Gold Dust (8 page)

A smile spread across Jonah’s face as he planned out his narration of the little adventure that followed. He would end
the story with Katy’s neat disposal of both of the Hacketts, and then reveal that his savior was a woman, of all things. His
readers would be delighted at the twist—much more delighted than he had been. To hell with the proper ladies who might be
shocked. Most of his readers were men, anyway.

Morning cast a whole new light on their journey. The sun blazed down from a bright blue sky; the breeze was warm and fragrant
with the tang of seawater and verdant forests of fir. The northern tip of Vancouver Island was a hump of green rising off
their stern, and from the port rail of the steamer to forever, it seemed, stretched the sea, deep green fading to blue in
the distance. Sea blended into sky without a perceptible line. Not a cloud relieved the bright expanse of the heavens; not
a wisp of fog shadowed the sea.

Jonah wished he had a camera that could do the scene justice, but no camera could do that. How could his readers understand
the vast beauty of this changeable land without seeing it for themselves? His words would not be enough.

In the dining room, Jonah found his cabin mates and sat at their table.

“I heard you moving about last night,” Toby Walsh, a farm laborer from one of the Carolinas, told him. “Was you sick?”

“No. I got an inspiration in the middle of the night to finish an article I had started, so I got dressed and came up here
to work. Sorry if I woke you.”

“Didn’t bother me much,” Toby said. “Went right back to sleep.”

“Writers sometimes keep odd hours. I’ll try to be more quiet.”

“You find a good claim in the goldfields,” Alan Smith said, “and you won’t need to work in the middle of the night.”

“I’m going to Dawson in search of stories, gentlemen. Not gold.”

Everyone at the table guffawed their disbelief of that.

“Here comes breakfast, and lookee what’s bringin’ it,” Toby said. “Didn’t know they allowed women to work these ships.”

“I haven’t seen her before,” Carl Gundescheim commented in his thick German accent. “I would have remembered that one.”

Jonah grew warm all over. As if thinking about her almost the whole night through had somehow conjured her out of thin air,
Katy O’Connell stood before the table, a platter of steaming flapjacks in her hands. She grinned at him, seemingly not at
all discomfited at seeing him. “Here’s your breakfast, gents, still hot from the griddle. Enjoy them, because cook says there’s
only one platter to a table. No seconds.” She leaned across Toby to place the platter in the center of the table. The Carolina
man’s eyes nearly popped as the material of her blouse strained across a small but shapely bosom. By the time she straightened,
every face at the table except Jonah’s wore a blissful grin.

“You have butter, syrup, forks—yep. Guess you’ve got everything. Coffeepot’s on the table over there. Just help yourself if
you want a refill.” She turned the full force of her smile on Jonah. “Morning, Mr. Armstrong. Glad to see you made it this
far, at least.”

“Katy?”

She turned and walked away with a light, lithe step and saucily swaying hips. Jonah’s tablemates regarded him with awe and
envy.

“Katy! Come back here!”

His breakfast companions all babbled questions at once, but Jonah didn’t stay to answer. He pursued. She wasn’t hard to catch,
as she had merely returned to the kitchen for another platter of flapjacks. He met her coming out the swinging wooden door.
The platter bumped his chest.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Working my way to Skaguay.” She dodged around him, deftly balancing the heavy tray.

He followed. “They don’t hire women to work on these steamers.”

“They didn’t exactly hire me.”

“What did you—”

“Excuse me, Jonah.” She set the platter on a table and blithely ignored the men who sat there ogling her with curiosity, surprise,
and lurid interest. “I have work to do, and you’re in my way.” She smiled at the diners. “That’s your only platter, gents,
so enjoy it.”

She pushed past Jonah with impishly twinkling green eyes. “You wouldn’t want the captain to toss me into the sea, would you?”

“Katy!”

She danced away from his outstretched hand. “He would, you know. Then wouldn’t you be sorry you got me into trouble?”

Before he could catch up to her she once again disappeared into the kitchen. Giving up for now, Jonah returned to his own
table. The flapjacks had disappeared. This was not an auspicious beginning to a good day.

