“I have things I need to get for tomorrow. Wire for rabbit snares in case we run out of food. Some other stuff.” Ammunition. Doug’s rifle.
Kerry’s answer was indistinguishable, muffled.
Sam felt elated. He’d been given a reprieve. He’d have another chance. Right now, that seemed like the most important thing in the world.
THE NEXT MORNING Kerry was awake before Sam, bustling around in the kitchen, heating water on the stove, making eggs and heating canned sausages.
She regarded him coolly. “Are you planning to get up anytime today?”
He blinked the sleep from his eyes. “I’m not wearing clothes,” he said as apologetically as he could considering that he didn’t really think this was anything a person should have to apologize for.
Her mouth rounded into an O. “Oh,” she said.
“Turn around.” She did, and he threw aside the blanket and pulled on a clean pair of long johns from his pack, followed by his jeans. “There,” he said.
“Well,” she said briskly, “I’m ready to go. Is it time to douse the fires?”
Douse the fires? Oh, yes, he thought that was a jolly good idea, especially the fire she’d lit inside him. But he knew she meant the ones in the fireplace and the cookstove.
He told her that it was and he helped her do it. He remained pensive, quiet, but if Kerry had any trepidations about the trek on which they were about to embark or regrets about leaving Silverthorne, she didn’t voice them.
He busied himself strapping his leather knife sheath on his belt while she handled last-minute cleanup chores. She did a double take when she saw the rifle protruding from his pack.
“We might need it,” he said.
The implications of this statement were not lost on her, but she made no comment.
She prepared the pack she would carry, Doug’s old one, and hardly spoke at all. He wondered if she was thinking about last night. He certainly was.
Things lightened up a bit when they left the cabin, and he noticed that she didn’t lock the door.
“Now that you’ve learned to adapt to the hospitality requirements of the Country, you’re not a cheechako anymore,” he told her. She grinned back at him, clearly pleased.
They started out along the creek, turning north at the fork. After a few missteps, Kerry began to manage walking on snowshoes well. Sam didn’t like to use poles with showshoes, never had. Kerry did, but he was glad to see that she could maneuver them well despite a slight awkwardness due to her broken finger. Sam, breaking trail in front of her, deliberately kept their pace slow in order to conserve Kerry’s energy. He had no doubts that he would be able to reach the first overnight stop without any trouble, but he wasn’t sure about her.
Fortunately it was a sunny day; only a few high clouds adorned the distant sky on the other side of the mountains. As they penetrated deeper into the bush, they passed whitened moose antlers protruding from the snow. For a while, a band of caribou foraged ahead of them, eventually drifting into a willow thicket alongside the creek. Once an eagle with a seven-foot wingspan soared overhead, catching a thermal that carried it out of sight across the mountains.
“I’ve always admired eagles,” Kerry observed.
“Me, too. They’re such beautiful birds. But have you ever heard their cry?”
Kerry shook her head.
“They sound like hysterical chickens.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, I mean it. This is how they sound,” and he commenced to cackle like an eagle, which made her laugh.
“Seriously? That’s what an eagle sounds like?” Her eyes danced.
“It’s true. I once met a movie director who told me they have to splice other birds’ cries into the sound tracks because the moviegoing public would never accept the way eagles really sound.”
Kerry attempted the eagle’s cry, and before long they were laughing together. It felt good to be enjoying each other’s company, and the time passed quickly.
They stopped early for a lunch of moose jerky as well as a rest. By this time, snow was melting in places where the sun could reach, and there was no wind. If a wind sprang up, Sam told Kerry, they would be protected because their route, the furrow of an old dog-sled trail, scraped circuitously through a valley; the wind would be cut by the mountains rising on either side.
“I wonder what this trail is like in the summer,” Kerry said, stretching her legs out full length and raising her face to the sun.
