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“No.”
Mack caught Lana’s eyes over Georgie’s head. Do something about this, his expression silently shouted. “Ah, but it is. Your mama knows it is, too.”
The great Mack Tanner, flummoxed by a toddler. Were she not so bone-tired herself, she’d have found it amusing. Wound up by all the excitement and the new surroundings of Mack’s large cabin, Georgie was about as compliant as a mule. A very cranky, very curious, very irritating little mule. “I do indeed,” Lana said, dropping the socks she’d just managed to wrestle off Georgie’s feet and dragging herself to the chair by the small fire. Sinking into it, she patted her lap several times. “Come up here and…” She’d meant to ask Mack to bring her one of the children’s readers from the stack of books they’d purchased, but the question suddenly raised the issue of what to call Mack now.
“Ugle Ack,” Georgie barked pointing in Mack’s direction.
“Uncle Mack,” Mack replied, sensing not only her unspoken question, but Georgie’s unsolicited pronouncement. Mack was Georgie’s godfather, and Jed had referred to Mack always as “Uncle Mack” to the boy. For months Georgie could only manage “Ack,” which was amusing enough in itself, but over the Christmas holidays he’d graduated to “Ugle Ack.” Perhaps their new marital status was no reason to change that.
“Uncle Mack can bring us one of those pretty books with the pictures in them. Mama will read to you.”
Mack instantly delivered the book in question. “And Uncle Mack will take a walk,” he declared, “to let things settle down.”
From the moment Caleb Johnson had loudly heralded their arrival on Treasure Creek’s dock, Mack, Lana and eventually Georgie been surrounded by an endless stream of well-wishers. Little wonder Georgie was too wound up to sleep, while she could barely hold her eyes open. Lana nodded her approval as she took the book from Mack’s outstretched hand. “Bye-bye, Uncle Mack.” She used the reader to wave at Mack, fighting a twinge of jealousy at his escape into the quiet night. Georgie babbled a chattering farewell, too, wiggling his fingers while he grabbed at the new diversion.
Mack grumbled something Lana suspected she’d be glad not to have heard, and plucked his hat from its peg by the door. She felt her whole body collapse as the door clicked shut. Alone. She’d been on pins and needles all day, plastering a happy look on her face despite the terrible night’s sleep she’d gotten. Mack Tanner snored. Loudly. Still, by the endless sets of shifting she’d heard from his corner of the floor, Lana gathered he’d slept no better, if indeed more loudly. Add one exuberant toddler and everyone was on edge.
“Let’s see.” She sighed, returning her attention to the fidgety boy in her lap, “what have we got here? McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer. Uncle Mack knows you need to learn your letters first of all, and look at the pretty pictures!” Georgie, finding this suitable entertainment, settled in against Lana’s chest and began sucking on his thumb. Turning to the first page, Lana read, “A is for…ax? Good gracious, who starts off the alphabet with axes? I daresay Mr. McGuffey wasn’t a papa, if you ask me.” She yawned. “A is also for apple, too. You like apples.” She’d have a thing or two to say to the esteemed Mr. McGuffey about his opening page if she ever met him. Still, the alphabet continued on with kinder images. Box, cat, dog, elk and so on.
How many nights had Mack walked the town, praying his way though the streets of Treasure Creek, asking God’s protection over the people who lived there? It had become his evensong, his nightly ritual, his way of laying to bed the troubles of the day and asking God to send enough wisdom to make it through tomorrow.
It felt different tonight. He could walk through town all he wished, but it would not change the fact that he would go home to a wife and child. Mack had never in his life felt more sure he’d done the right thing, but less certain how to handle the consequences. It might help if his patience weren’t strained to the limit by Georgie’s boundless energy. The rascal had found six things to break in the first half an hour in his new home.
“Says who?” an angry voice sounded from the side of town where stampeders camped. The constantly shifting tent village housed those waiting their turn up the Chilkoot Trail. Or those limping down off it, thin and hungry. Mack broke up a fight nearly every night. He’d pressed nearly a dozen barely skilled people into stitching up the wounded lately. Even Teena Crow, the healing woman from the local Tlingit tribe, had been forced to double her efforts. Mack wondered how many punches had been thrown—and bones broken—in his time away. These days the medical needs of Treasure Creek threatened to surpass its spiritual needs.
