The bell rang above the door as Maude Foote pushed her way in and Charity stood to greet her. She was older than Charity had expected, a woman perhaps in her early seventies, her wrinkles smoothed a little by the extra pounds she carried. She was at least four inches shorter than Charity, who stood five-foot-six, but the woman walked with her back straight and kept her shoulders squared.
“You must be Charity Sinclair.”
“That’s right.” Charity smiled and extended her hand, liking the woman’s straightforward manner. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Foote.”
“Maude’ll do. Been called that round these parts for nigh on fifty years.” Maude looked her up and down, taking in her designer jeans and the sweatshirt with the red-checked collar. “So what makes a city girl like you come all the way from New York to Dawson?”
Charity shrugged as if she wasn’t really sure—which, in fact, she wasn’t. “It’s kind of a long story. Let’s just say I wanted a change of pace. I wanted to get away from the city and experience a different sort of life.”
“It’s different, all right. But you ain’t the first greenhorn to come here lookin’ for gold, and it’s for sure you won’t be the last.”
Boomer Smith had recommended Maude Foote as someone who might be able to help her get started in her mining endeavor. Maude had prospected Dead Horse Creek, where the claim was located, for the last forty years and lived on a piece of property just down the road from the one Charity had purchased.
“Whatever my reasons for coming,” Charity said, “the fact is I’m here. I intend to make the gold claim I purchased pay for itself. The question is, are you interested in helping me?”
Eyes a watery shade of blue took in the straight blond hair Charity had pulled back and secured with a tortoiseshell clip at the nape of her neck, traveled down her jean-clad legs to her brand-new Hi-Tech hiking boots.
“You got ‘city gal’ stamped all over you, but I guess you’ll do. Money you offered is more than fair and I got nothin’ better to do. ’Sides, that claim you bought ain’t never really been worked. We just might find ourselves some gold.”
Charity bit back an urge to whoop out Yippee! This whole thing was crazy from beginning to end and yet she had never felt more alive, more sure that in coming on this adventure she had done exactly the right thing.
“Mr. Smith also mentioned a man named Johnson who might be willing to help us. He said you would speak to him for me. Has he agreed to take the job?”
“Buck Johnson owns the property that borders yours to the north. He’s been dredging for gold for twenty-odd years. Early on, he had considerable luck, but not lately. He knows what he’s doin’ and he needs the money. He says he’ll sign on.”
She bit back a grin. “Great. When do we start?”
“I ain’t been out to the Lily Rose since old Mose Flanagan packed up and moved. It’ll probably take some rightin’ to get the place in order. We’d best pick up supplies before we head out of town. Might not get back here for a while.”
At Maude’s instruction, they stopped at the Dawson City General Store to buy groceries, cleaning supplies, and bedding, including sheets, towels, and blankets. They bought a four-place set of dishes, silverware, pots, pans, and utensils. Maude suggested she buy an air mattress till they found out what sort of bed was there—if any. They would pick up whatever else they might need after Charity had seen the cabin and what was inside.
Once the place was livable, they could talk to Buck Johnson, decide what equipment they would need to start the dredging operation.
As they loaded their purchases into the back of the Explorer, Charity found herself grinning. Her adventure had truly begun. She couldn’t wait to see her new home.
McCall Ryan Hawkins paused at the edge of a line of firs at the top of the rise and slung his backpack down on the ground. Below him, Dead Horse Creek looked no bigger than a narrow white ribbon, tumbling over boulders and winding through rocky crevices on its way down the hill.
Call squinted through the binoculars that hung from a strap around his neck. From where he stood on the border of his wooded, two-thousand-acre property not far from King Solomon Dome, he could see old man Flanagan’s dilapidated cabin perched just above the creek.
The place was even more run-down than it was before ol’ Mose left. One of the front-porch steps had a hole punched through it and a shutter tilted down beside the window, creaking in the wind.
Funny how forlorn the place looked. Though Call and ol’ Mose had never gotten along, so much silence seemed odd somehow. The two of them had argued over everything from Mose’s decrepit mule straying onto Call’s property to the noise the old fool’s muffler-less pickup made rattling down the gravel road and the dust he managed to create that filtered through every window in Call’s house. Call had been damned glad to see the old man go.
And yet in some bizarre way, he missed him.
At least he’d had someone to argue with.
Call shook his head, thinking the climb down from the summit must have slightly addled his brain.
Turning away from the view of the cabin, he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders, whistled for Smoke, the big part-wolf, part-husky dog he’d adopted as a pup, and started off down the trail, heading back from his overnight trek to the house he had built along the creek.
It had been more than four years since Call had returned to the Yukon, seeking the solitude of the forest, searching for a quiet place where he could forget the past and put his life back in order. As he walked along the trail, images of those days threatened to creep in, but he firmly pushed them away, consigning them to the part of his brain where they could no longer hurt him.
He didn’t like to think of the past, to remember what had sent him into his self-inflicted exile four years ago, and so he kept walking, his strides lengthening as if he could leave the painful memories behind with every step he took down the hill.
He spotted the tall rock chimney marking his home on the creek and almost missed the two specs moving farther down the mountain that signaled a pair of unfamiliar cars coming up the road. Being an hour out of Dawson on a bumpy dirt lane and only a few sparse inhabitants along Dead Horse Creek, visitors were uncommon.
As usual, Call felt a trickle of irritation that his privacy was about to be disturbed, even for the short time it took for the cars to rumble past.
He wondered who they were and where they were going.
He wondered what the hell they were doing on Dead Horse Creek.
After making the turn off Hunker Road, Charity followed Maude’s ancient blue pickup along a winding gravel lane that followed the creek. They stopped once, at the little cabin where Maude apparently lived, so the older woman could retrieve a pair of work gloves she had forgotten.
“No sense buying new ones when I already got these,” she said, having declined the pair Charity had offered to purchase for her at the general store.
“How much farther?” Charity asked as she watched the older woman’s peculiar ambling gait, sort of like a sailor crossing the deck of a ship, only there wasn’t any water.
“Not much. Just around the next couple of curves and up the hill a piece.”
Just around the next couple of curves turned out to be a couple of miles, each one dragging at the slow pace they were forced to travel on the narrow, muddy road. Anticipation had her squirming in her seat. She felt like a little kid on her first trip to Disney World, so eager to get there, unable to quite imagine what it would be like once she did.
As the SUV rolled on, dropping into one pothole after another, she thanked God she had rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle. A regular car simply wouldn’t be able to make it. She sighed as they crawled past another bend in the road.