Page 44 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“Pull on your nose, that will warm it.”
Laughing, she did as he suggested. “Would you like some help preparing our lunch?”
“Nope. I invited you.” After explaining that the two large potatoes were partially cooked already, he pushed them into the coals beneath the flames. “There’s hot beer in my canteen.”
She didn’t think she’d like hot beer, but it turned out she did. She suspected she would have welcomed anything warm.
They touched their mugs together, and Tom said, “Here’s to old friends, the best friends.” He gazed into her eyes and continued looking at her while he took a swallow of the beer. “You’re still the prettiest girl in Newcastle.”
“This isn’t Newcastle,” she said. But she blushed with pleasure. “Ma used to say, ‘that Price boy could talk an angel out of her wings.’” Zoe smiled. “It was a compliment to you and maybe a warning to me.”
Immediately she regretted passing along Ma’s comment, which seemed to link them together in a way she hadn’t intended. Uncharacteristically flustered, she set out plates and utensils.
“Did you bring salt?”
“Salt and butter for the potatoes are in my saddlebags.”
“Butter?”
“Enjoy it. Butter is going to get very scarce, and it will cost the earth if you do find any.”
While they waited for the potatoes to finish baking, they sat on rocks in the shadow of the glacier and drank hot beer.
“Tell me what you’re doing in Alaska, Tom Price.”
“You probably know that I went into the mine about the same time as your brother Jack. I worked there for a few years,” he said, refilling their mugs from the canteen. “I told myself I’d get out, leave Newcastle and seek my fortune elsewhere, but I didn’t do it. My friends were in Newcastle, and that was more important. Eventually I moved into one of the houses on Shaft D Lane, and I started accumulating debt at the company store.”
“My family knows aboutthat.”
“You remember Saturday nights.”
“Payday.”
“The night for drinking, fighting, and carousing.” He smiled and shrugged. “Well, a bunch of us were at Ned’s place, and I’ll admit I’d had a few. Some company men came in, and after a while they asked if we were the skags who were talking strike. One thing led to another and—”
“—And a brawl erupted,” Zoe finished for him. She’d heard depressingly similar stories every weekend during her growing-up years. And helped Ma doctor the black eyes and split lips, cuts and bruises, and scraped knuckles.
Tom nodded. “Turns out I gave better than I got. Seems I damned near killed one of the company men. Which meant the end of my days at the mine. I had to forfeit my last pay packet, got tossed out of the house on Shaft D Lane, and I was given thirty days to clear my debt at the company store or go to jail.”
“I think Jack told me about this.” The story was coming back to her as Tom related it.
He sat with his legs apart, an elbow on the flat boulder, and his hat thumbed to the back of his head. Dark curls dropped on his forehead.
“Times were hard, and people talked about a national depression. I couldn’t find work in Seattle. At the end of thirty days, I stowed away on a Russian trawler. I thought I’d end in the Orient somewhere, but the Russians came up here.” He shrugged again. “I fished with the Russians for a while, made enough money to clear my debt back home. Eventually I bought a boat and started fishing for myself.”
Zoe tried to imagine him as a seaman, captaining his own outfit. She had no difficulty picturing him at the helm of a fishing boat. Tom was the type of man who would be successful at whatever he undertook, particularly if he was the man in control. She suspected he made a better employer than employee.
“When the stampede to the Yukon began, I saw an opportunity. Not to join the prospectors, but to help them get where they’re going. So I leased out my boat and started packing.” He met her gaze. “I’ve made a fortune, Zoe.” He shook his head and laughed.
“A fortune,” she repeated in a low voice.
“Well, not a fortune like the Van Hootens have. I wouldn’t say I’m wealthy, but I’ve put aside enough to buy a house and business when the stampede ends or after they get the train over the pass at Skagway, probably next year. I own a boat, a business, and I have investments. I’m proud of that.”
“I’m proud for you,” she said softly, staring at his fingernails. His nails were clean; there was no black miner’s line. He had broken away from Newcastle, and he had prospered. Maybe fate had placed him in her path to underscore the extent of her pride and stupidity. She had waited for dross when gold had been right under her nose.
“Stay here while I check on the potatoes. Sorry to bore you with the long version of the Tom Price story.”
“I wasn’t bored.” She watched him prepare the fish for grilling and supposed his cooking expertise came from camping. “Tom? Do you think you would have gotten out of Newcastle if the brawl with the company men hadn’t happened?”