“It’s wonderful. In fact, some of your guests might enjoy hiking up here for the fishing. It’d be a good day trip.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. I’ll need to be able to plan a week’s activities for my guests because I hope they’ll all choose to stay at least that long. That reminds me—Josiah Crocker only makes his run once a week, and I hope to be able to fly guests in and out so that the ones who can’t stay a whole week will be able to come and go according to their schedules. Any chance Harbeck Air would be interested in the route?”
“Sure. We could plan midweek flights or charters, whatever suits.”
“We should talk about it, Sam, and come up with a plan. That way I’ll be able to include the information in the brochures I’ll be sending out this winter.”
“We’ll sit down and map it out when we get to Anchorage, okay?”
Kerry stood up. “Great, I’ll take you up on that. Oh, Sam, finally everything is coming together, and I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Fixing up the lodge has been more work than I ever imagined.” She looked excited and pleased all at the same time.
As they strapped on their packs, Sam thought that he and Kerry were remarkably easy with each other, considering what had happened between them last night. He glanced at her surreptitiously, wondering if she had thought about it or if she’d put it out of her mind. He couldn’t. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way she had looked up at him, mouth parted, eyes sultry. And his heart—but he didn’t want his heart to play any part in this.
They stopped more frequently in the afternoon, and he couldn’t help but notice that Kerry needed lots of rest breaks. She’d loosen her pack, drop it on a rock or a log, and disappear into the woods long enough to take care of what she had called “certain needs” when they were back at the cabin. He made no comment even though this slowed them down.
To Kerry’s credit, she managed to keep up with him, her energy flagging only in midafternoon. When he noticed, he made sure that they stopped for a short break. At Kerry’s insistence, they set out again after only a few minutes, reenergized by handfuls of the dried fruit-and-nut mixture called gorp.
“It’s getting late,” Kerry said as encroaching shadows began to define the spaces between the mountains on either side of them; it was four-thirty, the time when light began to fade. “Are we almost at the place where we’re going to stop?”
“Just over the next ridge,” he told her. “Tired?”
“No way” was all she said, and he knew that even if she were, Kerry would never admit it.
Halfway up the ridge, she fell, rolling over a few heart-stopping times until she came to rest against a large boulder. Her poles landed out of reach below her. In those moments, time seemed to still, and everything switched into slow motion. All he could see was Kerry, her legs akimbo, snowshoes in danger of tangling with each other, and all he could think of was that she might break an arm or a leg. He rushed forward, terrified that she might have injured herself.
“Are you hurt?” he shouted before he even reached her. She surprised him by sitting up immediately, laughing.
“I’m so well padded by my parka and thick clothes that all I did was go with the flow,” she said.
He gave her a hand up and retrieved her poles for her, and she brushed herself off and fell in behind him to resume their upward passage.
Sam was glad that he was walking ahead of her so that she couldn’t see how shaken he was. The sight of her rolling over and over in the snow had brought his he
art to his throat, and his reaction to the mishap rammed home to him how much her well-being meant to him.
When they topped the ridge and she first saw the primitive shelter where he had planned for them to stay, Kerry looked dismayed. “I thought it was a real cabin,” she said, sounding disappointed.
The hut, surrounded by brambles, was only about eight by ten feet in size and leaned precipitously sideways toward the nearby creek. The metal roof that gleamed so dully through its mantle of crusted snow appeared to be composed of flattened gasoline cans. There was one window, grimed with smoke and grease, but no kitchen, no fireplace and no sanitary facilities.
“It’s shelter,” he said stoically. “And we’re desperate.”
Kerry said nothing, but traipsed doggedly down the incline behind him and waited apprehensively while he creaked the sagging door open. He wished he had thought to warn her earlier about this place; it simply hadn’t occurred to him. Now he affected an old codger’s accent and said, “It sure ain’t much, Miss Kerry, but we call it home,” which elicited something like a smile from her. When he motioned for her to follow him inside, she did, but she wrinkled her nose at the beaten-earth floor. “Smells musty in here” was all she said.