“I’da been rich by now if it ain’t for you!” another voice called back. He’d heard every version of this argument under the sun, it seemed. Everyone had someone handy to blame for their failure. Even with Treasure Creek’s God-fearing reputation, there were two dozen fools to every successful man. How do I show them, Lord? Mack prayed.
God had given Moses a few good tricks up his sleeve, divine wonders to back up his authority when folks wouldn’t listen. All Mack had was a good brain, a fine church, a well-stocked provision post that would soon be the region’s best general store and the sheer determination to keep another man from climbing to his death. A loud crash assailed Mack’s ears, and he wondered how much longer he could hold out without help soon.
Ignoring the shouts, Mack turned his steps toward home. Please, Lord, he prayed, ashamed to be driven to such a plea, let him be asleep. I’m worn out and nothing good’ll happen if I snap at the little feller. For all the nights Mack had walked the village praying protection over its residents, for all the dangers he’d faced in countless adventures, it struck him odd that he’d been reduced to praying for protection against the ravages of a two-year-old.
Mack looked awful when he walked out of his bedroom door the next morning. He rubbed his neck and winced, hair sticking up in all directions and a thick stubble covering his chin. He resembled not so much as man as a foul-mooded bear.
“You made coffee.” He said it with a foggy awe that made Lana hide a smile behind the plate she was holding.
“Much needed, don’t you think?”
Mack nodded, settling himself at the table and giving the very perky Georgie an analytical eye. Lana set the steaming mug down in front of him and he very nearly clutched it. “If I say I’ve just discovered the best part about being married, will you hit me with that?”
She eyed the dented tin plate she was holding, thankful she’d talked Mack into letting her order a new set of china in Skaguay. “Not likely.”
He made a dark sound, and she turned to find his gaze aimed out the window to where sheets were hanging. “Why are they out to…?” Lana gulped as Mack turned to level a foul-mooded bear’s glare at Georgie. “You didn’t.”
“It’s hardly his fault,” Lana angled her body in between them, quieting Georgie’s frightened whimper with a bit of the bacon she’d been frying. “He’s just barely been trained, and under the circumstances…more coffee?”
Mack laid his forehead into one hand while he held out the already half-drained cup in the other.
They were going to have to soldier through this morning no matter what, so Lana had decided hours ago to put the best face possible on the situation. “There’s bacon, eggs, toast and some applesauce Mavis Goodge brought over.” She set the full plate in front of him.
“You cook.” He seemed troubled by the observation.
“I find eating a rather necessary practice.”
Mack took several mouthfuls of egg. “You cook well.”
She found the surprise in his voice annoying. Had Jed complained to him about her cooking? “You could be less astonished, you know. And even say thank you if you wanted to really startle me.”
This seemed to make him think. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Not really.” She’d grown accustomed to snatching her meals in bits and pieces in between feeding and occupying Georgie. The long, luxurious meals they’d had in Skaguay had felt like her first in years.
Mack motioned to the place opposite him at the table. “Sit down. Please.” It wasn’t a command, it was an invitation. A grumpy, bleary eyed, but genuine attempt at civility. Lana hid her distinct pleasure as she filled a plate and sat down.
And there they were. The three of them, at table, a family. It was familiar and foreign at the same time, given the man at the head of the table. Mack cleared his throat and held out his hands—one to Georgie and one to Lana. She hesitated to give him her hand, ashamed how long it took her to realize what he was about. He was saying grace.
“We give You thanks, Holy Father, for the food You’ve given us this day. For the blessings we enjoy and the protection we need. May it strengthen us to honor You and Your will today. Amen.”
“Amen,” Lana said quietly.
“Ugle Ack,” Georgie added, batting Mack’s hand with the teaspoon he was holding.
Lana waited as long as she could before asking, “Why are you so surprised I can cook? What did Jed say?”
