Across A Thousand Miles

He shook his head. “I appreciate everything you’ve done. And I’ll be out of here soon, I promise you.” She nodded and turned toward the door. “Hey,” he said, and she looked back. “Was Fred Turner there when you got to my cabin?”

Rebecca shook her head. “There were no tracks in the snow, and your woodstove was two days cold. And you’d better lay in a few more bottles of whiskey for the winter. Looked to me like Fred found your stash.” She smiled briefly and closed the cabin door gently behind her.

HIS DREAMS OPENED doors to his past that he kept tightly closed when he was awake. In his dreams he relived every awful moment of that awful time. When he awoke it took him minutes, hours, days, sometimes, to close all the doors, to rebuild and fortify the walls that kept him safe, kept him sane.

This morning he lay in soft-breathing stillness, staring up at the hand-hewn planks of the bunk above him. The stove still held a fire, but its warmth was ineffective. The light through the thickly frosted window was dim and gray. It was early, very quiet, and very cold. Callie shivered at his feet.

Mac moved tentatively, shifting his upper body on the hard, lumpy mattress, and caught his breath. No doubt about it. Having a truck fall on you was a seriously painful business. Of course, if he hadn’t been so stupid about overloading his truck, none of this would have happened. Even worse that it had to happen right in front of her.

Rebecca regarded him as a cheechako and she was right. He was definitely the idiot of the North, completely out of his element. A few months ago he’d been in the Persian Gulf flying one of the most advanced technical fighters off one of the most advanced Nimitz carriers, and now he was lying on a bunk in Yukon Territory with a bunch of broken ribs at the mercy of a woman who didn’t care for him one little bit, in a land so hostile that all he had to do was walk out into it and he could quite easily die.

He shifted his legs beneath the thick wool blankets. He couldn’t just lie here. If he had to crawl back to his brother’s cabin, he’d crawl. A man had his pride, after all. Sometimes it was the only thing in the world he had. The effort cost him, but he made it as far as the stove, where he fed two split chunks of dry spruce onto the bed of coals and closed the door. He knelt in front of it with the blanket around his waist, shivering, his breath making little frost plumes in the cold cabin air. If this was technically still autumn, what would winter be like? Would he still be alive then, or would wolves be gnawing on his bones?

The cabin door opened and he glanced up. It was Rebecca.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Stern, disapproving voice.

“Freezing to death,” he replied.

She was carrying a coffeepot and two cups and looked bright and alert, as if she’d been awake for hours. She had walked bareheaded and without a parka from the main cabin, and her hair fell in a thick, glossy tumble clear to her waist.

“I brought coffee,” she said, scrutinizing him. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel just fine,” Mac said.

“Oh, yes, and you look just fine, too. Actually, your dog looks a lot better than you do. I’ll bring her a bowl of food in a little bit.” She set the coffeepot and mugs on the stove and then helped him to his feet with a strength that her small stature belied. “Get back into bed.” She guided him to the bunk and steadied him while he sat. Sitting was still painful, but he didn’t move while she poured him a cup of coffee, black, no sugar, and handed it to him.

“Thank you.” He cradled the mug between his palms, relishing the warmth that radiated from it. The coffee smelled wonderful. Rich and fragrant. He tasted it, and something inside of him eased. “This is very good.”

She poured herself a cup and gazed at him over the rim. Steam curled up and wreathed her face. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes upon. Rebecca Reed had the kind of beauty that came from within. He lowered his eyes, afraid of what might be showing in them. “It’s twenty below zero and clear,” she said. “The rivers should freeze up soon.”

His brother Brian had talked a lot about the rivers, one in particular. “My brother calls the Yukon a drifter’s river,” he said. “A river of dreams.”

She smiled through the steam. “Bruce and I paddled a canoe down it from Whitehorse to Dawson. Everyone should do that at least once in a lifetime. It mellows the soul.”

Bruce. Her dead husband. Mac took another swallow of coffee. It didn’t taste quite as good this time. He glanced at her hand, noting the gold wedding band she still wore. “Must have been a good trip.”

“It was a great trip. Our honeymoon.” She fiddled with the stove’s dampers and stuffed two more pieces of birch into the firebox. The stove began to roar like a blast furnace, the metal ticking rhythmically as it heated. “I should drive you into Dawson today for X rays.”

“No need. I feel fine.”

“You look flushed. My guess is you’re running a fever.”

“Can’t be. I’m freezing to death. Where are my clothes, by the way?”

“Ellin took them. They needed a bath. Sam and Ellin have loads of hot water and a washer and dryer, thanks to a big propane water heater and a huge diesel generator. They have a shower, too, which Ellin forces me to use from time to time.”

“That must be hard to take.”

