September's Dream by Ruth Ryan Langan Read Free Book Online Page A

you?" At Nell’s gasp, her husband climbed down to stand beside his wife.
    Wearily September shook her head. "He tried to trick me. He asked me to marry him. Then he said he couldn’t wait. I—I had to cut him with my knife to stop him." She squeezed Nell’s hand tightly and stared at the ground. "I’m so ashamed. You warned me not to trust him. How could I have been so foolish?"
    Nell glanced uneasily at her husband. "It happens, September. Even to the best of us."
    Wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, September avoided their eyes. "I shouldn’t have bothered you with my troubles. Thank you for this." She stepped back and draped the shawl over her trembling shoulders. "Good luck to you both."
    Jack helped his young wife into the wagon, then flicked the reins. As the wagon began to roll, Nell sighed.
    "What will she do now, Jack?"
    "Same’s everybody else. Work. Struggle. Survive. Or give up."
    Nell turned to watch the small figure walking along the dirt trail. "September Malloy will never give up. She’ll survive. I know it."
     
    *  *  *
     
    Jase Conroy clambered up the banks of the river. Autumn had come to Skagway. It was a brief burst of color on the distant hills. It added nothing to the drab town. Lifting his head like a wild animal, he tested the familiar scents. There was the bite of snow in the air. He had missed summer. Like autumn, it was a short season, sandwiched between a cold spring and a colder winter.
    With a practiced eye, he surveyed the town. More tents had sprouted since he left. More drifters in search of instant riches.
    He hoped his cabin, nestled in the crook of the far hill, had fared as well as he. His time spent in San Francisco had helped heal his spirit as well as his body. It had done him good to be with doctors and nurses, to talk with people who were dedicated to helping others. They reminded him of the kind of people who had originally settled this land. People like his father, a gentle man of the land who earned a good living trapping, and his mother, an Englishwoman who had come here to teach and stayed on out of love for Sebastian Conroy.
    Jase smiled as he thought about them. He’d had the best of all possible worlds with his parents. From his father he learned to love this wilderness and to feel comfortable in his surroundings. From his mother he’d discovered books. Though he rarely traveled far from Alaska, he had seen the whole world through the writers’ words.
    "Jason."
    Jase looked up and waved as Jack Brooks slowed his wagon.
    "This is my wife, Nell, and our little boy, Will."
    Shading his eyes, Jase smiled up at the thin, almost frail-looking girl and the little boy. "Jack talks about you all the time. Glad you made it safely."
    "They were on the same boat as you, Jase."
    "That so?" They must have kept to themselves. He hadn’t seen them among the passengers.
    "Come up and see us, Jase."
    He nodded. "If I’m in the area. Good luck, Ma’am."
    As the wagon moved away, Jase shook his head. That plain little girl was all Jack had talked about for months. She just didn’t look like the type who could make it in this harsh land. But then, hadn’t his mother fooled everyone? The cool, cultured Englishwoman and the uneducated trapper. Until her death, she had loved her man and his land fiercely.
    Love. It was a mystery to Jase. His parents had married late in life, but they loved each other like two carefree children. He’d be twenty-six on his next birthday, and he’d never met a woman who made him want to exchange his freedom for her favors.
    He turned and saw the slender figure of the girl from the boat. The hem of her dress dripped water into her shoes. She had a shawl wrapped tightly about her shoulders. Her pale, silvery hair, piled on top of her head, dripped little tendrils about her face and neck, sending little rivulets of water down her cheeks and chin. She lifted a hand to stem the flow and glanced toward him. Standing there in the dusty