Mack had made short work of the breakfast and was scraping up the last bits of egg with a corner of his toast. “He said nothing on the matter. It’s just that I know you’ve had house staff most of your life. No reason to learn such things.”
“So I’m useless because I grew up with advantages, is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. You’ve just not had much time to learn to fend for yourself. There’s cooking to live and then there’s good cooking.”
Lana sat back and crossed her arms. “And you were thinking you’d just married the kind of woman who can cook enough to keep you alive?”
“I obviously don’t know you well enough.” He used the diplomatic tone of a man who’d broken up too many arguments.
Lana got up from the table, clearing both their plates. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Mack Tanner.” She reached for the pile of McGuffey Readers she’d poured through in the hours before he woke this morning. She’d started the “Second Year” reader on the boat as they came back from Skaguay, and her opinion had begun to form then. As she sifted through the rest of them this morning—including the pictorial one she started with Georgie last night—the idea had planted itself in her head like a flag thrust in a mountaintop.
As she read through the volumes, Lana discovered she had very definite ideas about education. Ideas about how education was to be accomplished, and by whom, using what techniques. Really, what sort of person launches a child’s education with “A is for ax?” Everyone in Treasure Creek was fine with building a school, but it seemed to her no one gave much thought to what would go on inside it, once built. Somewhere in the second half of the “Fifth Year” reader, Lana had the shocking thought that people might assume the Tucker Sisters would simply hammer their last nail and move inside to take up the chalk. Surely not. Nor should they.
“I’ve read through these,” she began.
“Early riser,” Mack said, finishing his third cup of coffee.
Lana nodded toward Georgie. “Not by choice.” She lay the pile of readers on the table and sat down opposite Mack again. “Who will teach these?”
Mack ran a hand across his chin. “School’s not even finished yet. When it is, we’ll send word and the government will send out a teacher.”
So he didn’t have someone in mind for the position. She’d mentally catalogued Treasure Creek’s population earlier this morning, and came up with no clear candidate, either.
“I expect one of the Tuckers might even take it on.”
Lana swallowed a disparaging laugh. “The Tuckers? Teach school? I doubt that, and I doubt most folks would take to the kind of teaching they’d do anyway. If you want families, we’ll need a good school. And these books are a start, I suppose, but…” An hour ago she’d been so sure of what she wanted. Faced with proposing it to Mack, she felt her conviction waver. Alaskan women face life head-on, she reminded herself. Head-on it would be. “I’ve been thinking about it since I read through these, and, well, I’d like to be our schoolteacher. Very much.” Seeing as the world didn’t cave in on itself with the voicing of the thought, Lana went on. “And I don’t think we should wait until the building’s done. There are plenty of places to gather the children we’ve got. Even the church would work. Or outside on nice days. It’s not as if there are crops to get in, and most of these children are sorely lacking in education as it is. We’d only need to meet for an hour or two each day over the summer and it would do them so much good.”
Mack said nothing for a long moment, his face an exasperating neutral that offered no clue as to what he thought of the idea.
Georgie chose that moment to knock his bowl onto the floor, sending bits of apple and a chunk of cheese scattering across the cabin floor. On the one hand she was grateful for something to divert her attention from Mack’s uncomfortable silence. On the other hand, she didn’t care for Georgie’s commentary on the proposal.
“You want to teach,” he replied when she finished picking up Georgie’s spill. His tone was perfectly even. No wonder Jed often said it was a pity Mack shunned cards—the man’s face was unreadable.
She returned to her seat at the table. “Yes.” Lana gave her voice what she hoped was command. “I do.” Mack pinched the bridge of his nose. Not an encouraging response. Lana counted to ten, willing her hands not to fidget. “Well?”
“I can’t say I’m overly fond of the idea.”
“Why not?”
Georgie threw his spoon to the ground, babbling. Mack raised an eyebrow at her as if to say he thought she had her hands full already.
