That's Our Baby!

by Pamela Browning

  “Don’t be silly. The two of us are more likely to get the plane airworthy than one of us, even if the one of us is you. And didn’t you tell me that time is of the essence? That we need to get out of here before the river freezes? I’m going with you, Sam. No argument.”

  Sam knew better than to buck Kerry when she’d put her mind to something.

  “Well then, you’d better put on a warm jacket and a good pair of boots. And I’ll clean up the kitchen. How’s your finger?”

  “Sore.”

  “Let me see.”

  She held her hand toward him, and he inspected it carefully. “There’s not as much swelling as I expected. Come over here and I’ll change the binding.”

  Kerry followed obediently. She remained quiet while he administered gauze and adhesive tape.

  “There,” he said as he finished. “How does that feel?”

  “Fine,” Kerry said, wiggling her fingers experimentally. He noticed that she winced, but she didn’t complain.

  “Good. We’ll apply snow packs during the day, and that should help bring down the swelling even more.”

  Kerry dug in the closet and pulled out a quilted down coat, bright red. When she put it on, she looked like a kid with those pigtails. It would be good if he could think of her as a kid, Sam thought. That would keep him from noticing the sensual lines of her lips.

  “I threw a light lunch together,” she said. “Hot chocolate in a thermos. A can of macaroni and cheese. Also, dried fruit—apples and peaches.”

  While she was talking, Sam arranged Doug’s tools in his pack. Kerry handed him the bag containing their lunch, and he stashed it on top. Then he slipped his arms through the straps of the pack and hoisted it onto his back. Kerry helped him adjust it.

  When they left the cabin, he was surprised when Kerry locked the door and hid the key under a rock.

  “Way up here in the wilderness, it’s usual for people to leave their cabins unlocked in case somebody in an emergency situation happens along and needs food and shelter. If the place is locked, it’s considered all right to break in. So who do you think you’re keeping out?” he said. He couldn’t help laughing at her.

  She flushed, but took the jibe in stride. “It’s a habit, I guess. Old habits die hard, you know.”

  He did know. The reason he wanted to keep needling her was that annoying Kerry had been his habit in the old days. And yet somehow it seemed inappropriate now.

  The cabin was situated on a knoll overlooking a small bowl of a lake that had been named Kitty Kill Lake by Klondikers during the Alaska gold rush. The lake fed the Kilkit River, which emptied into the Gulf of Alaska. In the distance, the icy summits of the highest mountain range in North America glittered in the sun. Above, the sky was azure and unmarred by clouds. The path to the river was narrow and steep, but not long, and Kerry followed Sam to the trail that skirted its edge.

  They found themselves wading through drifts of ankle-deep snow across a landscape blanketed in pristine white. The wide terminus of Williwaw Glacier rose a good five hundred feet over the lake, a huge frozen wall glimmering pale turquoise-blue in the sunshine. As they walked they heard a shudder and a groan from the direction of the glacier, and they whipped their heads around as a small jagged iceberg leaned forward and tumbled off its perpendicular face, sending up a frothy splash from the lake below. Kerry stopped to watch for a moment. Sam watched, too. He didn’t speak and neither did she, but he didn’t have to hear her say the words to know that she was spellbound by the beauty of their surroundings.

  Without a word, they resumed walking. The snow made their journey hard going, and more than once Sam looked back at Kerry to see if she was having trouble keeping up. She had apparently decided to make her way a bit easier by placing her feet squarely in the hollows of his footsteps, concentrating with great determination on what she was doing. To make it easier for her, he shortened his stride.

  By this time, the tip of Kerry’s nose had pinkened from the cold, and her braids with their blue ribbons bobbed against her shoulders with each step. Braids, he thought in amusement.

  The next time he looked back, he saw that the tips of her ears were red. “You’d better pull the hood of the coat up,” he said gruffly.

  “What difference could it possibly make to you whether I wear a hood or not?”

  “I don’t want to have to thaw you out if you get frostbite.”

