She knew that deep voice, softer than usual, the calm tone meant to soothe her. Something like relief trickled through her that he was there and she wouldn’t have to face the wolf alone. Very carefully, she knelt and laid the stick back down on the ground near her feet.
The minute she did, the wolf sat down on its haunches and began to wag its tail. Call Hawkins walked up behind her.
“Come here, boy,” he said over her shoulder. “The lady isn’t going to hurt you.”
She stiffened a little as the wolf started trotting up the path in their direction. But his tail was wagging again and a second shot of relief swept through her. The animal sat down at Hawkins’s feet as if he belonged there and her relief melted into annoyance.
She turned to look up at him. “I don’t believe this. That wolf is your pet?”
His mouth faintly curved and though he still needed a shave, she thought it was a really nice mouth. Charity wondered what he would look like if he actually smiled.
“Smoke’s not a true wolf—he’s a wolf-husky mix. They’re not uncommon up here.”
She wanted to yell at him, to tell him he should have warned her about the dog, but just then the animal cocked its head in a very dog-like manner, reminding her of Swizzle, the big black lab that belonged to her family when she was a kid, and she found herself smiling instead.
“He’s absolutely gorgeous.” The dog was studying her with curiosity, as if he wasn’t sure he should trust her but looking as though he really wanted to. “Can I pet him?”
“He doesn’t usually take to strangers.”
But Charity was already down on her knees, holding out her hand, and Smoke was sniffing her fingers. The dog must have realized she wasn’t afraid of him anymore and he certainly wasn’t afraid of her. She ran her fingers through his long, silver coat.
“What a beautiful dog you are,” she crooned, casting a sideways glance at its master.
Hawkins was frowning again. Apparently he wanted his dog to dislike her as much as he did.
“You need to be careful out here, Ms. Sinclair. Smoke is tame, but there are lots of animals around that aren’t. This is grizzly country. There are black bears and moose. If you’re going to go hiking, you had better take someone with you who knows the terrain.”
“Funny, I must have missed the line of people offering to take me on a sight-seeing trip.”
He started to speak and for a moment she thought he meant to volunteer for the job. Instead, he clamped down on his jaw. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to the cabin.”
They weren’t very far away, but she didn’t point that out, just let him fall in behind her as she made her way back down the trail. She could feel him there, just behind her shoulders, purposely curbing his longer strides to keep from overrunning her shorter ones.
As soon as they reached the bottom of the hill, he whistled to his dog, who had run off after a squirrel.
“Remember what I said. Be careful out here.”
She didn’t answer, since she had no desire to do battle with a moose or a bear, and instead watched his tall figure retreat out of sight down the path beside the creek.
Call Hawkins was truly an enigma. Charity wondered if there was anyone else in his life besides the wolf-dog he kept for a pet.
It was late in the day by the time they were ready to set up Buck’s homemade sluice box, a long, wooden trough about eighteen inches wide tilted up on one end. The bottom was lined with wire mesh and every few inches metal riffles, like the steps of a ladder, poked out to catch the gold as it washed past.
A three-horse gasoline engine on top of a foam rubber pad set up vibrations that shook the box, separating the gold from the lighter mass of dirt and rock. Turning the engine speed up or down controlled the force, jiggling the gold into the riffles in the box.
It looked pretty homemade to Charity, but hey, she had come to Dawson for adventure and hopefully to find some gold. She never intended to embark on a professional mining career.
They positioned the box at the rear of the eight-inch dredge they had chosen after reviewing all the options, the inches signifying the diameter of the suction tube that went under the water to suck up the material in the streambed. The machine was five feet long and gasoline powered. The day they’d bought it, Buck made a deal with A-1 Fuel to set up a storage tank on the property for supplying gas to the dredge and the generator.
“Let’s see how it works,” Charity said.
Buck tightened a screw at the rear of the machine that helped keep the sluice box in place. “We’ll have to go into the water to operate the suction pipe. I’ve got my waders in the truck.” The stream was still icy cold, too cold to stay in for any length of time without special gear.
“I bought myself a pair the last time we went into town,” Charity said, proud of her foresight. She had watched a video made by the GPAA—Gold Prospectors Association of America—so she knew how the dredge was supposed to work. “I’ll just run up and get them.”
She was back on the bank of the creek a few minutes later, pulling the heavy rubber waders on over her jeans. They came up to her waist—big, baggy, rubber legs that basically was just stood in. A pair of wide red suspenders went over her shoulders to hold them in place, which Charity adjusted to fit.
Buck eyed her up and down as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. “You sure you want to do this?”
Undoubtedly she did look pretty funny, with her black-and-white panda bear sweatshirt peeking out from under the suspenders and the lower half of her body swallowed up by the ugly rubber waders. Thank God she couldn’t see herself. She would probably be laughing so hard she wouldn’t be able to walk into the stream.
“I came here for gold,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”
Buck just grunted, stepped off the bank into the water, and slowly made his way to the length of flexible, eight-inch hose sticking out of the dredging machine.
She had pulled her hair up in a ponytail so it wouldn’t get wet and hoped that the waders would insulate her legs and feet. She looked down at the clear stretch of water unhampered by boulders that they had chosen for their initial effort—about three feet deep in this location—took a steadying breath, and waded in.
When Charity reached the place next to Buck, Maude turned on the dredging machine. It was louder than she had imagined. She thought of Call Hawkins and inwardly grinned. The suction pipe began sucking gravel up from the bottom of the stream and as it flowed through the dredge, Maude turned on the motor beneath the sluice box, making it vibrate back and forth.
“You got to be careful with these things,” Buck warned, pointing to the pipe. “Don’t get your hand in front of it. It can take your fingers off—or worse.”
A shiver of alarm raced through her. She hadn’t realized the job would be dangerous. She watched Buck’s big, blunt hands work the suction pipe, making the task look easy, and thought that surely she could learn to master it without losing any extremities.
“Want