He took a whiff. “Smells like moose,” he told her.
In almost no time they had a fire going in the barrel stove, which like many Alaskan heating stoves was nothing more than a modified oil drum with a flue leading out one of the walls, and since the stove took up much of the hut’s interior, it warmed the place considerably. They unpacked some of their gear, changed to dry socks, and soon the odor of wet wool replaced that of moose.
For supper, they perched on the wooden shelf that was slung low on the wall and served as a bunk. They ate a couple of cans of hash and a handful each of dried apples, a meal that they both found satisfying enough. Afterward they played a desultory game of cards by the light of a candle, losing interest before anyone won. Kerry was yawning widely by the time Sam had bundled the cards into a rubber band and replaced them in his pack.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he told her when he saw that she seemed unsure about what to do next. “You can spread your sleeping bag on the bunk.”
She unrolled her sleeping bag, but appeared hesitant. “Maybe we should toss a coin and see who gets the bunk. Although I think the floor might not be as hard.”
“Well, take your choice.”
“The bunk, I guess. Fewer creepy crawly creatures there, maybe.”
He cleared his throat. “Kerry,” he said. He didn’t know how he would summon the delicacy to say what needed to be said, but he had to say it.
“Hmm?” She unzipped the sleeping bag, bending over it so that her jeans outlined the neat curve of her hips.
“When you need to go outside, I’d better go with you. I don’t want you to meet up with any of our less unsavory wildlife.” He didn’t mention bears although they were a possibility, and so were wolves.
She sat down on top of the sleeping bag and drew her feet up until she was sitting cross-legged, her face illumined by the single candle they were using for light. Her eyes were bright and they seemed enormous.
“I might have to get up more than once during the night to go outside,” she said haltingly. “I mean, it happens.”
Sam spread an insulating pad on the floor and arranged his sleeping bag on top of it. “You’ll have to wake me up. Every time.”
She made a little gesture of futility. “I’m sure I’ll be fine if I have to go out by myself,” she said all in a rush. “I won’t have to wake you. In fact—”
He stopped what he was doing and eyed her with what he hoped was an implacable expression. “Wake me up, Kerry. Every time you have to go out.”
She gazed up at him, and he sensed a desperation behind her eyes. “Sam—”
“Don’t argue. Now let’s you and me catch some z’s.”
She drew in a long breath. He happened to notice—and he didn’t know why he noticed—that she’d clasped her hands so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.
Something inside him turned over and then stilled into a moment of calm. Somehow he knew that what she was about to say was of great import. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. And it was clear that Kerry was having a hard time saying it, whatever it was.
She twisted her fingers together, then looked at him, her eyes searching his face. “There’s something you need to know, Sam.” She looked him straight in the eye.
He lifted his brows, a question mark.
“I’m pregnant, Sam. Almost four months.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
He tried to force air into his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. Her words hit him hard in his gut, sinking in with all the force of a two-fisted punch. He stared at her, his mouth hanging open, unable to speak.
All kinds of thoughts jangled through his mind. She couldn’t be pregnant. Kerry couldn’t get pregnant. But her infertility hadn’t been due to any deficiency on her part. It was because Doug had a problem.
“Anomalies of the sperm,” Doug had told him. So this baby, the one Kerry said she was going to have, must be someone else’s baby. Not Doug’s at all. But Sam knew that Kerry hadn’t been with anyone else since Doug died, and he was as sure of that as he was of his own name.
Kerry couldn’t be pregnant. That was all there was to it.
Unless—
Oblivious to his shock, Kerry kept talking. “That’s why it’s so important to me to have Silverthorne in operation by next summer. With the baby coming, I’ll need the money. And running the lodge is good wholesome work, Sam, and I won’t have to worry about day care for the baby because I’ll be able to keep it with me at the lodge. So I stayed on at the cabin longer than I should have and now I wish I hadn’t. And I don’t want to slow us down.”