  “Oh, I’m all kinds of fun, aren’t I, Harbeck?”

  For some reason it irritated him for her to call him by his last name. “My name’s Sam,” he said.

  “Mine’s Kerry. You never call me anything.”

  He stopped and looked back. She had missed one of his footprints and was floundering toward a snowbank. She looked plain tuckered out.

  “Time for a rest,” he said. For the heck of it, trying out the way her name sounded on his lips, he added, “Kerry.”

  She rolled her eyes and bent over to brush the snow off a fallen tree. When she sat, she let all her weight down at once, which was how he knew she was more tired than she let on. After he removed his pack, he went over to the log and lifted one leg up on it. He leaned on his knee with one elbow and bent down to study her face more closely.

  “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”

  She shook her head in vehement denial. “I—”

  “Do you want to go back to the cabin? I’ll walk you back, take care of things at the plane by myself.”

  “No! I’m keeping up, aren’t I?” She didn’t dare let on that she was having a problem walking in the snow, that every step made her finger throb. She knew she should have eaten more at breakfast, but there was no way she could have with her stomach roiling as it had been. She shifted position on the log, wincing as her bruised hip came in contact with a burl in the wood.

  Sam sat beside her, determined that he would let Kerry rest until she was ready to move on. The last thing he needed was a sick woman to hold him back. The thought made him feel small, petty and self-serving. Was he? Well, maybe. Or maybe he was only jamming thoughts into his mind every which way so he wouldn’t have to think about Kerry’s effect on him.

  It seemed important to stem the awkwardness between them by saying something, anything. “I remember the first time I ever came up here,” he said. “Doug and I were on leave from the Air Force, and he said he had this place. I was curious, and we came and canoed and fished and enjoyed some great R and R.”

  “That must have been the first of your male-bonding retreats,” Kerry said wryly.

  “Yep. It was. We decided to make a habit of it after the first one went so well. I thought I’d never seen more beautiful scenery, although I was born and raised in the Country and I’m used to spectacular.”

  “The first time I came up here was on our honeymoon,” she said.

  He shot a quick look at her. She didn’t look sad, only subdued.

  “Does it bother you to talk about Doug?” he asked.

  She shrugged lightly. “No. I miss him, that’s all.”

  “So do I.”

  She blinked, then smiled slightly. “I only hope he would approve of what I’m doing to keep the lodge in the family.”

  “What family? There’s only you.”

  She looked at him penetratingly and stood abruptly, avoiding his eyes. “I feel better now. Let’s get a move on.”

  While she stuffed her braids under her hood, he wondered what had brought that on. Well, maybe Kerry really didn’t want to talk about Doug, but hadn’t wanted to say so. This irked him, since he considered himself a straightforward guy, and he’d rather Kerry would tell him if she didn’t want to talk about her husband, his buddy. But okay, if that was how she felt, fine. They might as well continue on their way.

  Kerry stood shifting from one foot to the other and blowing out a mist of vapor in the cold air as he hefted his pack. Wordlessly he took the lead, and she fell in behind him. “Any time you want to stop, Kerry, holler. I don’t mind a rest now and then,”
he called over his shoulder.

  “Right,” she said, close behind him. He didn’t turn around to look at her because he knew exactly what he’d see: Kerry plodding pluckily along, a stoic expression on her face, and those remarkable eyes throwing the challenge right back at him.

  They stopped only one more time before they reached the plane. It had settled more solidly into the mud at the river’s edge and was covered by a mantle of snow. Even if someone had flown overhead, they probably wouldn’t have been able to distinguish the Cessna from the snow-covered landscape.

  Kerry stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the damage. She made no comment, but Sam doubted it was because she was being tactful. It was much more likely that she didn’t know what to say. He slipped off his pack, unzipped his coat and took in the situation. Not good, he thought. But fixable.

