Page 5 of Echoes of Twilight (Dawn of Alaska #4)

5

M ikhail Amos was the most unnerving man she’d ever met. Bryony trudged back to the fire, where she intended to fry up the roots she’d dug up earlier that day and the bit of jerky Heath and Richard had brought back with them. It wouldn’t be the tastiest thing they’d ever eaten, but at least they’d all get a little meat.

As for Mr. Amos, up until about twenty minutes ago, she’d thought him admirable. She’d read the series of newspaper articles he’d written two years ago. The articles had talked about his explorations of Alaska, and they’d been riveting.

In fact, she’d liked them so much that she’d gone to the library and dug out another article from several years earlier, written by a man who’d been on one of Mr. Amos’s expeditions. In it, he described Mr. Amos saving him from a grizzly attack. She’d thought her heart would pound straight out of her chest as she read it.

Her search had also yielded a book that described a harrowing expedition ten years ago near Skagway, where Mr. Amos had been assisting another guide. But the guide ended up dying in a bear attack, and Mr. Amos had to get the rest of the team out of the wilderness before winter. He hadn’t succeeded. Mr. Amos and the book’s author had been the only ones to survive the journey.

The book had left her with a heavy feeling in her chest, but also a sense of awe about Mr. Amos himself. He seemed to have an innate understanding of the wilderness, and everyone said he was the best guide in all of Alaska.

But nothing she read had indicated that the famous Alaskan explorer barely spoke, had golden eyes that appeared cold and hard, or walked through the woods as stealthily as a mountain lion stalking its prey.

Well, now that she thought about it, the survivor of the grizzly attack had said something about Mr. Amos moving through the woods as swiftly as a predator, but she had thought that a good thing when she’d read it. In person, it made the man appear downright?—

“What are you doing?”

She jumped at the sound of the voice, then looked over her shoulder to find that the man she’d been stewing about had appeared out of nowhere. Probably because he moved through the woods like a predator.

Drat. Why were those words from the article sticking in her mind?

“Well?” he asked, staring at the wooden cutting board she’d just wiped off. “What are you up to?”

“Making dinner.”

“With what food?”

Bryony reached into the deep pockets of her coat and pulled out the roots she’d dug up just before finding Mr. Amos spying on their campsite. Flecks of drying dirt sprinkled across the cutting board, and she sighed. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking, coming back to camp instead of going to the stream to wash the roots.

No, that wasn’t true. She knew exactly what she’d been thinking. That she wanted to get away from those all-knowing eyes, from the man who seemed to think a million thoughts but never voiced a single one of them.

Now she’d need to wash the cutting board because of it.

“Is that all you’ve been eating?” Mr. Amos asked.

Bryony wanted to press her lips shut and tell him to leave her alone, but there was almost something soft about how he said it.

She looked up and found no softness in his face, though. Instead, his features were set in an unreadable mask, and those eerie golden eyes were boring into her.

It caused every muscle in her back to stiffen. “Why?”

“Here.” He swung his pack down from his shoulders. The pack looked heavy enough, she half wondered why he’d been carrying it around the camp and hadn’t set it down the first chance he got. But he didn’t seem to have any trouble moving it off his back.

He rummaged in one of the pockets and pulled out a small wooden box, which he opened to reveal three biscuits wrapped in a cloth napkin with some pemmican beside it.

He set the box atop the cutting board. “You need to eat.”

Was it that obvious? Just how gaunt did she look to the stranger? She shoved the thought aside and stared down at the food, which of course caused her stomach to growl. But she forced her hand to stay by her side. “Thank you for the offer, Mr. Amos, but I can’t eat this. We haven’t much food left in the camp, and you’re going to need it to keep up your own strength.”

He nudged the box closer. “We’ll have food aplenty once I catch fish for dinner tonight.”

His voice was kinder than she’d expected, though the serious lines of his face still gave no indication he felt the least bit of compassion.

But he must feel something ; otherwise he wouldn’t be offering her his own dinner.

Her stomach rumbled again. Had he heard it?

She glanced up to find his lips now pressed into a firm line, but his voice still sounded soft when he said, “Take what you want. I insist.”

She reached out and swiped two biscuits and two pieces of pemmican. She couldn’t explain why her hand trembled as she did so, nor why, once she had the food in her hand, she stood staring at it rather than putting it in her mouth.

