“It looks crowded along the creek," Hannah said, peering at what looked like hundreds of miners, all working along the banks.
Logan nodded agreement. "It is. There’s no room to stake more claims near Barkerville. Newcomers can try their luck on other creeks, or they can work someone else's mining claim for wages. Or, if they have enough money, they can pay to join an existing mining company.”
“Do any women file claims?" Hannah was curious.
"Very rarely. A few have applied for mining certificates, but mostly that's just a way for the husband to hold an extra share or work a claim in his wife’s name.”
"Doesn't sound very fair.”
He shot her an amused glance. “Barkerville’s a man's town,” he commented. “Besides, mining's hard work."
"Women can do the same work men can,” she insisted. "Where we come from, some women are miners.”
He grinned. “Is that what you do, Hannah? Are you a miner?” His tone was teasing.
“Nope. I work in a hospital. I'm a social worker.”
His frown relayed total incomprehension, and again she struggled for words that would explain her job in terms he’d recognize. “I work with people who have problems, maybe with their families or with the hospital staff, or maybe adjusting to illness or accident, something that has happened to them physically."
"How do you do this social work?"
“A lot of it is just talking. When people are upset, it often helps them when you listen or ask questions. If you ask the right ones, eventually they figure out themselves what they should do."
"You’re paid a wage for this?” There was an incredulous tone to his voice, and Hannah bristled.
"Of course. Very good money," she emphasized. She was tempted to tell him how much, but she realized that there was probably no fair comparison between wages in this time and in hers.
“And who pays you for all this talking?”
"The hospital. My job is considered valuable and necessary.” She'd had enough of his skepticism. "What about you, Logan? Did you grow up running a saloon back in San Jose?” There was sarcasm in her voice, and she didn’t care. He’d scoffed at her job, hadn’t he?
A sardonic grin tilted his mouth for an instant. "Hardly. My father is a clergyman there.” Again, he obviously wasn’t going to volunteer anything more, and Hannah told herself it was rude to pry, even though she was madly curious.
“Oh, look there," Elvira cried out from behind them. Just ahead of the buggy, a deer stepped out on the road for a moment, and then leaped gracefully into the trees. Daisy and Elvira oohed and ahhed, and Logan began telling them a story about a black bear that had wandered into Barkerville and broken into the supply cellar of Wake-Up Jake's, and again the conversation became general.
The noonday sun grew warmer in the blue sky above them, and the miles passed slowly beneath the wheels of the buggy and the hooves of the horse. Hannah began watching anxiously for anything familiar from the previous night, but so far nothing registered.
“Elvira, do you remember any landmarks that were near that bridge?" It seemed to Hannah that they must be close to the area by now. According to her watch, several hours had passed since they’d left Barkerville, and she had a feeling the buggy was going along somewhat faster than the wagon had.
Elvira couldn’t remember anything special, and neither could Daisy. All three women now became quiet and tense, watching the road ahead expectantly. The small river wound along, but everything looked different in the daylight.
"This is the bridge I spoke of," Logan announced after a time, and Hannah's heart sank. It was a small log affair, nothing like the long one she remembered, even though the steep bank down to the creek might have been the same. It couldn’t be, though, because there was no sign of her van.
“Can we go a bit farther?"
Obligingly, Logan drove the horse across the logs. They bumped along the trail for another half hour, but there was no sign of that other bridge. There was only the stream, the woods, and the rough track that passed for a road.
When they began to pass through a narrow rocky canyon, Hannah knew for certain they'd come too far. Her voice strained, she told Logan so, adding, “There must be another road. We must have somehow turned off onto another road last night. Are you sure there isn’t a fork somewhere?" But she'd been watching closely, and she knew there wasn’t.
Logan turned the horse and buggy. “I assure you, this is the only road of any sort between Quesnellemouth and Barkerville." His words confirmed Hannah's worst fears. The bridge, the van, the route back to their own time, were gone. It was a terrible disappointment, and behind her, Hannah heard Elvira start crying.
Hannah didn't feel like crying; instead, she wanted to punch something, rage, scream out her frustration at whatever quirk of fate had landed her where she was. Her frustration and anger burst from her in a torrent of words.
"I’m supposed to be getting married in less than two weeks. The wedding’s all planned. Worse yet, it's all paid for, the cake’s ordered, the dress is being altered, gifts have arrived already. Brad didn’t want me to go on this trip in the first place. Now he’s going to be furious when it dawns on him I’m not coming back. And I can’t even let him know why."
"Brad is your fiance?”
Hannah nodded.
“Then I should think he’d be worried rather than angry,” Logan commented in a dry tone. Hannah’s anger found a target. “Of course he’ll be worried," she snapped. “How would you feel if your bride-to-be drove off on a Friday for a simple little weekend trip, and disappeared? He’ll have the R.C.M.P. alerted, and there’ll be a province wide alarm."
A horrible thought struck her. “When ... if they find the van where we left it in that creek, they’ll think we’re all dead."
Elvira was sniffling into a tissue, and she wailed, “Gordon will never know what really happened to me. I never thought the day would come when I’d miss him, but I do."
