Across a Thousand Miles

by Nadia Nichols

  Her team exploded forward, and Rebecca didn’t dare look back as they rounded the curve in the river.

  ELLIN DODGE WAS in a terrible state. Rebecca was as dear to her as her own daughter might have been, and she desperately wanted to see her happy. In Ellin’s opinion, Bill MacKenzie was as good a man as Rebecca would ever stumble across in this wild and lonely land, or anywhere else on earth, for that matter. If only Rebecca would come to her senses and fall in love with him, but instead, Sadie Hedda had decided to set her cap for the rookie musher.

  Sadie wasn’t beautiful the way Rebecca was, but she was a woman, a very warm and willing woman in a land where warm and willing women were few and far between. And Bill MacKenzie was a red-blooded man, no doubt about it.

  Ellin had invited Sadie to share their traditional Christmas Eve supper. If she hadn’t invited her, it would have been just the four of them. Mac and Rebecca, she and Sam. It would have been a perfect Christmas Eve! But Ellin had had no choice. Sadie had as much as invited herself by going on and on about how lonely Christmas Eve was for her…and then to cap it all off she had produced this gigantic Virginia cured ham!

  How could Ellin not have invited her?

  Moot point, now. Sadie would be here in another hour, as well as Rebecca and Mac. She’d heard Mac return from his training run a while ago. He had snuck cat-footed into the kitchen where Ellin was putting together a simple salad and asked humbly if he might shower, to which she had replied matter-of-factly, without looking up from the vegetables she was slicing, “William MacKenzie, if you don’t take a shower and shave, and if you don’t put those doggy-smelling clothes of yours into the laundry hamper, you won’t be the least little bit welcome here for supper!”

  He had emerged from the shower all spruced up and freshly shaved, smartly dressed in a black-watch flannel shirt and his best blue jeans, and to her surprise had taken over her kitchen, finishing the salad, pinning bright yellow rounds of pineapple to the ham with whole cloves, and sprinkling brown sugar over the ham before sliding it into the oven. While she’d watched from the sidelines, he’d cleaned the pots, pans and dishes in the sink, wiped down the counters, scrubbed the potatoes, set the table for supper and then he’d turned to her and said, “I kissed her today, Ellin. I shouldn’t have done it but I did, and I guess she’s mad enough at me now that she might not even come over tonight.”

  He looked so dejected standing there that for a moment Ellin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the end she just patted his arm. “She’ll come, Mac. Rebecca will come.”

  It never even occurred to her that Mac might have been talking about Sadie, because Ellin knew full well who Mac was in love with.

  REBECCA LOOKED at her reflection in the tiny mirror above her sink and made a face. No doubt about it, she was homely. The fact that Mac had actually kissed her was an unexpected, unexplainable, and unnatural phenomenon. It would probably never happen again, and that was just as well. Kissing was a pointless pursuit, when it couldn’t possibly lead to anything but pain and misery. She lifted her hair up and heaved a discouraged sigh. She would like to sneak over to Ellin and Sam’s and take a shower, but that was probably what Mac was doing at this very moment, and after what had happened this afternoon, she didn’t see how she could possibly look him in the eye ever again.

  With another heavy sigh, Rebecca let her hair drop back onto her shoulders. Maybe she should call Ellin and tell her she just didn’t feel up to a night out. Ellin would understand. Ellin understood all things. She was the wisest woman Rebecca had ever known. She was so lucky to have Ellin and Sam. Without them, she never would have survived after Bruce’s death.

  Yes, Ellin would sympathize.

  Rebecca connected her radio phone to the battery and dialed their number. Ellin answered on the second ring, and before Rebecca could utter a word, the older woman spoke. “My dear girl, if you’re going to tell me you can’t come over tonight, please don’t bother. If you can’t come over here, then we’ll all just have to come over there. I certainly hope your cabin is spotlessly clean and ready for lots of company!”

  “Ellin,” Rebecca said, “I just called to tell you I’m on my way.”

  “Well, hurry up then! There’s still time for you to take a nice hot shower before supper.”

  CHRISTMAS EVE was a rather interesting affair. Rebecca managed to take her shower before Sadie arrived, the ham came out of the oven about the time Mac made his appearance, and the seating arrangements at the table, not prearranged by Ellin, placed Sam between Mac and Sadie, and Rebecca next to Mac. Ellin suspected that Mac and Sam were in cahoots, but that was fine with her. Nonetheless, Sadie was not to be put off.

