Page 92 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“I guess there’s no reason to continue on to Dawson,” Clara said finally, breaking a lengthy silence.
Juliette raised shaking fingertips to her lips. “No reason at all.”
“I suppose we can leave as soon as Clara’s shoulder and side are fully healed and she’s up to running behind a sled,” Zoe said, speaking to the fire.
Tom stood before them, a handsome weathered man, tall with authority, his expression as hard as the ice on the lake.
“Since you won’t be staying in Dawson, you don’t need a year’s worth of goods and foodstuffs. You can lighten the sleds considerably by selling off everything you won’t need during a rough fast run for Dyea. If you lighten your outfits sufficiently, we can put Clara in one of the sleds. You could depart as early as tomorrow morning.”
Zoe looked at the others, then gripped her hands in her lap. “I guess we could be ready by then.” The others nodded. She gazed up at him, her heart in her eyes. “Will you take us back?”
“No. Luc will be in charge of getting you to Dyea and on board the next ship out.” Tom’s gaze locked to hers. “Good-bye, Zoe. When you see your brother Jack, give him my regards.”
He hesitated as if there were more to say, then he muttered beneath his breath, nodded to Clara and Juliette, and tipped his hat on his head. The door closed softly behind him.
“We’re going home,” Zoe whispered when the silence became too much to bear. “Tomorrow.” A tear hovered on her lashes and then zigzagged down her cheek.
Juliette pressed her handkerchief to her face. “I thought I couldn’t cry anymore. I thought all the tears were gone.”
Clara walked to the window and leaned forward as if she could see through the ice. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t end like this. This is too abrupt, too…I don’t know.” Despair choked her voice. “One minute I am someone’s sun, and an hour later I am his darkness. How can that happen so fast? How can I survive this?”
Clara was touched by the number of people who gathered to see them off and wish them well. Mrs. Eddington and her husband came, and most of the women on the trail. She recognized the men she had beaten in the arm-wrestling tournament, exchanged grins with a couple of men she had laid low during the infamous brawl. But the face she longed to see wasn’t there.
She kept hoping Bear would appear until Luc locked the straps over the thick blankets covering her and shouted the order for the sleds to move out. Only then did she allow herself to admit that Bear wouldn’t stop her from leaving.
Then, once they were under way, she hoped he would come after her. Their pace was set by Juliette, the slowest member of their party. Bear could easily have caught up. But he didn’t.
Her last hope was to find him waiting at their evening campsite, impatiently looking for the first sled, intending to surprise her.
“I know what you’re hoping,” Juliette said sadly after she’d arrived and inspected the site. “But they aren’t coming.”
“Look.” Zoe’s voice sounded peculiar. “The Chilkats are setting up our tent, and it appears that Henry is going to cook.”
Overhearing the comment, Luc walked toward them with a smile. “Mr. Tom told us to take very good care of you ladies. Treat you like rich clients.”
Zoe’s face paled beneath the ash and grease, and she abruptly walked away.
“It isn’t a reference to Jean Jacques,” Clara insisted later when they were on their cots with their stove heating the cramped space inside the tent.
“Of course it is.”
“No, Clara’s right.” Juliette lifted on an elbow. “Tom loves you, Zoe. He wants the trip back to be as comfortable as it can be, so he instructed his Indians to treat us like rich people. He used a phrase to help his Chilkats understand what he wants them to do. That’s all.”
“I don’t want any favors from him,” Zoe snapped. She flopped down on her cot and stared at the tent ceiling.
“Well, I do. I want every favor I can get,” Clara said, covering a yawn. “I wonder if Bear paid the Chilkats for this portion of the trip, too.”
Juliette cleared her throat. “I paid our way.” Fire burned on her cheeks. “Tom didn’t say anything about the cost of getting us back to Dyea. But I thought…” She shrugged. “By now Mrs. Eddington will have given him the envelope I left.”
Zoe bolted up on her cot and swore. “Damn it, Juliette! I don’t want your charity!”
“Just say thank you and shut up.” Clara lifted her head and scowled.
“It won’t kill you to accept a gift or a favor from Tom and me.”
“Not only are you forcing charity on me, but you’re talking in that prissy little voice! I don’t know which I hate more!”
Juliette paused with her brush in her hair. “Did you hear a thank-you in any of that?” she asked Clara.