She had the strangest notion not to eat it but to squirrel it away somewhere in her pack and hide it for a time when she was truly hungry.

Which was ridiculous, because she’d been hungry for weeks.

“Eat it, please. I have flour to make more biscuits, and pemmican and jerky aplenty in my pack. I’ll catch fish for dinner to give us some fresh meat. Don’t worry about eating too much.”

She lifted a biscuit to her mouth and took a small bite.

“Do you have food, Mr. Amos?” Father came up beside her and reached for a biscuit. “This looks delicious. All we had for lunch was stewed roots.”

Mr. Amos’s hand reached out and clasped Father’s wrist before he could snatch the biscuit from the box. “This food is for your daughter. You can wait until I catch us some dinner.”

Her father blinked. “But I only had a small bit of jerky after Heath and Richard came back to camp. I really am quite hungry.”

“You can wait an hour.” There was no hint of kindness in Mr. Amos’s voice now, and he closed the lid on the box with more force than necessary, causing the sound of wood slapping together to echo through the valley.

He bent and retrieved the pieces of a fishing pole that had been strapped to the side of his pack, then screwed them together with smooth, practiced movements.

A moment later he stalked off toward the lake, leaving her with the entire box of food and her father with a perplexed look on his face.

* * *

It took Mikhail less than an hour to catch ten fish. As he’d expected, the lake had been full of them, but no one in the party of botanists and researchers had known how to make a fishing pole out of a tree branch after Jack had died, and Richard had said Jack’s fishing pole had broken during the bear attack.

He’d held his tongue, not bothering to tell Richard that if he was going to survey the Stikine and Iskut River valleys for the Department of the Interior, he should be a skilled enough woodsman to fashion a fishing pole or snare a rabbit or do something to provide food for himself and the members of his party.

But despite the fact Richard Caldwell published a field guide every year about some new area he’d explored, and despite the fact he’d written numerous reports for the Department of the Interior over the years, it seemed the man had never once gone on an expedition without a guide.

Mikhail shouldn’t be surprised. In his experience, Richard Caldwell liked to talk big, even when he knew very little.

His fishing line full, Mikhail turned away from the lake and headed back to camp, where he was hoping he could make use of Miss Wetherby’s cutting board to clean the fish.

Her father and the other scientist were packing their specimens and equipment in a wooden trunk that looked large and cumbersome, and Heath and Richard were having a deep conversation near the bedrolls.

Mikhail pursed his lips as he surveyed the trunk. It was sure to slow them down. There would be no quick or easy way to get it through the canyon, and if the rain turned to snow... Well, he didn’t want to think about how slippery the trails would be while carrying the trunk.

“You caught that many fish?”

He turned to find Miss Wetherby standing beside the fire, her eyes running down his stringer.

She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth, as though not quite sure what to say, then finally blurted, “We won’t be able to eat all of those.”

“I know, but I want to cook them all tonight. We’ll save some for breakfast tomorrow. Mind if I use your cutting board?”

“Go ahead.” She gestured toward the wooden board he’d watched her take down to the beach to clean. “I figured I’d still cook the roots I dug up, and the bit of jerky Heath and Richard brought back with them, but I hadn’t realized you’d catch so many fish.”

“The roots will be a good addition to the meal. I have some flour in my pack. Do you know how to cook biscuits over a fire?”

She stilled for a moment, then gave her head a small nod. “I’ve been cooking biscuits like that since the first time I accompanied my father on an expedition.”

Something about how she said that made him wonder just how old she’d been when she’d gone on her first expedition. But if she was accustomed to being in the wilderness, then why was she so thin? It didn’t make any sense. “Have you been sick recently?”

Miss Wetherby’s brow furrowed, then she shook her head, causing locks of wavy red hair to tumble about her shoulders. “No. Why?”

“How much did you eat of the food I gave you?”

Her eyebrows slashed down, and she took a step back from him. “Why?”

“Because I want to know.”

“Enough.”

Just how much was “enough”? He moved around her, covering the few steps to the boulder where his wooden box sat. He opened the lid, only to find it still missing two biscuits and two pieces of pemmican.

“We ran out of pemmican a week ago and flour before that.” Miss Wetherby twisted her hands in front of her, her eyes riveted to his box. “We gave Heath and Richard the last of the jerky weeks ago when they went to find help.”