  “I sure hope you like the Christmas present I got you, Mac,” she said as soon as she was seated.

  Mac, carrying the ham to the table, froze in midstride. He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came forth.

  “Boy, am I hungry!” Sam burst out, slamming his fists onto the table and making the silverware dance. “Who’s going to carve the beast?”

  “Mac will,” Ellin said.

  “Uh-oh. Better get your medical kit ready, Sadie,” Rebecca advised, lifting her wineglass for a sip.

  Mac set the giant ham in front of his chair and picked up the carving knife. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I may be dangerous with a dog team, but I’m pretty good with a knife.”

  “Not as good as I hope to become,” Sadie interjected, twirling the stem of her wineglass. “I’ve been thinking about going back to school. Medical school.”

  “You don’t say!” Ellin smiled. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

  “Well, the Territory needs more doctors, and the way I see it, two or three more years of study will give it a darn good one.”

  “Here, here!” Sam said, lifting his wineglass in salute.

  Mac waved the carving knife and grinned his brash, handsome grin. “That’s great, Sadie. Medical school! You were born to be a doctor.”

  Rebecca took a sip of her wine and suddenly found herself resenting Sadie. Sadie was smart, pretty, accomplished. Sadie already had a good career and now she was going to make it better. Sadie was motivated. Sadie… Sadie wanted Mac and she was in a perfect position to grab him.

  Not that Rebecca cared.

  She took another sip of her wine and watched Mac carve the ham. His shirtsleeves were rolled back, and she glanced covertly at the play of muscle and tendon in his powerful hands and arms. Raised her eyes briefly to his face and was startled to see that he was looking at her. She felt the heat come into her cheeks.

  He kissed me! she thought, her cheeks burning. What a nerve that man has!

  “Thank you, Mac,” Ellin said as he handed her the platter of sliced ham. “A masterful job!”

  The meal was delicious, the wine and conversation flowed freely, and over dessert—a chocolate cream pie Sadie had made that surpassed Sam’s fudge—Rebecca found herself listening with one ear to a somewhat strange and one-sided dialogue between Mac and Sadie, while keeping the other ear tuned to an argument between Ellin and Sam. The conversation between Mac and Sadie involved reincarnation.

  “Oh, yes, I am quite sure,” Sadie was saying as she leaned back in her chair and gazed across the table at Mac, “that I’ve been reincarnated several times, the latest as a horse in the Civil War. In fact, I’m absolutely certain that I was killed on a battlefield there!”

  “A horse?” Mac said, elbows on the table and wineglass in hand. Rebecca found his nearness unsettling, and she jerked her leg away involuntarily when his knee nudged hers beneath the table. She felt her cheeks warm again.

  “Yes. A black horse with one white stocking and a snip on my nose. I honestly believe I could take you to the exact spot where I was killed.”

  “You have spent thousands on that plane, Sam,” Ellin was saying to her husband. “Thousands! And I’m not even considering the enormous amount of money you squandered on purchasing it in the first place!”

 
“Oh, now, Ellin…”

  “I believe I was in the Seventh Cavalry,” Sadie continued, “being ridden by a man named Captain Richard Randolph Allen. He used to stroke my neck and call me Stump.”

  “Stump?” Mac said, lifting his glass and draining it in one deep swallow. His booted foot shifted and touched Rebecca’s. She moved hers away.

  “Over fifty thousand dollars when all is said and done! You can’t deny it! That’s what you’ll have spent on that dratted hunk of scrap metal. I’ve kept records!”

  “Yes, but, Ellin, when it’s finished it will be worth five times that,” Sam said weakly.

  “I believe it was a minnie ball that killed me,” Sadie reflected, gazing sadly into some distant place. “It was quite sudden, and I could hear Dickie saying, ‘Oh, my God, Stump, they’ve killed you!’ And there was such noise as I’ve never heard, explosions and gunfire and men crying out in pain and horses screaming, but I never screamed. I never did!”

  “You were obviously very brave,” Mac said, eyeing the wine bottle and then reaching for it decisively. His foot nudged Rebecca’s again under the table, and she kicked it away with a vengeance.