“Sheer torture. I can only stand it for about thirty minutes at a time.” He noticed that she almost smiled. “I have a sauna here and it’s great, my clients love it, but it’s just not the same.” She rose to her feet. “When I’m done feeding and watering, I’m going to run some dogs. I’ll bring you breakfast before getting started and I should be back by two. Will you be all right by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine. I’m sorry to be such trouble.” Rebecca nodded and began to leave, taking her coffee mug with her. “Rebecca,” he said. She paused and turned. “You have to believe me when I tell you I’m not usually like this.”

Her eyebrows raised slightly. “Like what? Half-naked and freezing to death?”

Mac drew the wool blanket more tightly around his waist, and felt his color deepen. “I’m not usually such a nuisance. I’m actually a fairly intelligent, capable, self-reliant man, and I have good common sense.”

“You do?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m loaded with it.”

This time the smile made it to her lips, and they curved in a most delicious way. “Well,” she said, “you certainly couldn’t prove it by me.”

And then she was gone, taking her smile and its sunshine with her.

CHAPTER THREE

REBECCA WAS STILL SMILING three hours later, twenty miles down the trail. The dogs were trotting smoothly, moving through the fresh snow as if it wasn’t there. She had put Cookie and Raven up in lead, two young females with loads of drive and intelligence, and they were doing a great job. The sky was a deep vault of blue, the sunlight bright, the air very still and very cold. Her eight-dog team was covering ten miles an hour, not bad at all on an unbroken trail and pulling about a hundred pounds of weight in the toboggan sled.

“Raven! Gee!” The main trail intersected with a cutoff that would loop around and take them home. Raven pulled to the right as ordered, taking Cookie and the rest of the dogs with her. “Good girl, Raven! Good girl.”

Common sense? Hah! The man was hopeless. He would most certainly die out there in that trapper’s shack on the Flat this winter. He would starve to death trying to feed his dogs. He would freeze to death trying to keep a fire in the woodstove. Common sense, indeed! What on earth possessed him to think he could come into this wild land and survive?

And now she was stuck with taking care of him and his dog team, all of which made her wonder just how much common sense she, herself, had. She laughed aloud, the noise startling her dogs and causing them to break their gait and glance back at her. “It’s okay, gang. Good dogs. All right.” They faced front again and their tug lines tightened as they forged ahead. She could still picture Mac sitting on the bunk with that old wool army blanket pulled around him, his broad shoulders bared to the chill of the room. She hated to admit it, but Sadie Hedda had been right. William MacKenzie was one long, tall, handsome man—even if he didn’t have one shred of common sense. He had something else, though, something she couldn’t quite fathom….

Rebecca shifted her weight on the sled runners, bent her knees and bobbed up and down to warm up the backs of her calves. Her toes were cold even in her heavy boots. This was nothing new. Her toes and fingers were always cold from October until May. It came with the Territory.

“Okay, you huskies, pick it up!” Cookie and Raven broke into a lope at her words, and moments later they were heading home. The trip back would be quicker on the broken trail, and she’d have time to run one more team before she had to start evening chores. The other dogs in the yard heralded her arrival, and Rebecca was surprised to see her red plow truck parked in front of the main cabin. As she looped her snub line around the hitching post, securing the team, Sam stepped out onto the porch. At the same moment, Ellin emerged from the guest cabin. Ellin’s face was radiant as she strode across the dog yard.

“Rebecca,” she said as she approached. “We’re taking Mac over to our place. Sam’s rigged a sled behind the Bombardier for Mac to lie in so it’ll be an easy trip for him. He can stay in the boys’ room for now and move into the cabin when he’s ready.”

Rebecca unsnapped the dogs’ tug lines and began stripping the polar fleece booties from their feet. “Ellin, you and Sam have enough to do without taking care of an invalid.” She reached for the stack of galvanized feed pans and dropped one into the snow in front of each dog, then opened the prepacked cooler to give each some broth thick with chunks of liver.

“He won’t be an invalid for long, Becca. Sam could use some help around the place, and the way I see it, God has provided it in the form of this nice young man.”

Rebecca straightened, one mittened hand pressing into the small of her back. She looked at Ellin and sighed. “You do have a way of looking at things.”

“He’s going to be a big help to Sam. If he can do all the things Sam thinks he can, Bill MacKenzie will be worth his weight in gold. After all, he did fix the Bombardier, and that thing hasn’t run since the turn of the last century.”

“He’s a big man, Ellin,” Rebecca cautioned. “Probably eats a lot.”

“I cook a lot. Can’t get out of the habit after raising four boys. There’ll be plenty to eat. And Sam has fixed up one whole end of the hangar for the dogs.”

“You’re taking his dogs, too?”

“Of course! It’ll be fun having a dog team around the place again. I miss them.”

“Take some of mine!”