For Katy, this was an exceptionally good day. The expression on Jonah Armstrong’s face when he’d seen her serving breakfast
was almost worth getting hauled out of her hiding place in a storage closet and dragged before the steamer’s captain. Jonah
looked as though he’d seen a ghost, poor man. Poor man, indeed! Every time she recalled how he’d let her make a fool out of
herself that night in Missoula she wanted to strangle him. He’d known all along she was trying to manipulate him, and throughout
the evening he’d been laughing at her as she masqueraded as a female who actually knew how to be a woman. He deserved every
bit of grief she could give him!

Plenty of work remained to be done after the breakfast dishes were washed and the dining room cleaned. The captain of this
tub had no sense of humor when it came to people stealing a ride on his ship. He had no soft spot in his heart for women,
either, Katy had discovered. If she didn’t give him the full value of labor he thought he deserved, she wouldn’t
put it past the old buzzard to throw her and Hunter overboard and let them swim to shore.

Katy had no desire to test her swimming abilities in the Pacific Ocean, even if the steamer did hug the shore. So she did
everything she was told to do by the chief steward, and she did it with energy—cleaned cabins, polished brass fittings, mopped
the deck, scrubbed laundry, helped with preparing and serving meals. She didn’t mind such tedious work on the steamer nearly
as much as she had resented it at home, where it had kept her from being outdoors, working cattle, breaking horses, or hunting.
The work she did now propelled her toward the Klondike and a bright future.

As Katy moved about the ship, she delighted in letting her presence grate on Jonah Armstrong’s nerves. Every time he saw her,
aggravation darkened his face. The more she smiled at him, the darker was his scowl, the more cheerful her greeting, the more
surly his response. Therefore, she was as smiling and cheerful as she could be, and when, three days out of Seattle, she spotted
Jonah at the rail looking pensively out to sea, she grabbed the opportunity to nettle him.

“Afternoon, Jonah,” Katy said as she slipped up to the rail beside him. “Nice afternoon, isn’t it?”

A single raised brow lent his smile a dash of the devil. “Katy. You didn’t tell me that you include maid-of-all-work among
your other accomplishments. I’m surprised you could convince Captain Jefferies to hire on a woman.”

Katy grinned. “He didn’t exactly have a choice. I stowed away in a storage closet. Bet I could’ve gone the whole trip without
being discovered if Hunter hadn’t chosen the wrong time to hang his butt over the water.”

“What?”

“You remember Hunter. He needed to go.”

“Not that! You stowed away?”

She met his shocked amazement with a proud smile. “I can do anything I need to do to get where I want to be.”

“So I gather,” he said darkly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That means I was right in my original estimation of your character.”

“What’s wrong with my character?”

“Nothing that would bother you, I’m sure.”

Katy huffed indignantly. “What do you think I am, anyway?”

“What you said yourself—a woman who will do anything to get what she wants. And I mean anything.”

Katy wasn’t sure she liked her words repeated to her in that tone of voice. Jonah made determination, hard work, and ingenuity
sound like something immoral. She struck back. “At least I’ll be getting to Dawson. I’m not so sure about you.”

“I’ll get there,” he assured her confidently.

Katy expressed her doubts in a derisive laugh.

“I’ve taken your advice and hired a guide,” he told her. “Along with a party of five other Klondikers.”

“Who?”

“A gentleman by the name of David Hayes.”

Katy cocked her head and lifted one brow. “Is he on the ship?”

“No. He’s meeting us at Skaguay with provisions and a pack train.”

“Which you already paid him for, I suppose.”

“Naturally. How is he supposed to buy the outfits without money?”

“How much?”

“Five hundred apiece.”

Katy shook her head. “You’d have been safer with me, greenhorn. I think Mr. David Hayes just got himself one nice grubstake
to go to Dawson and dig himself some gold, and I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t take you and your friends with him.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I know a crooked scheme when I hear one. When there’s gold to be had, don’t let anyone out of sight with your grubstake.
Too bad you didn’t stick with me. You wouldn’t have to worry about someone cheating you.”

“And I suppose you’re as honest as a midsummer day is long, Miss Stowaway.”

“I am honest. That’s how my pa raised me.”

