Denby gave her an uneasy look. “Lars can’t be lost. He knows this country.”
“I doubt that,” said Roxanne sharply. “Why don’t you ask him where we’re headed?”
But when Denby questioned Lars, all he got was a laconic nod of the head that included half the landscape.
By now Roxanne had learned to manage the dogs fairly well and to hold onto the handlebars while running along behind the sled. It was exhausting, but her long hours of dancing had conditioned her for it. She was holding up somewhat better than Denby.
Lars seemed to be changing before her eyes. Every night now, when they camped, he looked at her more fixedly and his pale blue eyes were beginning to gleam; she felt violated by that look. It was frightening. She mentioned it to Denby.
“I’ve noticed,” he growled. She had almost forgotten how jealous he was.
“Suppose you are hurt,” she pointed out. “I’ll be completely at his mercy.”
Denby wavered. “The Winchester’s loaded,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you know how to use a gun, Roxanne?”
“Yes—though I’m not a good shot.” She had learned while he was out prospecting along the Felly.
“You don’t have to be a good shot,” said Denby. “If Lars comes at you, just aim it at him and cock it and pull the trigger. The gun’ll take care of the rest.”
The fourth day out, Roxanne had occasion to test the truth of that. They had spent a trying day with yet another arctic delight inflicted on them: a type of mirage called “looming,” in which distant objects appeared near and close. Crawling like ants over Alaska’s white face, they never seemed to come any nearer to a distant lip of ice that projected sullenly ahead of them.
When at last they stopped by a low wall of ice, Lars sent Denby around to the other side of the white wall to see if it contained a better campsite than the one he had chosen. As soon as Denby left, Lars strode over to Roxanne. His big fur-clad figure looming over her, he asked, “Tired?”
Bone weary, she looked away from him and did not reply.
“We’re only a couple of days away from where we’re goin’,” he said. “Gin-Gin’s people—she’s my Eskimo gal I left back in Nome—have a camp somewheres up here. We can’t be more than a couple of days from it.”
A camp—people. Hope sprang up in Roxanne, but she kept her face averted.
His voice harshened. “Damn it, look at me when I’m talkin’ to you, woman! Now you get on that sled and holler ‘Mush!’ and make tracks out of here after me. You hear?”
“Denby isn’t back,” she pointed out.
“We don’t need Denby. We’re leavin’ him behind,” Lars said heavily.
Roxanne whirled to stare at Lars, her worst fears realized. Lars was going to leave Denby behind to freeze!
“Unless you’d rather I shot him,” said Lars sarcastically.
She must warn Denby. She made a dive for Denby’s Winchester on the sled to fire a warning shot, but Lars was too quick for her. He grasped the gun just as she reached it. Still, Roxanne did not give it up easily; she struggled with him for it. Contemptuously, he wrested the barrel from her and sent her sprawling.
“Now you get up from there,” he snarled. “I want to do this the easy way, you hear? We’re leaving Denby here and heading for the igloos of Gin-Gin’s people. We’ll have an Eskimo marriage, you and me—I’ll take you for my second wife. Come on, don’t look so glum, you won’t find it so bad—they play games in the igloos sometimes; turn off the lamp and everybody undresses and we all find each other in the dark—finders keepers. Life’s real relaxed in the igloos. All you’ll need to wear is that short fur top, no bottoms. Gin-Gin’s brother’s wife never wears the bottoms in the igloo.”
Roxanne scrambled to her feet in the snow and turned to run. Lars’s big body barred her way, standing between her and the dogs. With a sob Roxanne fell back before him, and Denby’s voice, almost a shriek, pierced her consciousness. Turning toward the sound, she saw that Denby had just rounded the corner of the ice wall.
“Lars, you cheat! We’re up here for gold!”
Lars lifted Denby’s Winchester. “There was never no gold,” he said heavily. “She was the gold. I been planning this all winter.”
With a maddened roar that was half sob, Denby lunged at Lars. He didn’t make it. The Winchester spoke—once. Struck in the chest, Denby fell, a look of disbelief spreading over his haggard young face. He lay wincing, clutching his chest where the red lifeblood was ebbing fast away.