“I’m aware.” Or at least he was starting to become more aware. Starting to have a better idea of what the real problem was. “But how much did you eat while I was fishing? You must have been starving.”

“I was, but...” Her hand crept up to cover her belly. “I felt full really fast.”

“How fast? How much food did you actually eat?”

She looked away. “I could only stomach a few bites of pemmican and half a biscuit. I gave the rest to my father.”

Her father. The thought of the hale and hardy man eating his daughter’s food caused Mikhail’s jaw to tighten. “Do you still feel full or are you hungry again?”

Her hand splayed wider against her stomach. “I still feel full.”

A few bites of pemmican and half a biscuit was a paltry amount of food. She shouldn’t be full after eating so little. Just like she shouldn’t look gaunt and emaciated when no one else in her party did, and she hadn’t been sick.

Just how little food had she been consuming since Jack died? Had she been sacrificing her own portions so the men had more?

Did any of the men know what she was doing?

Mikhail looked at his wooden box, then back at Miss Wetherby. “Dinner should be ready in about an hour. I want you to eat what you can, but not so much that it makes you sick. Then I want you to eat again before bed and make sure you have food to eat every couple of hours on the trail tomorrow. Try to eat six or seven small meals throughout the day, even if you’re only hungry enough for a few bites.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “Why do you care so much about what I eat or when?”

Because he’d been in a situation like this once before. It hadn’t been his expedition. He’d just been along to help the guide, but much like Miss Wetherby’s father, the guide on that expedition hadn’t understood the dangers of an Alaskan winter. He’d kept them in the wilderness far too long, and once the snow came, things had turned deadly.

That expedition had a woman on it too.

Mikhail shoved the thought away. Thinking about Livy wouldn’t do him any good. This was a different expedition—one that he would ensure had a far different ending. “I’m afraid you might be undernourished, and it’s a five-day hike back to the river—and that’s if the snow doesn’t come and we can move at a reasonable pace with that big trunk. I need you to be able to hike out of here tomorrow without fainting.”

Her shoulders slumped. “I was just trying to make sure everyone else had enough.”

So no one had been taking her food or rationing too little for her. She’d been doing it to herself. That was something, at least. “You did a good job keeping everyone else fed.”

She shook her head, causing tendrils of fiery red hair to cascade over her shoulders. “I’ve only been cooking for my father and Dr. Ottingford. Heath and Richard just got back to camp today. They said they traded with Indians for some food while they were gone.”

“Perhaps so, but before they left, you fed the entire camp on your own, right?”

“After Mr. Ledman died, we started rationing the jerky and pemmican as soon as we realized none of us knew how to fish or snare an animal. Mr. Ledman had done all that. I should have rationed the small bits of cornmeal and flour too, but I didn’t realize...” Her gaze moved up to the mountains, their peaks now shrouded in shadows of early twilight. “Do you really think we can make it out of here? With the snow coming? With everything that’s happened? Can you really get us back to the river safely?”

“Of course. It’s my job. I wouldn’t have signed up to do it if I thought I’d fail.”

Or at least, he’d thought he could do it when he assumed he’d be able to find the botanists in a week, two at most.

When he’d assumed the entire party was made up of men.

Miss Wetherby looked at him for a moment, their eyes meeting again. She was a beautiful woman, even with weariness lining her face and shadows filling the space under her eyes.

Then she moved her gaze to the giant peak towering over the valley. “The snow keeps creeping lower and lower, and this morning there was a skiff of it on the ground. I spent the entire day thinking this would be the last view I ever saw.”

“You were right to be concerned. It’s unfortunate the others in your party don’t view your situation with the same seriousness.”

Now that he knew he’d been following Heath and Richard’s tracks, it was easy enough to guess what they had been up to. They’d left the two botanists and Miss Wetherby in this pristine valley and gone off in search of gold—just like Richard had done when he’d lived with the Athabaskans for two years.

Richard had probably known where the Iskut River was the entire time, and Heath might have too. While the scientists from the Smithsonian Institution were interested in studying flora and fauna, the men from the Department of the Interior might even have been sent on the expedition for the purpose of finding gold.

Even after their guide had died, Richard Caldwell had been more concerned with finding claims to stake than getting everyone to safety. The thought made blood rush hot in Mikhail’s veins.

If they didn’t make it through the mountains, if the entire party didn’t make it safely back to Sitka, he knew exactly who to blame.