Jonah made a sound that Katy took as disbelief, but she was enjoying the fresh air and warmth too much to get angry at the
slur. She leaned back against the oak rail, arms braced behind her, and arched toward the sun like a cat. She felt Jonah’s
eyes on her and smiled just to make him mad. Her smiles always seemed to make him mad.

“Katy, why aren’t you married with children hanging on to your skirts rather than running with a pack of uncouth men up to
the Klondike? Look at you! You’re young and pretty enough to find a husband and have him care for you, but instead you run
wild as some barefoot rowdy.”

“Mmm. I’d like that—to run barefoot through that cold Klondike water and see gold nuggets between my toes.” Out of the corner
of her eye she saw him flush, as if the image was too much for him. “What’s the matter, greenhorn? Haven’t you ever waded
barefoot and barelegged through a mountain stream? What kind of life have you had?”

“A responsible life lived within the confines of social convention, which I suspect you know very little about.”

“Horsefeathers! You talk as if I’m some sort of criminal.”

“You ought to get married to some brave man who will take you in hand.”

“If marriage is so grand and responsible, why aren’t
you
married?”

“I told you before. I don’t lead a settled enough life to care for a woman. A woman needs to be sheltered.”

“Well, Mr. Responsible, I don’t need to be cared for, especially by some bossy man who expects a woman to spend her life cooking
and cleaning and mopping up after babies.”

“Most women enjoy that.”

“Some women don’t!” She threw his words back in his
face. “Some women want to live a life not settled enough to care for a man. And out here, a greenhorn like you needs to be
sheltered.”

For a moment his face was a battleground of conflicting expressions. Then he smiled with an unexpected flash of strong white
teeth. “You are the most outrageous female I have ever met, Katy O’Connell.”

“You don’t say!”

“You belong to a world that died a couple of decades ago, do you know that? But I wish you luck.”

Katy couldn’t help but grin. Jonah was impossible to stay mad at for very long. “I guess I wish you luck, too. Though I don’t
know why I bother. Generally I figure that someone who doesn’t know how to take care of himself deserves what he gets.” She
walked jauntily away and shot him a knowing smile over her shoulder. “Just remember, I warned you that you need help. Don’t
blame me when you get taken!”

Jonah told himself that he would be glad to see the last of Katy O’Connell, entertaining as she was. With her free-swinging
stride and her open, easy smile, she was disturbing in a way no proper woman should be. Of course, that was because she wasn’t
even close to being a proper woman.

One would think that on a steamer crowded with 140 passengers, a conglomeration of boats, sleds, wagons, carts, and various
types of livestock, avoiding one rather small female would be easy; but it wasn’t. She seemed to be everywhere he was, serving,
cleaning, polishing, running errands. Jonah suffered an urge to help the little imp when he saw her lifting, scrubbing, and
hauling, but sternly reminded himself that she’d gotten herself into this position. She wanted a man’s adventure; let her
pay a man’s price.

The fifth night out of Seattle, north of Mary Island in the tortuous sea channels known as the Inside Passage, Jonah relaxed
in the evening cool, leaning against a lifeboat, gazing out upon the calm sea. Katy sat nearby, propped against the
deck cabin with her face tilted toward the full moon. Her wolf, a handsome silver-gray animal of intimidating size, sat close
against her. Jonah expected the creature to loose a blood-chilling howl toward the sky at any moment, but he merely leaned
against his mistress as a child might press close to its mother. Though quite sure Katy knew she was watched from the concealing
evening shadows, Jonah began to feel as though he were intruding upon a private moment. He was about to leave when two prospective
gold kings came walking along the deck. They had obviously been celebrating their expected gold strikes a bit early, for their
steps were uncertain and their voices loud and slurred

“Lookee here!” one said. “It’s our little waiter-girl.”

“Waitin’ fer us, I’ll bet,” the other crowed.

“How ‘bout comin’ with us, missy! We’ll have us a time, we will!”

One of the men reached down and grabbed Katy’s arm. She slapped him away with the same lack of concern with which she might
swat at a pesky fly. “Take your hands and keep them where they won’t get you in trouble, friend,” she warned.

“Whooo-eeee!” the man said with relish. “She’s got as much spit as a she-cat!”