She did, but in some twisted way that was part of the attraction of teaching for her. Tending to Georgie was like tidying up after a tornado all day long, only to do it again tomorrow. She desperately needed to feel a sense of accomplishment, of achieving something beyond mere survival. The truth of it was she was as surprised as Mack at the idea, but it had grabbed hold of her somewhere between the fourth and fifth reader and refused to let go. She knew she needed this. She also knew she’d find a way—no matter how hard or complicated—to make it work.
“A man provides for his family. It takes a lot to keep a household running up here. You’ll be too busy. I want Georgie to come first.”
She’d been worried he would think she couldn’t do it. The idea that he thought she shouldn’t do it pulled something dark and angry out from the hard knot under her stomach. It leapt from her mouth before she could think better of it. “Georgie? Or you?”
“Lana…”
“I’m to fill my days being Mrs. Mack Turner, is that it?”
“You’re to be a mother to your son.” His voice rose to match hers. “Let someone else, without that kind of responsibility, see to the teaching. The government will send one if we ask. I see no reason for you to take this on. I just don’t think it’s wise.”
“Oh, and you’re Mack Tanner—you always know what’s best.”
Mack pushed away from the table. “We’ve been married—what?—not even three days? Do you even know what’s ahead of you? Of us?”
“I know the timing’s not perfect.”
“Perfect? It’s lunacy. The school’s not even built. It’s June. Georgie’s a handful on a good day. I don’t see how this makes any sense.” He looked at her, a sharp shadow of hurt behind his eyes. “Isn’t this enough?”
Hadn’t she asked that very question of herself? A dozen times over? Why, after resisting for months and finally relenting to the one thing she’d thought she’d never do, did she need something else? And she did. She needed this. In a fierce, defiant way she could never begin to describe. It was, she supposed, a way of hanging on to Lana Bristow before she became completely swallowed up by Mrs. Mack Turner. “Not yet” was the only reply she could manage, weak as it was.
Chapter Six
Mack pushed the floorboard into place with his boot. “So I told her I’d think on it.”
Ed Parker, down off the trail, in between prospecting trips, hauled more board over from the stack at the far end of the new general store’s main room. “You did, did you? Why’d you say that?”
Mack held the board in place with one foot while he nailed the edge down. “Because she loved the idea. She was all fired up and ready to fight for it. I hadn’t even seen the sun go down twice on our house and already things are—” he searched for a word “—complicated.”
“Nothing complicated about it. Say ‘no’ and that’ll be end of it.”
Because that wouldn’t be the end of it. He’d seen it in her eyes. This notion had a hold of her and she wasn’t about to let it go. Logic didn’t come into it. The most he could hope for was to hold off until her head cleared. “You married, Ed?”
Ed dropped the stack of boards with a smirk. “Nope.”
“Well, when you’ve got to spend every morning sitting across from a woman you’ve said no to, then you come and give me advice, okay?” Mack drove the final nail home.
Ed pulled another board off the stack and slid it up against the one Mack had just secured. “You ain’t been married but a few days. What do you know about all that stuff anyways?”
Mack pound in the next nail. “That’s the secret to my success. I learn fast.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing as you’ve got a teacher for a wife and all. Me, I think you have a lot to learn.”
“Mack!” Any further commentary was cut short by the appearance of Caleb Johnson. “Got another one for you.”
Mack set down his hammer and straightened up with a groan. “Sixth this month. I thought we’d see more of these in winter than now.” He walked out of the general store’s framed-out shell to see a scrawny young man in tattered shoes and nowhere near enough clothing for the trail’s demanding weather. “What’s your name, son?”
“David Mindown, sir. Out of Seattle. Came up two weeks ago.”
It was the Seattle ones that always showed up like this. Young men who’d hopped the next boat, so sure of their fortune, only to discover how cruel the Chilkoot Trail could be. Mack was surprised he’d lasted this long. “How old are you, Mindown?”
“Twenty-one.”
Mack doubted he’d seen twenty, from the looks of him. “Got family back in Seattle, do you?”
The boy just nodded. The ones that came back down off the trail—especially the ones Caleb brought to him—would almost choke up at the mention of home and family. Most of them were so broken down and hungry they’d been known to call any woman who offered them a good meal and a bit of care “Mother.”
