Page 58 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“I’m not laughing.” But she could see his lips twitching. He appealed to Clara. “Am I laughing?”
“No. I’m the one who’s laughing.” Her eyes crinkled above the scarf wrapping her throat and mouth. “We look like fat penguins, waddling along with our arms stuck out at the sides.”
“What do you know about penguins?”
“In a bad mood, are we?” Tom asked, lifting an eyebrow. He’d pulled his scarf away from his mouth and she could see his smile.
“I’m either too hot or too cold. I’ve been stuck in that tent for a week. Juliette is driving me crazy. We’re all starting to repeat ourselves. We’ve had no exercise. And I’m so sick of Alaskan strawberries and dough cakes that I could scream.”
Alaskan strawberries was the name given to the pink half-cooked beans that everyone in camp joked about when they weren’t complaining. No one had the energy to cook much else even if they could have found more interesting fare among the tumbled boxes of iced-over goods.
“When are we going to get out of here?” At least a hundred people had turned back. They might not have given up if it hadn’t been so late in the year, if they could have sailed across the lakes and down the rivers. But the frigid temperatures and the long walk over ice had discouraged them. Zoe had watched them go with envy in her heart.
“A few folks left for Dawson today.” Tom fell into step beside her, making walking on snowshoes look easy and graceful. “There’s no reason our party can’t depart tomorrow morning.”
“Good.” She wanted to get to Dawson, find Jean Jacques, do what she’d come to do, then go home if they didn’t hang her as they probably would. She wanted to sit in Ma’s snug kitchen, pour her heart out, and let her family comfort her. She wanted her life back the way it was before she met Jean Jacques and before she ran into Tom Price.
Jean Jacques had deceived her and ruined her, but he’d made her feel like a lady. Tom confused her and reminded her of a background she wanted to rise above. Good sense advised her to forget both of them.
Head down, she listened to the cold squeak of the snow beneath her boots, heard the rhythmicschwooshof Tom’s snowshoes. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him.
When they reached the shore of the lake, Tom paused and pushed back the fur-lined hood of his coat. Mist gathered in front of his lips when he spoke. “That was some kind of fight you started last week,” he said, shaking his head and grinning. “I never saw anything like it.”
Zoe closed her eyes and cringed inside her layers of clothing. When she felt uncertain about her behavior, she asked herself: Would Juliette do this? Never in a hundred years would Juliette have punched a man in the nose and started a brawl. Only a low-bred person would do such a thing.
“I was proud of you, Zoe.” Tom pushed his hands in his coat pockets and gazed down at her with soft eyes. “If you hadn’t gotten to Horvath first, I would have flattened him.”
She turned away, focusing on the men loading sleds out on the lake. “I’m ashamed of myself,” she said in a low voice. How was she ever going to better herself if she couldn’t control the Newcastle in her?
Tom took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “There’s no reason to be ashamed of standing up for your friend.”
Juliette was not her friend. They could barely tolerate each other. Although she’d thought about it at length, she didn’t know why she’d flown at Jake Horvath like an avenging angel. It was nothing to her if some vulgar-mouthed man made scurrilous comments about Juliette. But at the time it happened, she had cared deeply, had cared enough to bust the man’s nose. She still didn’t understand what had come over her.
“Ladies don’t get into fistfights.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” His fingers tightened on her shoulders hard enough that she felt the pressure through all the layers. “The standards are different up here, Zoe. If you aren’t a fighter, you won’t succeed in the Yukon. And you might die. Qualities like toughness and loyalty are prized.”
“Is that how you see me?” she asked, horrified. “As tough?”
“You bet I do. You’re tough enough to go after what you want. Tough enough to fight for what you believe in. It takes strength to make your way in a big city like Seattle, and you’ve been doing it. It takes strength to set your sights on a place like Dawson City and endure what it takes to get there.”
The praise made her feel a little better, and then a lot worse as she realized he praised her for the wrong things. There was nothing admirable about starting a brawl.
He grinned down at her. “You and Clara are becoming legends. There isn’t a man on the trail who wants to get crossways with either of you. Everyone knows you can shoot that rifle you keep in the tent, and now they know you throw a mean right fist.”
You could take the girl out of Newcastle, but you couldn’t take Newcastle out of the girl. What a fool she had been to believe that Jean Jacques really thought she was genteel.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, walking out onto the ice. Clara had reported that it was a foot thick now. Clara seemed to know everything, which was one of her annoying traits. “Tell me what we’re supposed to do.”
Tom followed, and she sensed that he watched her with a puzzled frown.
For the next hour, he worked with her on the sleds. Four of his clients had turned back midway to Crater Lake, therefore he had extra sleds and dogs.
“With fewer clients and goods to transport, we’ll be able to move faster.”
The plan was for the Chilkats to attach canvas sails to the extra sleds and let the wind blow the piles of goods across the lake. With any luck, the Indians would make such good time that camp would be set up by the time Zoe and her companions arrived. They would drive dog-powered sleds.
“So why do I need to know how to rig a sail?”