“Denby! Oh, Denby!” Roxanne ran and knelt in the snow beside him, cradled his head in her arms with a sob, shielded him with her body from Lars’s long gun.
“I’m—sorry, Roxanne,” Denby gasped, and she could see that his eyes were glazing. “I . . . did it for you . . . make you rich . . .” His voice was drifting away, like his life. “Loved you so. . . .” he murmured, and his voice was gone, lost in the crunch of the ice beneath Lars’s big mukluks.
“Oh, Denby.” She didn’t know if he could hear her, but she hoped so. “Denby, I loved you too!” Hot tears spilled from Roxanne’s eyes, fell to his cheeks, froze there. And she had loved him. Those long-ago words of his, I love you anyway, rang in her ears. Denby had tried—in his way he had tried to make her happy, to give her what he thought she should want. If he had failed, the fault was as much hers as his. And now . . . the glover’s son lay dead in the arctic snows.
Lars’s mukluks had come to a stop beside her. With a snarl deep in her throat, Roxanne hurled herself upward against the long gun cradled in his arm, and felt her shoulder connect with it, knocking it from his grasp. Off balance, Lars staggered backward. She plunged madly forward, threw herself on the gun, grasped it, rolled over and pointed it at him.
But before she could fire it, he was on her and had wrested the gun away. His hot breath was on her face, melting the ice on her lashes.
“Goddamn wench,” he muttered. “I’ll make you pay for that!” Her head rocked as he slapped her face, first this way, then that. Though the fur parka protected her a little, her neck felt almost broken from the blows. She would have sagged back into the snow, but he dragged her to her feet with a curse. “Don’t you pass out on me now! We got us a way to go yet!” He shook her as a great bear might shake some small animal. The loose snow flew from her parka as he shoved her toward the sled. “You take Denby’s sled,” he said, “and you go just where I tell you. Or”—his voice rose to a roar—“I’m going to shoot you, do you hear? Just like I did him. Now take hold of those sled handles and make tracks!”
Out of the pain of her ringing head, Roxanne found her voice. “You aren’t going to leave him?” she cried. “Not here where the wolves—?”
Lars paused. She could see indecision on his angry face. A fierce light burned in those blank blue eyes. “Come here,” he said. She came reluctantly. Swiftly he lashed her to the sled, took up Denby’s slight body in his arms as easily as if it had been a child’s, and stomped to the edge of the crevasse. Lifting the body high, he hurled it over. Roxanne closed her eyes. Her head reeled. Poor Denby, walled in forever by the ice. For when spring came, this whole mass would move, closing up the crevasse, holding Denby eternally in its dark crystal depths. She was only half conscious when Lars strode back and untied the thongs that bound her, stood her on her feet and pushed her toward the sled. To steady herself and keep from falling, she grasped the sled handles.
“Now mush!” shouted Lars, and she leaped on the sled runners and cried out to the dogs in a voice that had tears in it, “Mush! Snowman, mush!” Head bowed, she clung there until minutes later they hit a rough spot and she was tossed off. She caught up and in stunned misery, whipped by the wind, ran along behind the sled, gripping the handlebars. Sometimes to catch her breath, she stood on the runners and buried her face in the fur of her parka. Sobs wracked her slight body encased in its heavy furs. Denby had not been much of a husband, nor had her marriage brought her satisfaction. Between them they had brought each other onl
y heartache and despair. But for him to die in that forbidding place and in that terrible unnecessary way! It was unbearable. Pain blurred her vision as she stood on the runners, her hands gripping the handlebars, and felt the yelping dogs sweep the sled farther into the frozen north.
Then slowly, rising even over the numbing pain of Denby’s death, the horror of her own situation penetrated her misery. She had been the prize all along, and Lars had killed Denby to possess her. And now they were headed God knows where. . . .
Her tears dried and her courage returned to sustain her. She looked across the open space at Lars’s watchful figure, tall and bulky and with a bearlike strength, running behind his sled. Dull hatred burned in her eyes. If only she had the Winchester, she would kill him now! Whatever happened, she swore silently, she would never be Lars’s woman. But she had only until they made camp to make her move, and time was running out.