Still in shock, Sam sank down on the bunk beside her. “You’re going to have a baby. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
She took her time answering. “I want to pull my weight. I don’t want you to make exceptions for me just because I’m pregnant. I’ve been feeling pretty good for the past day or so, I’m sure I’ll be able to hike the whole distance to Athinopa.” She gazed at him, anxiety apparent in the furrow between her eyes.
“You should have mentioned the baby. I never would have let you come with me if I’d known. This can’t be good for you, Kerry. Or for the—the child.”
Her chin shot up in a familiar gesture of defiance that he knew all too well. “I’m used to walking a lot and I’m in good physical condition. I get a little more tired than usual because of the pregnancy, but that’s not so serious. The morning sickness hasn’t been too bad for the past couple of days. Yesterday and today I didn’t feel any.”
He passed a weary hand across his face. “Morning sickness, a little more tired than usual—we shouldn’t have tried to hike out, Kerry. I shouldn’t be putting you through this.” Now he knew why her jeans had looked so tight. They were tight. She was pregnant.
She slid around to face him, her eyes imploring. “I knew if I told you before we left that you’d make me stay in the cabin at Silverthorne by myself. I didn’t want to be alone there, not after the bear. And I know it’s safer for you if you have someone with you. It’s not a good idea to go traipsing around this wilderness by yourself.”
“So you made the decision without consulting me.” He was beginning to be angry now, really angry.
“Sam,” she said, but he didn’t want to talk to her anymore. He stood up abruptly, his mind whirling with what he knew. Things he couldn’t tell her. Things he might never tell her.
He stared down at her for a moment that stretched into eternity. Her eyes were wide, almost all pupil, and her cheeks were bright with two spots of color, and her hair gleamed in the candlelight. She was so beautiful that his heart rose in his throat, and he wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her tightly, to smooth her hair, kiss her eyelids and trace her mouth with his fingertips.
But
he couldn’t. He was still too flattened by her revelation. He needed to think and he couldn’t do that with her so close by.
So without a word, he hauled on his parka, clenched his fists and slammed out of the little hut.
SHE WISHED she hadn’t told him. She’d only made things worse.
Kerry huddled miserably in her sleeping bag on the hard bunk and waited for Sam to return. The candle burned to a stump, flickered and went out. She stared into the dark, listening. She thought she heard a wolf howl in the distance.
Suddenly every sound seemed magnified—the protest of the boards beneath her sleeping bag, the crackle and snap of the wood burning in the stove, the creak of the metal stovepipe as it expanded with the heat. She wondered why, as tired as she was, she couldn’t stop thinking about Sam and go to sleep. She wished she could forget how he’d looked when she’d told him the news.
What was keeping him?
Oh sure, he’d been baffled. She had read it in his eyes, his consternation, his shock and something else—pain? Worry? She couldn’t exactly blame Sam for feeling any or all of those things, the sum of which added up to something more. But what? They’d been getting along so well, and she’d thought it would be okay to tell him, and it hadn’t been. Considering his reaction, it was probably the last thing she should have done.
Now she needed to make an urgent trip outside. And Sam had been firm about wanting to stand guard when she did. But Sam wasn’t around, and she couldn’t wait. She’d go out without him whether he liked it or not.
She slipped out of her sleeping bag, pulled on her boots and parka, and opened the door. The night was nippy, but unbelievably clear; the stars above seemed hugely magnified. She had no trouble picking her way into the woods. She saw no sign of Sam. Maybe he had gone down to the stream. Maybe he was so angry he wouldn’t be back until much later.
When she arrived back in the clearing where the hut hunkered low against its skirt of brambles, she heard a rustle. Startled, she wheeled around. It was Sam.
She could only see him in outline, but the sight of him unnerved her nonetheless. He said, “Kerry. I told you to let me know if you had to go out.”
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