Where Heaven Begins (14 page)

T
he days were growing too short. Clint realized that even though it was the end of August and not all that late, it was pitch-dark when they’d resettled their camp. He climbed down from a pine tree where he’d hung the moose hide that held the fresh meat tied inside, only a fraction of what could have been taken from the carcass. The hide hanging in the tree held all the weight they could afford to add to the back of one of the horses.

With a sigh of both weariness and relief, he walked over to sit down on a blanket near the fire. He lit a rolled cigarette, taking a long first drag to further settle his nerves. He noticed Elizabeth’s hands shaking as she turned the sliced meat he’d given her, now cooking in the black fry pan.

“What a day,” he commented. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Well, nothing hurts, except the back of my head from hitting the ground. I certainly will have a tale to tell my grandchildren.”

Clint grinned. Our grandchildren. The unexpected thought quickly sobered him. What on earth had caused him to think it at all? He felt like cursing her for throwing her arms around his neck. Darned if he hadn’t wanted to hang on. He’d enjoyed the feel of her against him, the smell of her hair. The trouble was, that quick embrace was going to make sleeping in the same tent with her more difficult.

“That’s for sure,” he answered, taking another drag on the cigarette. He’d get over this feeling. It was just from the scare of thinking she’d been hurt. It brought back all the guilt he felt for not being with Jen when she was killed. He might have been able to stop the whole thing. And Ethan. Poor little Ethan. Had he cried out for his daddy when—

They heard growling in the distance, and the horses shifted nervously again and whinnied.

“Wolves,” Clint told her, “just like I figured. I just didn’t add that grizzly to my figuring.”

Elizabeth sat down across from him, looking more tired than normal. Clint suspected the encounter with the grizzly had taken more out of her than she cared to admit. “I’m sorry I sent you back alone. I won’t do that again.”

She shrugged, pretending it didn’t matter. “It’s all right. You didn’t know. Besides, if I’d been out there with you, that bear might have ripped our camp apart and maybe attacked the horses before we had a chance to stop it.”

“Maybe.” He felt the odd new tension between them. It was the embrace that did it. She felt funny about it. So did he. He had to avoid talking about it at all costs. This would all blow over.

“I have to say, pulling back the hammer on that gun was harder than I thought it would be. I can’t imagine how you do it with one hand.”

She, too, was trying to keep things nonchalant. “I should have known it would be hard when you’ve never even shot a gun before. When we get the chance, I’ll have you do a little target practice with the six-gun
and
the rifle. Then we’ll hope you never have to use either one again.”

She took another deep breath. She was nervous. He could tell. “I agree with you there.” She leaned over and turned the meat again. “Now I owe you one again.”

“I didn’t know we were keeping score.”

She laughed lightly. “It just seems like you keep delivering me from death’s door. But then, that’s why God brought you into my life, to get me safely to Dawson.”

There she went again, bringing up God. God had nothing to do with it. He sat there smoking quietly, thinking how, if God was so intent on saving good people, why couldn’t He have saved his wife and son?

“Saying God brought us together still makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?” Elizabeth commented.

He shrugged. “Believe it if you want to.”

She didn’t answer right away. She dished some of the meat onto a plate and gave him a biscuit along with it. The biscuit was hard, a left-over from the day before; but she’d warmed it by the fire first. “Do you want a knife and fork?”

He finished his cigarette and threw the butt into the fire. “No sense dirtying more utensils than necessary. I’ll eat it with my fingers.”

She took a couple of pieces for herself, and they both ate quietly. The growling in the distance continued. “That carcass will keep them busy,” Clint told Elizabeth between bites. “I don’t think we’re in any danger, but I’ll keep my rifle beside me all night, just in case. It also helps to keep the fire going. They don’t like fire. I’ll sleep outside tonight to keep watch.”

There. Now he had an excuse not to have to sleep next to her tonight in that tent that seemed much too small for a man and a woman together.

“All right.” Elizabeth set her plate aside. “God
did
bring us together, Clint. I’ve gone far beyond doubting that. I just want you to know I truly believe that in my heart, because it means God is watching after you, too. He has some kind of plan for you.”

Now came the irritation. Good. That would make it easier to forget about that embrace, the feel of her slender body in his arms. “I thought you promised not to preach.”

“I’m not preaching—exactly. I just…well…you think you are a man who makes all his own decisions, and in most ways you are. But there is a Higher Being controlling your life in many ways, Clint. I’ve grown to care about you, enough to know I can’t let you go on thinking there is no God, or that if there is, He’s somehow totally uninvolved with your life.”