  Kerry scooped a handful of snow into a plastic bag that she produced from her coat pocket and iced her finger with it while studying the plane. “Wow, Sam, do you think you’re going to be able to fix this by yourself?”

  He made himself sound confident. “Sure do. You have doubts?”

  There it was again, that wry little quirk to her lip. “Gosh, no, Sam, far be it from me to cast doubt. However, I see a float that appears not to be part of the plane anymore and a place where the strut should be. It seems to me that we need an aircraft factory in this neck of the woods, but golly gee, I don’t think we’re going to get one before the river freezes over, and that’s a real shame.”

  This lengthy speech made him grin wickedly and say, “You’ve got it pegged, all right. And remember, you and I get to spend the winter in the cabin if none of this works. Now that would be the real shame, don’t you think?”

  Kerry only heaved a sigh and blew the air out of her mouth, ruffling her bangs.

  Sam checked the ELT to see if the battery had somehow regained power. It hadn’t. He tried the radio, but managed to raise only static. It was what he’d expected—too many tall mountains around for transmission.

  While he was inside the plane, Kerry took it upon herself to tackle the encroaching branches; she started pulling the larger ones away and tossing them alongside the river. She worked awkwardly because of her broken finger. Well, Sam thought as he watched, nobody could accuse Kerry Anderson of being lazy.

  After he’d checked whatever he could inside the plane, Sam unfolded himself from the cabin and walked the float until he could wipe the windshield clear of snow. From where she worked alongside, Kerry made a face at him.

  “I’ll be ready for a hot drink soon,” he told her.

  She paused and shook her braids back. “Me, too,” she said.

  Sam jumped down for a close look at the propeller. To his dismay, something had gouged a good-sized chip out of the aluminum, maybe one of the tree branches he’d sideswiped on the way down. He hadn’t noticed the ding yesterday, but then he’d been in a hurry to be on his way.

  Kerry stopped working when she saw that he was pulling tools out of his pack.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “File that ding out of the propeller.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “You’d better believe it. It has to be balanced or it won’t work properly.”

  “Major job?”

  “Major enough, but it won’t take too long.” He picked up the tools he needed and walked back to the plane.

  “How is it you know so much about plane repair?”

  “A bush pilot has to. You can get stuck out here in the woods, and if you can’t repair your plane, you’re dead.” He concentrated on unscrewing the spinner—the nose cone in layman’s terms—and removing the bolts that held the prop in place.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  He had the prop off, and picking his way carefully through the maze of boulders on shore, found the rock he wanted. It was pointed on top, and he centered the prop on it so that the point was through the hole.

  He looked up as Kerry approached. “See this chip on one side? I’ll have to file away as much metal on the other side for it to balance.” He selected a file and began work, gauging carefully so as not to take off too much metal.

  Kerry settled down on a nearby boulder, icing her sore finger while she watched. “Have you been in many tight situations?”

  “Not lately. But when I was a kid and my dad was teaching me to fly, I was kind of reckless.” He concentrated on the prop, selecting another file, working quickly.

  “You want to explain that?”

  “I had to gain respect for the weather, for the Country, for the plane. I learned it by getting myself in and out of some hairy situations. I remember once when I had to set down on a glacier with skis on the landing gear instead of wheels. The engine wouldn’t start, and I had to figure out if I should walk out of there or stay with the plane until someone came to get me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Stayed with the plane, and the engine started later on. Just luck, I guess. But that wasn’t the worst. Once when I was flying supplies to a family in the bush, I had to make an emergency landing on a remote frozen mountain lake, and the ice was too thin. I didn’t have any choice, mind you, but no sooner had I climbed out of the plane than the plane broke through the ice and sank. There I was in the middle of the lake and having to walk across that same ice to the shore. I walked very carefully.” He laughed at the memory, but it hadn’t been funny at the time. The plane had been salvaged, lifted out by helicopter, and his father had been livid.

  “That’s some story,” Kerry said.

  Sam lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I chose my flights more carefully after that. As my dad used to say, there may be old pilots and there may be bold pilots, but you’ll never see any old bold pilots.”