Before they had gone another two miles, she had figured out what she would do. She planned to wait until the trail narrowed and Lars had to go around a difficult blind turn to maneuver past some jagged chunk of ice that barred their way. The moment he could not see her, she would wheel the dogs about and run for it. She was lighter than Lars, and her team was every bit as good as his—Snowman, in fact, was better than his lead dog. She would run with all her strength and leap on the runners only when her strength failed her. No matter if they went in the wrong direction at first; they would take the easiest path, whichever way it lay. But she would escape from Lars, even if she died in that white frozen world out there.
Lars must have guessed her intention, because they had not gone another quarter mile when he reined up his sled and came to a halt. Roxanne halted behind him, blocked by his sled. At his approach she shrank back.
“I don’t trust you,” he muttered. “Tricky, that’s what you are. Here.” He pushed her onto Denby’s sled, pulled the fur wraps around her and tied her down. “That’ll keep you nice and warm for me tonight,” he said grinning.
Haggard, Roxanne stared back at him, hatred burning in her sapphire eyes.
“You’ll come round,” he chuckled. “You’ll find out you got no other choice.”
As she watched, he untied his own sled and cut it adrift. “We’ve used enough of our supplies to get rid of it anyway,” he grunted. “And Snowman’s a better lead dog.” Tying all the dogs so that they fanned out before the sled, he roared to Snowman, “Mush!” Roxanne thought she heard the sound of wolves in the distance.
A red aurora hung shimmering in the sky when at last Lars made camp. He built the fire, cooked their food, brought Roxanne’s portion to her and untied her hands so she could eat. Though she had tried to writhe free, she was still tied securely to the sled. The events of the day had kept her so distraught that she could not force her food down.
“You better eat,” Lars advised in a surly voice. “You’ll need it.” And when she shook her head and looked away, “Don’t matter none. After I’ve got you broke in, you’ll be plenty glad to eat—and cook, too. You’ll do whatever I say and jump when I tell you.”
Roxanne gave him a bitter look.
He sat hunched before the fire, talking to her, while the dogs growled and snarled, sniffing the food. From the distance there came a howl. Lars looked up alertly. “Probably wolves,” he muttered.
Still tied, Roxanne shuddered. Wolves . . .
Lars leaned back and contemplated her. “You think I’m in a hurry to get my hands on your white skin,” he said lazily. “But I ain’t in no hurry. Me, I know how to wait. I seen you up there on that platform with your hips swingin’ in that orange satin dress, and I swore I’d have you. I’d have took you back there in town, but half of Nome would have been gunnin’ for me. So I figured out how to get rid of your fool of a husband and get you at the same time.”
“What about your Eskimo girl friend?” asked Roxanne. “I’m even wearing her clothes. Do you mean she won’t mind?”
Lars shrugged. “I got Gin-Gin broke in real good, same as I’ll have you broke in soon. When Gin-Gin acts too uppity, I just give her a taste of the whip.”
Roxanne paled. That long whip that he cracked over the dogs . . . she could almost feel it lashing her own bare skin. Well, he would have to use it on her, because she did not mean to give in to him without a struggle.
He sat a while, staring at her. Then he rose casually. “Now,” he said, “you and me is going to share a sleeping bag. And inside that sleeping bag you’re going to do anything I want you to do. And you’re not going to give me no trouble. On account of,” he added reflectively, “I killed the last one who give me trouble. Sort of forgot myself and found I’d broken her back. . . .”
Feeling like a trapped animal, Roxanne glared at him, her own back stiff. She’d rather lie dead in the snow, or buried in some crevasse like Denby, than share a sleeping bag with Lars!
He stepped forward and unbound her. Roxanne stumbled to her feet, feeling numb at first from lying there so long.
“Walk around a minute,” he suggested. “Restores the circulation. I want you in the pink when you crawl into that sleeping bag.”
Roxanne flexed her leg muscles. She wondered how far she could run before Lars caught up with her.
She was poised to run, seeing Lars’s big shape as a shadow against the red aurora that lit the night sky, when a voice she had never expected to hear again said, “Drop to the ground, Roxanne, so I can get a shot at him.”
Over the low, icy embankment that sheltered their little camp from the wind, a man vaulted toward them. He was wearing mukluks and a fur parka, and inside that parka—was Rhodes’s grim face.