There it was. The very thing he couldn’t stand to hear. Yes, now he knew why he didn’t want to get too involved
with this woman, why he didn’t dare care about her. “You don’t know anything about real life, or the ways God can totally fail a man!” He let out a rough deep breath.

“Please don’t think like that.”

“I’ll believe what I want! And believe me, the God you’re talking about doesn’t exist. That God would not have allowed my wife and son to die! And He wouldn’t allow men like those who killed them to exist on the face of the earth! He wouldn’t allow
evil
to exist!”

To his surprise she didn’t back down. “There
is
evil in this world, Clint,” she retorted. “It’s a fact of life, and knowing it is where
faith
becomes all-important—faith that even when bad things happen, God has a plan for us. He has ways of working around the evil, and no evil on earth can destroy the beauty and peace all of us will know when we reach God’s arms in heaven! That’s where your wife and child are right now. They are enjoying something far more wonderful than anything they would have known here on earth! You could kill every evil man on this earth, and it wouldn’t bring back your wife and son, or bring you the kind of peace only our Lord and Savior can bring you.”

“Shut up!” he yelled. “Just shut up! Why are you bringing this up now? I asked you
never
to bring it up!”

She shivered and looked away, saying nothing for the next several tense seconds. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, her voice lowered to a nearly unintelligible pitch. “I just thought…tonight’s experience just…I don’t know. It just made me feel even more strongly that you were meant to come into my life. That in turn…it makes me feel responsible to tell you about God’s love to do what I can to bring
you back into His arms…the only place where you’ll ever find any peace. It’s so obvious that you’re lonely and hurting. If God brought you to me, then all that is Christian in me tells me I have no choice but to do what I can to bring you back to Christ.”

Why was she doing this? He set his tin dish aside. “I am real close to hurrying up this trip till we catch up with Ezra Faine and his bunch. You can finish this trip with
them!
” he snarled. “Now clean up and go get some sleep!
I
won’t get much shut-eye tonight, thanks to you bringing up things I have a hard enough time not thinking about—like the fact that my wife and son are
dead!
”

He walked off to check on the horses, pulling another cigarette from a pocket inside his jacket and lighting it. He swore. Why had she said all those things? Why did she keep bringing up God? Why was she breaking her promise to him not to talk about Jen and his precious son?

He could hear her crying. Good. She
should
cry. Maybe she was beginning to see that all her preaching wasn’t going to do any good. Maybe she
needed
yelling at. It would wake her up to real life. Besides that, it helped keep him from looking at her as someone he could care about.

S
elfish fool!
Elizabeth scolded herself as she plodded through fresh, wet snow on their way up the highest mountain they had climbed yet. She hated herself for crying after Clint had yelled at her two nights ago. After all, she’d
deserved
to be yelled at. She wouldn’t be surprised right now if God Himself struck her dead.

She’d deliberately said the very words she knew would make Clint Brady explode. And immediately afterward she’d regretted it and cried about it. She had no doubt he’d enjoyed hearing that. God probably had also. After all, she’d said what she had on purpose, just because she was afraid of her own feelings for Clint. All she could think about was how to avoid those feelings, and the best way to do that was to say something that would make him
explode at her. When he was like that, it was easy not to like him, and that was what she wanted—not to like him…not to
love
him.

And yet for all she knew God
meant
for her to love him. Who was she to fight her own heart? Who was she to judge, believing that Clint Brady was not right for her, maybe even not good enough for her? How dare she think that
anyone
might not be good enough for her! Everyone was a child of God. Everyone had a right to love and be loved.

Clint had not said one word to her since the night they’d argued, other than to bark orders angrily. Whenever they made camp, he joined her only long enough to help put up and take down the tent and load and unload supplies, or to eat. Other than that, he walked off alone, away from the fire. He’d slept outside, in spite of a snowfall last night.

She almost wished he would scream his head off at her. At least that would open a way to talk again, but she could tell he was determined that all talking was over.

If only they had not embraced after the grizzly had nearly attacked her. That was the most wonderful embrace she’d ever experienced, warm and loving, an embrace that had brought forbidden desires and a rush of pleasant feelings of warmth and safety…and yes, love. And either she was crazy or she was right that she’d sensed the same feelings in Clint. Then she had to go and spoil it all on purpose, all because of her own stupid, girlish fears, not just the fear of falling in love with someone totally wrong for her, but of being with a man at all.

What did she know about men? And for heaven’s sake, Clint was ten years older than she! He’d been married, and
only the Lord knew how many other women there had been in his life, maybe women like Collette. How could an ignorant young woman who knew little beyond church and family be a wife to a man like that? And why in the world was she even
thinking
that way? Clint Brady drank, often cussed, and he killed men with no remorse. He wore a gun and never hesitated using it…even on men.

