Free Jenna Kernan by Gold Rush Groom Page A

their coffee by the fire, Lily with an arm around Nala and Jack on her other side. Lily no longer used her dog as awall between them, allowing Jack closer at meals. He liked her company. She didn’t talk drivel, but kept them on practical matters. Every so often she spoke of her plans. He liked that best, for she looked off at the horizon when she spoke, her body finally still, her hands at rest and her face holding a look of such longing, it about did him in. He admired her dreams and her drive.
    They set the tent and Jack loaded his stove with wood to keep them warm at night. The next day they began the descent to Crater Lake. The trail was difficult but at least downhill. It was unfathomable that the distance between the Scales, below the Chilkoot Pass, and Crater Lake was less than five miles. They were well and truly into the mountains now. The wind bit deeper and the snow fell faster. They used Lily’s sled for all the gear, making short trips and shuttling forward, bit by bit. Jack worried every step that they would not reach Lake Bennett in time to make a proper shelter before the real cold hit. It was November already and still they had not reached that last great lake. The nights were twenty hours long now, so they traveled by moonlight and by the shimmering Northern Lights. When they stopped they huddled together, the three of them, dog, man and woman, in their blankets by the fire, and still he never felt warm.
    When the cold grew so deep that the coffee froze in his cup before he could drink it, Lily finallyconvinced him to cache some of his gear so they could move forward. And still it was January before they reached Bennett. This would be the launching point for the boats, because it was the first of the connected lakes that became the Yukon River.
    As they descended the final incline, the narrow lake seemed only a bare expanse among the trees, surrounded by an odd assortment of structures, hastily erected and shoddily made. Lily signed on to help a woman run her kitchen, which did a better business feeding men than any other in the vicinity. Instead of pay, she received food and shelter for them both. That freed Jack from having to build a cabin, so he had time to retrieve the remainder of his gear, using Nala and Lily’s sled. On each return trip he found more and more men building their boats on the shore so as to be ready for the break-up when they would sail to Dawson. When, at last he had all his belongings, he turned his attention to constructing their boat.
    Jack planned their conveyance carefully, since it had to carry more weight than most. It needed a reinforced hull, which would make it heavy and unwieldy. He took the problem to Lily. She did not understand construction but he trusted her opinion.
    “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see past the gear piled in the middle.”
    “Make it longer, then the gear won’t go as high.”
    “I’ve made it the length of the pines here. It will be sturdier that way.”
    She nodded at the logic of that and then considered his drawing, pointing to a spot in the bow. “If I stood here, I could see for you.”
    “You’d spot for snags and rocks.” He nodded, liking the idea, for it kept him from having to construct a raised steering deck and extending and weakening the rudder. “Yes. That might work.”
    They shared a smile, which Lily ended when Jack tried to stroke her cheek.
    “Off to work with you. You can’t build a boat while standing in my kitchen.”
    He spent the next hour looking through his gear for his whipsaw and tools, finally returning to Lily.
    “I think they’ve been stolen.”
    “Don’t be silly, I’m a better watchdog than all that.” She paused, coffeepot in hand on her way past a long table of seated men. “I rented the saw to George Murphy and his brother, Tim. Larry Kristen has your hammer, but no nails. Those he has to buy elsewhere. Martin—”
    “You rented my tools?”
    “Well, you didn’t need them to haul