Page 49 of I Do, I Do, I Do
Embarrassment scalded a face already red from the wind and cold. She was too frozen to feel his hands through her petticoats, her skirt, her coat, and his gloves. Still, it was indecent. But she didn’t say anything, she just let him help her up one step and then another and another. But eventually, even Bear’s assistance wasn’t enough to keep her going. She was simply tuckered out, done in from exhaustion and strenuous effort.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, stumbling out of the line.
He frowned through the monster mask, then shrugged and moved on. And she felt like crying. The slide down terrified her. But she could not go another step farther, her feet were chunks of lead, her lungs burned, she shook all over. And now she was stuck two-thirds of the way up Chilkoot Pass, unable to go on up and too frightened to slide down. She no longer believed she could slide to the bottom without enduring severe injury.
Weeping, she ate her sandwich and the last of her apples, not because she was hungry but in an effort to lighten her pack.
“You miserable weakling.”
Choking on hopelessness, she opened her eyes and discovered Clara standing on the ice steps glaring at her.
“Get up and get back in this line,” Clara hissed. “Every man who passes you is feeling vindicated. Women don’t belong in the Yukon. We’re the weaker vessel. We aren’t tough enough.” She gasped between the words, sucking air into her chest. “Get in this line before you totally disgrace your sex. Be a man.”
“I’m not a man,” Juliette protested weakly, blinking hard. Teardrops had frozen on her lashes. “And I admit I’m not tough enough. They’re right.”
“If I can do this, so can you. Get the hell back in this line! And I mean right now!”
Ice caked her scarf and coated her skirts almost to the waist. She hardly had enough strength to get up and step back into line, let alone climb more steps. But Clara’s scorn got her moving again. For one bitter moment, she couldn’t endure the thought that Zoe and Clara would succeed where she could not; that notion gave her a tiny motivating burst of energy. Anger pumped her muscles and stiffened her determination, and she scraped together enough willpower to fight upward. This time she labored behind Clara, listening to ragged breathing, watching Clara’s legs tremble with fatigue when the wind caught her skirt. The line moved forward at an excruciating and inexorable pace.
But the moment came when she could not lift her foot up one more step. She simply could not. Over the hours, the muscles she needed to climb had played out. Her throat was dry and burned from the effort to draw in enough icy air to fuel her lungs. The weight of her pack threatened to pull her over backward.
Like a dumb animal seeking relief, she turned out of line and sat hard on a rock buried beneath inches of snow. And she cursed herself for not sliding to the bottom when the bottom was a short distance away. Now she stared down nine hundred feet and knew the fall would break every bone in her body if not kill her. But she could not make it to the summit. Fresh tears of fear and panic froze on her cheeks.
“Resting a minute is an excellent idea,” Ben said, dropping down beside her.
She hadn’t seen him step out of the line, it was as if he magically appeared. And she was so glad to see him. Turning blindly, she dropped her head and pressed her forehead against his chest.
“I can’t go farther,” she gasped between shuddering sobs.
He held her tightly as if he feared she would go careening down the mountain side if he released her. “We’re almost to the top. It’s only another fifty feet or so.”
It might as well have been a mile. She couldn’t do it. She said so, sobbing until no more tears would come. Then she realized she was sitting in the snow with a man’s arms around her and his lips against her hair in full view of the hundreds of men dragging themselves up the ice steps. The impropriety of it rocked her, and she pulled back.
“Don’t move too suddenly,” Ben warned, concern darkening his eyes. Vapor fanned from his lips and bathed her cheeks in warmth. “You don’t want to set off a snow slide. Or fall. There’d be no stopping if you begin to slide.” He gripped her arms through her coat sleeves, steadying her on the buried rock.
His beard had completely filled in and he wore it a bit shaggy like the other prospectors did. And like them, he wore sturdy all-weather trousers today, a loose sweater, and a drill-cloth coat with the heavy lining removed for the climb.
She brushed the fingers of her gloves across the green scarf tied through a buttonhole of his coat. “Would your wife have made this climb?” she asked. Good heavens. Where had that question sprung from? She tried not to think of his late wife just as she tried not to think of her present husband.
“Helen? I doubt it.” Smiling, he carefully swung his pack around to his chest, then found his canteen and opened the lid. “It’s hot coffee,” he said, handing her the container.
Ignoring the line moving to the side of her and the steep life-threatening fall below her boot tips, Juliette lifted the canteen. She hated that they had no cups and had to drink directly from the mouth of the container, but she wanted a hot drink more than she needed to stand on proper manners.
“Helen would have researched every detail about Chilkoot, about the Yukon, about gold prospecting. She would have loved learning about it, would have loved the idea of being here, but she would never have actually come.”
“Whereas I hate the idea of being here, but I did come,” Juliette said unhappily. She accepted the canteen for another sip of coffee, feeling the warmth travel from her throat to her stomach. “Tell me about Mrs. Dare,” she said, her voice almost conversational now that she’d caught her breath. “That is, if you’re comfortable talking about her and don’t mind.”
At the moment it didn’t strike her as improbable or strange to be sitting in the snow less than a hundred feet from a windswept Alaskan summit, staring down at a sheer drop while hundreds of men trudged past not three feet away. This was the only place she could be: she lacked the energy to go up and the fall down would probably kill her.
“Helen was an admirable woman,” he said after a moment. “She was tireless in her efforts to promote women’s suffrage, and she helped expose the suffering of Chinese women forced into slavery and prostitution.”
Juliette’s mouth rounded as he spoke. He had said the wordprostitutionin her presence. And he spoke in an even tone as if he didn’t realize her proper response should be to clap her gloves over her ears and depart, never to speak to him again. Or was that indeed the proper response? Could it be that Aunt Kibble’s notions of propriety were more rigid than what the rest of the world imposed? It was something to think about. Later.
“Do you have children?” she inquired, staring at him in fascination. She envisioned Ben and his wife engaged in stimulating discussions about taboo topics. Obviously he didn’t think less of his wife for her interest in subjects proper ladies were not supposed to know about. The freedom of such a relationship staggered her mind.
“No children.”
Juliette glanced at the green scarf while they sipped coffee and Ben spoke about his late wife. When his voice trailed, they sat in silence.