  He glanced at Kerry for her reaction. She looked somber, worried and in that instant it hit him that perhaps he’d been insensitive. Her husband had died in a plane crash, after all.

  He cleared his throat. “Look, Kerry, maybe I shouldn’t be talking about flying disasters. Under the circumstances, I mean.”

  “I was a flight attendant,” she said tightly. “I understand the risks. But now—” and she shook her head “—it’s different.”

  He hated to see her looking so down. He tried to think of a way to cheer her up. “You know what?” he said after a time. “I’ll see if I can’t provide our lunch myself. I’ve got a pair of hip waders and a fishing pole in the plane.”

  Her smile was faint, but it was a smile nonetheless. “You’re on. We can save the other stuff for later if we want it.”

  Later, when it was time for a break, Sam pulled on his waders and cast a lure into nearby Chickaback Creek, twitching the lure through the water as his mouth watered with the thought of fresh fish for lunch. It only took a few casts before the tip of the rod bowed toward the water with a strike. Playing the fight out of the fish required some skill, but in a matter of minutes he’d landed a fine, fat trout.

  Kerry built a fire while he dressed the fish, and after they’d cooked half of it, they wolfed it down while sitting on one of the boulders. Overhead the sun was shining brightly, and some of the snow had melted. A few red squirrels scampered up and down nearby tree trunks in a mad race to store nuts in the face of an early winter, and a flock of ptarmigan wheeled up out of a nearby patch of weeds.

  “Look,” Sam said, pointing to a cliff above the river, and Kerry glanced up to see two magnificent Dall rams, snow-white and with massive curling horns, looking down into the valley. They seemed to be hanging from a precarious ledge, almost motionless. As Sam and Kerry watched, the sheep suddenly turned and bounded away, as surefooted as they were agile.

  “Those are full-curl rams, moving down to lower elevations because of the cold,” Sam said.

  “Full-curl? What does that mean?”

  “They’re older rams, so old that their horns have grown large enough to make a complete curl. Their ewes are well camouflaged. Can you see them?”


  Kerry shook her head, and Sam pointed. She spotted a group of females, their wool so white that they blended into the snowy background. As if they knew they were being observed, the ewes suddenly came to life and took off, graceful but quick.

  “That,” Kerry said with conviction, “is one of the scenes that makes me want to live here.”

  She spoke with such intensity that Sam swiveled to look at her more closely.

  “I never pegged you for a nature freak,” he said.

  “Freak? Is that the word for it? I don’t think so.”

  “All right, I agree. Maybe I should have called you a nature lover.”

  “I like that better,” she said. “And I never was all that appreciative of nature until I came here. Just think, I haven’t seen a car in three months. Three months! In Seattle, I thought fresh air smelled like exhaust fumes. Now that I’m accustomed to living amid the most spectacular scenery in the world—”

  “The most spectacular? Are you sure of that?” He was teasing her because she seemed so focused and so intense.

  “I’ve been all over the world in my job and I think this is the best. The greatest. The most magnificent.” She threw out her arms as if to encompass the river, the mountains, the sky. “I don’t have Doug, but I have this to remember him by. I’ll never sell this property if I can help it.”

  She was beautiful in that moment, and he could think of nothing to say but, “Good for you.” He meant it.

  She stood up and dusted her hands off. “Well, I’m cleaning up. What’s the next step?”

  As a native Alaskan, he’d learned to keep one eye on the sky around the time that he’d cut his first teeth, and he didn’t like the way cumulus clouds were piling up to the west of them. “I was going to stay here and put the prop back on, but I don’t like the way those clouds look.”

  “What’s the problem? They’re white, fluffy and beautiful. Mashed potatoes clouds.”

  “They may not stay that way. We’d better head back.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Yeah, I don’t trust the weather at this time of year. We’re close to the fall equinox, and that’s a time when a rain squall can strike out of nowhere.”