It slowly dawned on Hannah that Daisy was the calmest of the three women.
"You okay, Mom?” Hannah turned to look at her.
Daisy looked back at her with a composed expression. "I guess we’ll just have to make the best of this," she said.
For someone who'd spent most of the past year crying, her mother was being amazingly optimistic, Hannah thought. Daisy even managed a small smile. “We’re all in this together, dear, and that’s a comfort, isn’t it? It would be so awful if it were only one of us.”
Hannah turned around again and stared at the rutted, empty road with the trees overhanging it, and it seemed symbolic.
There was no wide, modern road to take her back to where she’d been. There was only this winding dirt trail through thick woods, leading to a place she didn’t want to go, a place filled with hundreds of wild men whose hungry eyes made her feel like a thing instead of a person.
It was impossible to absorb the implications of what had happened all at once. Hannah felt she could only break off tiny pieces and examine them one at a time, because looking at the entire scenario would send her into full-fledged panic.
She was panicking anyway. If there was no way back, then this pointless journey through time was permanent. She’d live the rest of her life in an era devoid of everything she was accustomed to—cars, microwaves, computers, cell phones, probably even tampons.
It was a concept so overwhelming that it made her insides tremble. There were so many issues to think about. She tried to calm herself by sorting them out in order of importance. There were the immediate ones, like money.
Elvira might be able to get work at the hospital, but Hannah knew she was going to have to be financially responsible for Daisy. Her mother had never worked outside her home, and it didn’t seem likely she'd start now. Thank goodness they had the gold Dutch Charlie had given her. It would be an enormous help, but they had to think of it as an emergency fund, she decided. She’d have to find work, and Logan’s reaction when she’d tried to describe what a s
ocial worker did was proof that there wouldn’t be any openings for someone with her specialty in Barkerville.
She’d have to get some other sort of job. The idea was both frightening and depressing, and she wasn’t even aware at first that Logan had stopped the buggy beneath some trees, close to the stream.
"Hannah?" His large, warm hand on her forearm startled her. He was looking at her with kindness and concern, and she realized that she was on the verge of hysteria and that somehow he knew it. His strong shoulder was very close to hers, and the temptation to just plop her head there and sob out her fear and anxiety was almost overwhelming.
You don’t know him well enough to cry all over him, the rational, stern part of her brain warned. And there were Elvira and Daisy to consider, too. Elvira was still gulping and sobbing behind her.
It wouldn’t do any good for her to collapse as well, Hannah lectured herself.
"This is a good spot to have our lunch, don’t you think?” Logan’s voice was casual, and the simple question was calming. “Some food would make you all feel better.”
When they were walking home from the restaurant that morning, Daisy had gone into the bakery in Barkerville and, with one of the gold nuggets, bought what was available for a picnic.
Logan gave Hannah’s arm a reassuring squeeze and in a single lithe movement leaped down from the buggy’s seat to the grass, holding out a hand for her.
She took it, jumping down beside him.
Elvira gave one last fierce honk into a tissue, and then she and Daisy and Klaus also climbed down with Logan's assistance. Soon they were all busy spreading the lunch on towels on the grass, and Logan was right.
After Hannah had eaten a meat pie and a scone, which proved delicious, she felt much better. They drank water from the stream, the coldest, sweetest water Hannah had ever tasted. They packed up the food that was left, and Daisy and Elvira wandered off after Klaus, talking to each other in low, worried tones. Klaus was chasing butterflies through the deep grass, barking and growling as if engaged in mortal combat.
Logan laughed at him and even Hannah had to smile.
Logan began stacking the women’s travel bags more efficiently in the back of the buggy, and Hannah went over to help. She pushed her nylon bag firmly into a corner, and it struck her that the few toiletries and changes of clothing in the bag were now all the possessions she owned in the world. Again, she struggled to hold back the tears that threatened.
Logan was watching her. "I understand that this trip was a severe disappointment for you, Hannah. Will you be staying on in Barkerville now?"
“I don’t know." She hadn’t given it any thought. “For the time being we will be. I guess it would be the same year no matter where we went?"
His smile flashed, but it was sympathetic. “I believe it would, yes.”
"Then I can’t see that it matters where we’re living right now. We don’t have enough money to travel very far anyhow. So Barkerville’s as good as anywhere, I guess." Her voice betrayed how despondent she felt. She stared down at her sandals, shoulders slumped, arms crossed on her breasts. "Eventually I think I’d like to go back to Victoria."
But would she be able to stand it, seeing the city where she was born with none of the familiar places she loved? Her mother’s home, her apartment, the hospital... none of them would be there.
Tears of self-pity and fear filled her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.
He came close to her and gently tipped her chin up with a forefinger, stroking away the tears. "This man Brad you’re pledged to marry.” His voice was thoughtful. "Is it he you mourn, Hannah? Is he the reason you’re so distressed?"
Hannah sniffed and didn’t answer for a moment, searching for an honest response. She did miss Brad, of course, but there were many other things she missed as well.
Logan fished a clean white handkerchief out of a pocket and handed it to her.
