bear lurched across the stove and grabbed Midas by the collar. "You ain't gonna hurt that little gal," he growled.

As usual Midas backed down immediately in the face of a real threat. "I-I ain't gonna try nothing" he stammered.

Releasing his hold on the miner, Bear snatched up his battered felt hat and dusted it off. Cramming it down on the grayed cottony tufts of his hair, he pushed to his feet. "Well boys, I gotta go. But before I do, put me down for a buck on the lady."

"I'll take your money," Midas answered. "A buck says she leaves tomorrow."

"I'll bet a buck-" Cornstalk's voice cracked, dropped. He clamped his mouth shut in embarrassment.

"That's nothing to feel bad about, boy," Stone Man said. "It's natural."

Cornstalk grinned broadly, then said, "Looks to me like she's staying."

A scowl crept across Stone Man's craggy features. The thought of spending a winter locked in a two-man tent with a squawking woman was enough to make his blood run cold. "Look again, kid," he said, "and don't blink."

"Blink all you want, Cornstalk. The lady is definitely staying."

At the sound of her voice, Stone Man's head jerked up. She was standing just inside the tent, her muddy hands clasped together, her hat drooping over her dirty forehead like a puppy's tongue on a hot August day. How die hell did she manage to look so prim and proper with mud dripping down her face?

She was smiling like a contented cat. Or, he thought angrily, like she'd heard the boys' bets and wanted to place one of her own.

Shit! How long had she been there? He'd glimpsed enough of her personality to know that if she'd heard the boys' bets, he wouldn't be able to get her butt out of his tent with an axe handle.

He eyed her warily. "How long have you been hiding behind the tent flaps? "

She sniffed, all uppitylike. "I don't hide."

"How long were you standing behind the tent flaps?"

"Awhile."

"How long is a while?"

She shrugged. "More than a moment, less than a spell. I don't know, exactly. Just a while."

"Lady..." The word was a warning.

A warning she completely ignored. "You don't scare me one whit, Mr. MacKenna. Now," she said crisply, "where are the cleaning supplies? I want to get started."

In a cloud of silence so thick it made her spine rattle, Devon forced her chin a little higher.

Edging past her partner's intimidating form, she glided toward the haphazard array of overladen shelving that cluttered the tent's center. Huge piles of dusty boots lay heaped next to sacks of flour, which slumped alongside mining pans and cans of Campbell's split-pea soup.

She grimaced. Organizing this mess was going to be even worse than she'd thought. The soup belonged over there, next to the- "Get out!"

The booming command shattered her thoughts. She turned away from the crate of cans and leveled a steady gaze on her partner. "Not until I find what I need."