With a curse Lars whirled and grasped his gun. Since Roxanne was between them, Rhodes paused for an instant, while Roxanne, coming out of shock, flung herself to the snow. But that momentary delay had given Lars his chance. He turned the Winchester on Rhodes and both of their guns roared at once. In the explosion of sound, Roxanne saw Rhodes waver, heard Lars’s gun roar again. Silently, blood dripping from a wound in his head, Rhodes fell to the ground, his gun exploding once more as he went down.
Roxanne scrambled up and ran for Rhodes’s gun. As she grasped it, brought the barrel up and whirled, she saw there was no need to fire it. Rhodes’s first bullet had got Lars full in the face. Lars could only have fired one shot—the other must have been the result of a reflex. Appalled, Roxanne turned away from that sight; Lars was unrecognizable. What had been a face was now a bloody mask.
But it was not Lars who concerned her. Through some miracle, Rhodes was here—and he was hurt, perhaps dying. She bent over him fearfully. His eyes were closed, and blood was oozing from a cut on his scalp. It did not appear deep, but she did not know what damage might have been done. Then she saw that the blood was also trickling down his sleeve and staining his wrist. So he had taken both bullets.
Quickly, she stanched the bleeding with a woolen shirt from Denby’s pack. Her desperate gaze swung round. In all its fearsome beauty, the trackless arctic lay before her . . . unique, awe-inspiring, relentless, forbidding and remote. In the snow at her feet lay the only man she had ever loved—who might be dying because he had come to save her.
Roxanne’s jaw hardened. She looked out at the grim white distance, stretching ever away, and then down again at Rhodes’s prone figure.
By God, neither of them was going to die! Rhodes had come for her, and she was going to get him back to Nome! She would lash him to the sled, just as Lars had tied her. The same furs would cover him.
The hardest thing would be getting Rhodes onto the sled. And it had to be done at once or, she feared, he would freeze in the cold arctic night. Swiftly she founds Lars’s knife, cut off Lars’s outer clothing and wrapped Rhodes in the furs, being careful not to reopen his wounds. Then she enlisted Snowman’s aid. After she had untied the dog—risking bitten fingers from the other irritable snapping dogs, who smelled blood and were excited—she lashed Rhodes’s legs to Snowman’s harness, and together they hea
ved him onto the sled. She wrapped Rhodes in furs more carefully than she had ever wrapped anything, warmed her hands at the fire, swallowed the food Lars had prepared, retied Snowman and, leaving Lars’s body to the mercy of the wolves, started out by the light of the aurora. They would travel for short distances and make brief rest stops, she decided. Surely the dogs would last longer that way and could cover more distance. She feared the weather and the loss of the plain line of sled tracks that led back toward Nome.
With a start, she realized Rhodes must have dogs, a sled somewhere. His dogs must not be left to starve! She mushed her yelping pack back along Rhodes’s tracks, which followed their own across the snow, and found his dogsled. Roxanne fastened his dogs traces to her own sled and reassessed the situation. Since there were many dogs to pull a relatively light load, they would be able to travel fast. Even though they were lightly provisioned, she would not starve, having found some supplies on Rhodes’s sled and transferred them to her own. She had also tossed Denby’s Winchester and cartridges onto the sled, so if she met a wolf pack, she would be able to deal with them.
But wolves were not to be the enemy.
The arctic was.
Chapter 29
Two days later Rhodes still had not regained consciousness though Roxanne tended him anxiously. She tried to take care of herself too, forcing herself to eat, remembering to change the straw inside her mukluks to keep her feet from freezing, for the burden was hers now. Somehow she must bring them both home.
The way seemed endless and their food had almost run out when a light snow blew in from the north. Doggedly, Roxanne kept going as long as she could, then took a short exhausted nap on the lee side of a long ice shelf. She was awakened by the sounds of two of the hungry dogs fighting—they were on necessarily short rations now—and rousing herself, she struggled to her feet. Standing there, in the new-fallen snow, she was overcome by a feeling of hopelessness. Half blinded by the snow-glare, she climbed to a little hillock and surveyed the faceless landscape. No sign of the sled tracks she had so faithfully followed. The new snow lay like powdered sugar frosting, covering the ice with deceptive softness.
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