She wished she was already with Peter, or that she could talk to her mother. They would know what to tell her. They would pray with her, show her passages in the Bible that might help.

You should be talking to Me.

Where did those words come from? She actually looked around.

God, that’s where. He was speaking to her through that still, small voice from deep inside. Yes, she should pray more. She should ask forgiveness for being so selfish and judgmental. Then she should pray to God again to help her please to sort out her feelings, find the right words for Clint Brady. Whether he cared about her or not, she already cared too much about him to let him go on in such bitter loneliness.

The only distraction from her thoughts was the hardship of their journey. The climb had grown steeper and steeper, the pathway more and more narrow, the canyons below deeper and deeper. Her legs felt like bricks, and her breath grew shorter and shorter as they trudged ever higher. If White Pass was higher than this, and covered with deep snows to boot, how in the world would they get over it?

Clint finally stopped at what seemed the highest point,
although stark, gray walls of snow-capped granite rose on both sides of them, much higher than where they stood now, in spite of the climb. When Elizabeth caught up to where Clint stood, she realized why he’d stopped.

“Oh, my,” was all she could say. Before them lay another mountain, a much higher mountain. From where they stood they could see several parties climbing it, and several more men coming back their way—giving up and returning. Those climbing it looked like small black dots against a wall of white. In the area just below them they could see abandoned caches, a few dead horses lying stiff and frozen. Between them and the next mountain was more of a depression than a valley, an open area where a few trees grew. A closer look at the entire area brought more debris into focus, more abandoned back packs, tents, more dead horses and a general array of trash.

“What do we do?” Elizabeth asked Clint.

“We make camp down there and let the horses rest for a full day, then we go for it. Part of the problem with losing horses is most men headed for Dawson are in such an all-fired rush that they don’t let their animals rest in between. Since we aren’t breaking our necks to get there and make the first claims, we can afford to slow down.”

“Except for the fact that it’s September and by the time we get there it will surely be very wintry. That old guide I talked to back in Skagway told me that last winter a lot of men starved to death in Dawson because they didn’t bring along enough supplies. I hope my brother wasn’t one of them.”

Clint sighed. “Right now my only real concern is getting over White Pass. Then we have to hope that the Yukon isn’t
frozen shut. We’ll reach Dawson a lot faster if we can float a raft on the river than if we have to walk.”

“A lot of those men are turning back. It must be pretty bad up there in the pass.”

“We’ll make it,” Clint replied matter-of-factly. He headed down the other side of the mountain they had just climbed, a much more gradual slope that did not lead as far down as on the other side. The lower they got, the more mushy the ground became, until by the bottom the ground was marshy and sported a little grass. Elizabeth suspected there once had been more, but that most of it had been grazed off by other horses that had come through during the summer.

By the time they chose a place to make camp it was nearly dark, yet a few men were still trying to get over the snowy pass. Elizabeth could see their lanterns. She breathed deeply against her frayed nerves. The thought of climbing that pass was indeed intimidating.

They passed abandoned sleds, dead dogs, more bloated horses, their legs sticking up stiffly in death. In the distance two men were arguing about something, and in seconds they were battling each other with fists and feet.

They passed sacks of rotted potatoes, crates of canned goods, tents, saddles, sacks of flour. In some places men were ransacking abandoned supplies, stealing what they could carry. She didn’t need Clint to tell her that she’d better keep a close eye on their own supplies, and especially on the horses. By this point of the journey men were getting greedy and desperate. Even she, in all her ignorance of the ugly side of people, could understand that, just from what she saw here.

One returning party passed them, all the men bearded and looking haggard. One of them, whose nose was deeply peeled to an ugly red, nodded to Clint. “Not worth it,” he commented. “Just not worth it. I done lost part of my nose to frostbite. And the climb…” He shook his head and continued.

Clint stopped and looked back at Elizabeth. “You want to know the only reason I’m heading on?”

She frowned. “To find the man you’re after?”

“Oh, I can find him now or I can find him in the spring. If he’s really in Dawson, I have a feeling he’s going nowhere the rest of the winter.”

The statement confused her. “Then why?”

He looked her over rather scathingly. “Because you keep claiming that your God means for this trip to happen. You keep telling me that He will take care of us and keep us safe.” He turned back and kept walking. “We’ll see just what kind of a God He really is.”

The comment astonished her. So, was he “testing” God? Or was he just making fun of her? Was he out to prove her wrong? That would not surprise her. In fact, he was risking his very
life
to prove her wrong.

Lord, I guess it’s up to You to get us through this and prove me right,
she prayed quietly.
Just help me know how to handle this man and what to say to him while we do this. Help me act according to Your will…not my own.