  “Five times that? Five times that? Good heavens, Sam, who’s going to reap the rewards?” Ellin asked. “We’ll both be dead and buried long before you ever get that decrepit old thing into the air!”

  “Well, with Mac’s help…” Sam began.

  “We’ll definitely have her flying by spring,” Mac said, abandoning Sadie’s conversation. “That old girl is ready and raring to go. Believe me, ma’am, she’ll fly.”

  “There. You see?” Sam said triumphantly.

  “I don’t believe it!” Ellin said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve heard these stories too many times before, and that plane has been sitting in the hangar for over two years now. That’s two years too long, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Why, Ellin Dodge,” Mac said, sitting back in his chair with a look of hurt disbelief. “I always figured you for a romantic.”

  “A romantic!” Ellin snorted derisively. “Hah!”

  “Ellin,” Rebecca said, pushing her dessert plate away. “That was without a doubt the best Christmas Eve supper I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Amen,” Mac said.

  “My dear girl—” Ellin peered at Rebecca with concern “—your cheeks are quite flushed. Are you feeling all right?”

  Mac leaned over in an exaggerated study of Rebecca’s face, and she glared back at him. “She’ll be fine, Ellin,” Mac said, delivering his prognosis with a slow, maddening grin. “Too much wine!” Still holding the wine bottle, he refilled first Rebecca’s glass, then all the others. Ellin looked at them both with a certain smug satisfaction as she stood and began reaching for the dessert plates. Mac rose and took her hand in both of his. “There’s an old tradition in my family,” he said. “The hostess never washes the dishes. Allow me.”

  Ellin looked up at him, surprised. “You know, for a man, you’re not a bad sort,” she said. And to Rebecca she added, “He’s washed them once already today! Prepared most of the meal, too, truth be known.”

  Sadie jumped out of her seat. “I’ll help you, Mac,” she volunteered. “Between the two of us we’ll make short work of it!” She bent to the task of gathering the dishes from the table, and Rebecca stared at the sight of Mac and Sadie engaged in the very domestic task of cleaning up. There was no doubt in her mind that Mac and Sadie were perfect for each other. She took another sip of wine, unaware that she was wearing a troubled frown but very aware that she was unsettled by the thought of Mac and Sadie setting up house together.

  THEY OPENED the presents next, Sam playing Santa Claus. Rebecca had given Ellin an Icelandic sweater, Sam a book on tail draggers in which the Stearman figured prominently, Mac a comprehensive first-aid kit he could pack in his sled to deal with any medical emergency, and Sadie a selection of hand-milled soaps. From Sam and Ellin, Rebecca received a new arctic headlamp, thirty-six D-cell alkaline batteries to power it, and a pair of deluxe musher’s mitts. They gave Mac the same things, and Mac and Rebecca exchanged pleased grins, realizing how useful these gifts were.

  Mac, though virtually penniless, was not without his talents. In his spare time, sitting beside the woodstove in his little cabin, he had whittled small figurines out of odd pieces of wood. He presented Sam with a fox, Ellin with a raven, Rebecca with a wolf, and Sadie with a rabbit. Rebecca wondered briefly at the symbolism but didn’t dwell on it. Sadie gave Ellin a wool scarf, Sam a pair of wool mittens, Rebecca a fleece hat, and Mac a brand-new dazzlingly high-tech yellow, black and red musher’s parka with a wolverine ruff. It must have set her back at least six hundred dollars.

  Mac was flabbergasted when he unwrapped the enormous gift. He stood up from his chair, bringing the parka with him and turning to Sadie with an expression that bordered on panic.

  “What a beautiful parka!” Rebecca said. “Sadie, you sure hit the nail on the head with that one. I don’t know of anyone who needs a decent parka more than Mac does.”

  Sadie blushed prettily. “I sure hope you like it,” she said to Mac.

  “Oh, yes!” Mac blurted, staring down at the bright colors. “Thank you.”

  “You’ll be lit up like a neon sign on the race trail,” Rebecca said. “You probably won’t even need to use your headlamp.”

  Sam was filling his pipe, and Ellin was gathering the gift wrappings when Mac suddenly announced that it was his bedtime. “Have to run a team bright and early,” he said, rolling the parka in his hands like a sleeping bag and gathering up his other gifts. “Thank you all for these great presents, and for one of the best Christmas Eves I can remember.”

