Klondike Medicine Woman

Klondike Medicine Woman
Linda Ford

Dr. Jacob Calloway was the answer to her prayers–whether he liked it or not.Teena Crow is desperate to learn his scientific healing methods to help her people. But Jacob is too suspicious of Teena's native remedies to allow her near Treasure Creek's clinic. So she decides to earn his respect–and teach the good doctor to see beyond surface differences to their common goal.But it's not just Teena's medicines that render Jacob uncomfortable. Her warm gaze and determination dare him to open his heart. But can their fledgling love weather a town's disapproval, or the secrets they both hide?

“My heart belongs to God,” Teena said.

Jacob pressed his hand to his chest as Teena had done. “Mine, too.”

They studied each other openly, frankly, for the first time. A sense of something he could only explain as unity wrapped about them, though he could not say if she felt the same. Only that her eyes held his, dark and bottomless, opening to him with trust. He vowed he would treat her fairly from here on. No more judging her with the same anger he judged the shaman who killed Aaron.

Life was more complicated in his world. However, he considered himself a fair man, and there was one more thing he must do to be fair.

“I would like you to help me at the clinic,” he told her. The words were easier to say than he anticipated.

ALASKAN BRIDES:

Women of the Gold Rush

find that love is the greatest treasure of all.

Klondike Medicine Woman—Linda Ford, May 2011

LINDA FORD

shares her life with her rancher husband, a grown son, a live-in client she provides care for and a yappy parrot. She and her husband raised a family of fourteen children, ten adopted, providing her with plenty of opportunity to experience God’s love and faithfulness. They’ve had their share of adventures, as well. Taking twelve kids in a motor home on a three-thousand-mile road trip would be high on the list. They live in Alberta, Canada, close enough to the Rockies to admire them every day. She enjoys writing stories that reveal God’s wondrous love through the lives of her characters.

Linda enjoys hearing from readers. Contact her at linda@lindaford.org or check out her website at www.lindaford.org, where you can also catch her blog, which often carries glimpses of both her writing activities and family life.

Klondike Medicine Woman

Linda Ford

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that,

while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

—Romans 5:8

To Tom, Yvonne, Jordyn and Chris

for sharing our trip to Alaska and Yukon.

You made it a memorable event. Thank you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Letter to Reader

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

July 1898, Treasure Creek, Alaska

These people were set on destroying not only the land but themselves, as well.

Teena Crow bent over the injured man. Blood pooled under his leg, a fresh stream joining the black patch in the grass. If she didn’t stop the bleeding soon, he would die beside the Chilkoot Trail like so many others had. She took in his pain-filled eyes, the way the color seeped from his cheeks. Shrugging out of her fur shawl, she wrapped it around him then took out the reindeer moss, the plant known as mare’s tail and other healing remedies she always carried with her. She carefully packed the wound. The blood flow stopped immediately. She watched it a moment then returned her gaze to the man, wondering if he would say with his eyes or mouth, or both, what he thought of a native tending him. Many she’d helped showed no appreciation nor spared their hatred of the people who were here first.

The man’s eyes were already losing their fear-filled pain and he showed nothing but gratitude.

She smiled. “How long have you been here?”

“Since first light,” he croaked.

Light came early in July. That meant he had been there up to twelve hours. Teena held her canteen of water to his lips and he drank heartily. She sat back on her haunches and looked about.

All winter, they had come in boats of every sort in a mad race for the gold fields. They had flung themselves into the water, headed for land like fish thrown up at the knees of the newly formed town of Treasure Creek, Alaska, founded by Mack Tanner. They brought with them a mountain of goods that soon lay scattered across the beach. They clawed their way up the Chilkoot toward the lake and onward. They paid Tlingit Indians like her brother to pack their belongings over the pass where the Canadian Mounties waited to make sure they had the required amount of supplies. All for the glittering gold.

She shook her head. She would never understand the white man. But she had vowed to learn their ways of curing their diseases.

This was not the first one of their kind to be ignored at the side of the trail, as hundreds passed by without once pausing to help. Last winter her brother, Jimmy, had tossed his pack aside and left the path to pick up a man with a broken leg who had lain there all day without anyone helping. Jimmy brought him down the mountain to Teena. He had lived, though he might never walk as well as he once had.