“I do miss Brad. We were about to be married,” she slowly admitted, using the handkerchief to dab at her eyes and nose. "But I also miss my friends, my job, my ... my apartment, my clothes, my furniture, my mother's house. I miss the city where I grew up. And it's not as if I can go back and visit, because they’re gone now, aren't they? They’re lost to me. I can’t go back, not unless a miracle comes along. It scares me. It makes me feel like a homeless person."
He stood quietly looking down at her. "I don't understand exactly where it is you come from. I don’t understand this talk of a future time, but I know you're not from anywhere I'm familiar with. Your clothing, your manner, the things you speak of, are all foreign to me."
"Yeah. Well, it’s the same for me with you. For all of us. Everything’s weird, like falling into the pages of some history book. It's really scary."
He nodded. ‘1 can see that it would be." His half-smile was sardonic. “If it’s any consolation, Barkerville wasn’t at all familiar to me either when I arrived.”
"You never did tell me why you came.”
He shook his head and looked past her, to the stream and the woods beyond it. His expression hardened for a moment. "I'm a gambler by profession. Barkerville is a good place to win gold."
His words shocked Hannah. “But I thought ... I mean, you own the saloon. I thought you were a businessman.”
"I won the saloon," he clarified. “In a poker game, the first week I arrived. I’d never run a business before, but I could see that there was great potential in it. Miners need a place to spend their gold, and they spend it lavishly. The man who’d owned the Nugget didn’t put much effort into making his business successful. That's a great waste." His expression hardened again, and his voice was harsh. “I despise waste of any kind."
Hannah despised gambling. She thought of her father and the money he'd lost over the years, on the stock market, in get-rich quick schemes that never panned out, in businesses that lost more money than they ever made.
There hadn't been money for her education. She’d scraped by on student loans and summer jobs. The money Michael had lost had been Daisy’s, some of it originally from the great-grandfather who'd mined for gold right here in Barkerville.
The way her father and Logan went about it might be different, but in the end all gambling was the same. She stepped back, putting distance between Logan and herself. She realized he was all the things her father had been—handsome, charming.
A gambler, her shocked mind realized. He was the last man she wanted to have anything to do with.
Yesterday’s Gold: Chapter Nine
“We should be on our way.” Her tone was curt, and she didn’t look at him again.
"I'll go get Mom and Elvira.” Hannah hurried off across the meadow, angry with herself for the keen disappointment she’d felt when Logan told her what he did. Why should it matter what or who he was?
On the bumpy ride back to Barkerville, Hannah insisted that Daisy ride up front with Logan. They chatted, mostly about Klaus. In the back, shoulder to shoulder with Elvira, Hannah was lost in her own thoughts, barely listening to what was being said.
“Why did you ladies decide to come to Barkerville?" Logan was asking Daisy the very question Hannah had asked him, and she heard her mother explaining about her great-grandfather, Ezekial Shaw, and how he’d come here and staked a claim.
“I’ve met Zeke," Logan said calmly, and Elvira and Hannah gaped at each other. “He comes in the saloon now and again. He has a claim north of Richfield, I've heard it's a good one.”
"I'd love to meet him." Daisy's voice was filled with excitement. Hannah wasn't sure she wanted to. The thought of meeting her great-great-grandfather was too much right now. In fact, it made her feel queasy. There was something unnatural about it.
"I'll send word for him to come by, next time he's in town," Logan promised. "He was in last week, so it’ll likely be two, three weeks before he comes again. He and his partner are shaft mining. They sink a hole forty to fifty feet deep until they reach bedrock and then take the gravel out and wash it for gold.
In this good weather, they work sixteen or eighteen hours a day for weeks at a time."
Hannah tried to imagine what such a life would be like. Did they have a cabin, or were they, like so many other miners, making do with a tent? Cabins, tents. Hannah realized she hadn't yet given any thought to where they were going to live. Logan had generously offered his room for one night, but now it looked as if they were going to need permanent accommodation.
Depression washed over her. It was one more problem in a pile that felt as high as the surrounding mountains, and it was going to have to be addressed right away.
"Do you know of a house we could rent, Logan?”
He turned, shaking his head. “There aren't any houses to rent, or cabins, or even rooms. That's why so many people are living in tents, and why all the trees are cut down around town. The mill can’t keep up with the demand for lumber, partly because so much is needed for the mines and the flues.”
“Where can we buy a tent?" She heard Elvira groan in protest.
"There’s no need. You’ll stay on at the Nugget until something decent comes available." His tone was definite, but Hannah wanted to refuse.
She no longer wanted any part of his generosity. But there were Daisy and Elvira to consider, so she swallowed her pride and just said thank you, determined to turn the town upside down the first chance she got. She’d find them another place to live, she vowed, and soon.
Tired out from the emotional ups and downs of the day, Hannah fell into a half doze, and the sun was nearing the horizon when they again entered the noisy, dusty main street of Barkerville.
Back in Logan's room, all Hannah could think of was a bath. Hot, sweaty, and filthy from the trip, she couldn't bear the thought of still another meager sponging off in the washbasin.
“I’m going down to find us a tub and some hot water," she declared.
Now and Forever: Time Travel Romance Superbundle Page 46