  Sadie stood. “I’ll walk you out,” she said. “It’s time I was going, too.” She made the round of hugs and kisses, and just as she was slipping her arm possessively through Mac’s, the phone rang. Ellin answered, spoke briefly, then hung up and turned to Sadie.

  “That was for you, dear,” she said. “There’s been an accident up near the Inuvik road. Single vehicle, driver and three passengers, possible injuries.”

  Sadie’s face fell. She gazed up at Mac wistfully. “I’ve got to go,” she said. Mac nodded, so clearly relieved that Rebecca was amazed Sadie didn’t see it. Love was indeed blind. Sadie gathered her things and rapidly departed, leaving Mac standing near the door with the look of a man who had been granted a reprieve moments before his execution. Sam lit his pipe and chuckled audibly. Ellin patted her husband’s shoulder as she passed behind him and shook her head with a faint smile.

  Rebecca stood and gathered her things. “Ellin, Sam, you’re the greatest. It’s been a wonderful evening.”

  “I was wondering,” Mac said, as she shrugged into her parka, “could you take a quick look at Merlin’s foot before you go?”

  Rebecca hesitated. “You’ve been running him for a while. I assumed his foot was healed enough to warrant that.”

  “I think it is. He seems fine on it, no lameness at all. But he’s my ace in the hole, and you have a lot more experience than I do. I’d appreciate your opinion.” He looked at her hopefully. “It won’t take long.”

  She followed him out to the hangar and waited while he lit the propane lights. The dogs, curled on their beds of straw, stood and stretched and yawned. Merlin wagged his body and gave a mellow howl as Mac singled him out for individual attention. Freed from his picket line, Merlin whirled and raced from one end of the hangar to the other, causing a ripple of excitement to pass through the other dogs. He spun and jumped in ecstasy, circled the Stearman several times at full speed and came instantly to Mac when summoned.

  Mac and Rebecca knelt to examine Merlin’s paw. Mac switched on his brand-new headlight and illuminated the injury, which had healed so well that Rebecca could scarcely find the place where the pad had been cut. “It looks great,” Rebecca said. “Just keep him bootied and watch him for any signs of soreness.”

  “I always do,” he said, rubbing Merlin’s shoulder.
He glanced up at her suddenly, his eyes unreadable. “Rebecca, I—”

  Rebecca stood abruptly. “I’ve got to go. It’s getting late.”

  Mac stood with her. “Thanks for the first-aid kit.”

  She nodded. “Thanks for the wolf.”

  “Thanks for the kiss.”

  She drew her breath in sharply. “I didn’t give you that. You took it.”

  “Thanks for not slapping me.”

  “I should have. You deserved it.”

  He hunched his shoulders and ducked his head. “My apologies if I offended you, but I’d be lying if I said I was sorry. I’m not.” He reached impulsively for her hand. “Come outside. I want to show you something.” He led her into the stillness of the night, and they stood side by side in the darkness. The cold was keen and crystalline, and the sky was brilliant with stars. “I saw them earlier, just before supper,” he said. “I was hoping we might see them again.”

  “What?” she asked. His hand still held hers, strong and warm. It felt good to her, so good that she drew it away and moved to put some distance between them. Her inner voices were at war with one another. Emotions fought with intellect. She would not allow herself to feel good with him, to fall in love with him. She could not. Would not! No! Yet her heart raced as she struggled to steady her breathing. “See what?” she asked again.

  “The northern lights. They were spectacular! Purples and greens and yellows, broad bands of light shimmering and moving across the sky.” The night was so quiet Rebecca could hear trees snapping with the cold along the river. “You know, when I first came to this land,” he murmured, “I didn’t care whether or not I lived or died. I thought this would be a good place to just disappear. Vanish off the face of the earth. And then something happened that changed all that.”

  Rebecca, startled by this unexpected revelation, changed her focus from the stars to the profile of his face. She found it hard to imagine him depressed. Hard to picture him as anything other than brash, arrogant and irrepressible. “Look!” he said suddenly, startling her again. She turned her gaze back to the sky to watch the beautiful and mysterious light show known as the aurora borealis. As many times as Rebecca had seen the phenomenon, it never failed to take her breath away. “We’re so insignificant in the grand scheme of things,” Mac marveled as the streamers of light gradually faded from the sky. “There’s so much we don’t know.”