up an urge to throw up again, but there was nothing left in her stomach. For which, Kerry reminded herself with the steely resolve that had brought her this far, she might as well be thankful.
“Maybe you’d better take it easy,” he said. “Stick around the cabin while I take a look at the plane.”
“Don’t be silly. The two of us are more likely to get the plane airworthy than one of us, even if the one of us is you. And didn’t you tell me that time is of the essence? That we need to get out of here before the river freezes? I’m going with you, Sam. No argument.”
Sam knew better than to buck Kerry when she’d put her mind to something.
“Well then, you’d better put on a warm jacket and a good pair of boots. And I’ll clean up the kitchen. How’s your finger?”
“Sore.”
“Let me see.”
She held her hand toward him, and he inspected it carefully. “There’s not as much swelling as I expected. Come over here and I’ll change the binding.”
Kerry followed obediently. She remained quiet while he administered gauze and adhesive tape.
“There,” he said as he finished. “How does that feel?”
“Fine,” Kerry said, wiggling her fingers experimentally. He noticed that she winced, but she didn’t complain.
“Good. We’ll apply snow packs during the day, and that should help bring down the swelling even more.”
Kerry dug in the closet and pulled out a quilted down coat, bright red. When she put it on, she looked like a kid with those pigtails. It would be good if he could think of her as a kid, Sam thought. That would keep him from noticing the sensual lines of her lips.
“I threw a light lunch together,” she said. “Hot chocolate in a thermos. A can of macaroni and cheese. Also, dried fruit—apples and peaches.”
While she was talking, Sam arranged Doug’s tools in his pack. Kerry handed him the bag containing their lunch, and he stashed it on top. Then he slipped his arms through the straps of the pack and hoisted it onto his back. Kerry helped him adjust it.
When they left the cabin, he was surprised when Kerry locked the door and hid the key under a rock.
“Way up here in the wilderness, it’s usual for people to leave their cabins unlocked in case somebody in an emergency situation happens along and needs food and shelter. If the place is locked, it’s considered all right to break in. So who do you think you’re keeping out?” he said. He couldn’t help laughing at her.
She flushed, but took the jibe in stride. “It’s a habit, I guess. Old habits die hard, you know.”
He did know. The reason he wanted to keep needling her was that annoying Kerry had been his habit in the old days. And yet somehow it seemed inappropriate now.
The cabin was situated on a knoll overlooking a small bowl of a lake that had been named Kitty Kill Lake by Klondikers during the Alaska gold rush. The lake fed the Kilkit River, which emptied into the Gulf of Alaska. In the distance, the icy summits of the highest mountain range in North America glittered in the sun. Above, the sky was azure and unmarred by clouds. The path to the river was narrow and steep, but not long, and Kerry followed Sam to the trail that skirted its edge.
They found themselves wading through drifts of ankle-deep snow across a landscape blanketed in pristine white. The wide terminus of Williwaw Glacier rose a good five hundred feet over the lake, a huge frozen wall glimmering pale turquoise-blue in the sunshine. As they walked they heard a shudder and a groan from the direction of the glacier, and they whipped their heads around as a small jagged iceberg leaned forward and tumbled off its perpendicular face, sending up a frothy splash from the lake below. Kerry stopped to watch for a moment. Sam watched, too. He didn’t speak and neither did she, but he didn’t have to hear her say the words to know that she was spellbound by the beauty of their surroundings.
Without a word, they resumed walking. The snow made their journey hard going, and more than once Sam looked back at Kerry to see if she was having trouble keeping up. She had apparently decided to make her way a bit easier by placing her feet squarely in the hollows of his footsteps, concentrating with great determination on what she was doing. To make it easier for her, he shortened his stride.
By this time, the tip of Kerry’s nose had pinkened from the cold, and her braids with their blue ribbons bobbed against her shoulders with each step. Braids, he thought in amusement.
The next time he looked back, he saw that the tips of her ears were red. “You’d better pull the hood of the coat up,” he said gruffly.
“What difference could it possibly make to you whether I wear a hood or not?”
“I don’t want to have to thaw you out if you get frostbite.”
“Oh, I’m all kinds of fun, aren’t I, Harbeck?”
For some reason it irritated him for her to call him by his last name. “My name’s Sam,” he said.
“Mine’s Kerry. You never call me anything.”
He stopped and looked back. She had missed one of his footprints and was floundering toward a snowbank. She looked plain tuckered out.
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