“Got anything left at all?”
Caleb and the boy shook their heads simultaneously. This boy should have never been allowed up the trail. Harder men than he had barely made it halfway. Mack put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, finding it sharp and bony under the thin shirt he wore. “Time to go home, son. Some adventures are better left to other days. You come on by the house tomorrow morning and I’ll get you squared away. There’s a ship leaving on Tuesday, I’ll book you passage. You got a place to sleep and eat until then?”
“Mavis said the shack is open,” Caleb answered. Mavis Goodge, the boardinghouse owner in town, had a little bunkhouse out on the back of her property that she’d fixed up for just such circum stances. Treasure Creek had crafted an odd little rescue system. Caleb usually found the wayward miners in need of rescue. Teena Crow often tended to whatever wounds she could with the Tlingit healing ways that were her gift, as the town still had no doctor to speak of. Mavis gave them shelter. Lucy Tucker took it upon herself to feed whomever was housed out in the little shack, so that it wasn’t a burden on Mavis. And Mack funded their passage home. Every home and business in Treasure Creek was either sending prospectors up the Chilkoot or catching them when they fell back down, so needs somehow always got met.
Still, no one really saw to the spiritual needs of all those broken men—except the missionary on the trail, Thomas Stone. And still, he was only one man. Treasure Creek needed a real church, which meant the town needed a real pastor with teaching and preaching gifts, not just a fill-in general store owner with good intentions. Mack seemed to see it more clearly with every lost soul who limped down off the mountain.
“Mavis’ll set you up for tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow then, David Mindown. And don’t you bother with anyone who says they’ll wire your mama from Skaguay. There’s no telegraph from there, only wires that don’t lead to anything except your money going into someone else’s pocket.” The sham was a common one—and one of the hundreds of predatory schemes that led to Mack’s vision of a honest town in Treasure Creek.
Ed came up behind him on the General Store’s future front steps. “You’re too good to kids like that. A fella’s got to learn to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. You can’t go around scooping ’em up and sending them back home just ’cause they’ve hit hard times.”
Mack looked at the skinny fellow sulking his way down the street beside Caleb. “Hard times is one thing. Freezing to death on the trail is another. You and I both know what they do to pups like that in Skaguay.”
“Yep,” replied Ed as they both turned back to their work, “but I wish I didn’t.”
Lana spent the morning organizing the house and cooking Mack a nice picnic lunch. He was working hard keeping his provisions outpost running while building the new general store, and he’d lost time while he took her to Skaguay. Lana thought she owed him the courtesy of a decent meal. Besides, things had been rather cool when he left this morning, and she hoped the gesture might smooth things over.
She’d been so taken with the concept of teaching, it hadn’t even occurred to her how broadsided Mack would be by the idea. Even she found it rather sudden. Snapping at him for his honest reaction wasn’t the smartest response. Jed hadn’t been a champion of honesty in marriage, and she was just coming to understand that honesty sometimes meant you didn’t like what you heard.
She made the mistake of stopping by one of the dockside fruit stalls on her way to the General Store. Treasure Creek’s waterfront could be beautiful or chaotic, depending on which ship was docked. “Serves me right,” Lana chided herself as she hoisted Georgie up on one hip, for fear of losing him in today’s teeming, boisterous crowd. Caleb would have his hands full today; men, animals and crates of every description were piled in disorganized clumps all over the beach and adjoining road. Lana heard four different languages and winced at several bouts of indecent banter as she picked her way through the throng. She had just decided fresh fruit wasn’t worth the trouble when a young man sidled up next to her.
“Lemme me carry that for you, ma’am. Looks like quite a load to get through this mob.” The double load of toddler and picnic basket had made maneuvering treacherous, if not close to impossible. She vaguely recognized him; he was in his early twenties, clean-cut by Skaguay standards and boasting a charming smile. He tipped his hat at both her and Georgie. “You’s Mack’s new wife, ain’t you?”
“Thank you. I am.”
