She suddenly felt like ducking her head, or shifting her gaze so that she no longer had to meet his. But those golden eyes bored into her. “No one showed me, but I’ve seen snares before. After our guide died and Father said he still wanted to complete the expedition, I tried to...”
Again, her words trailed off, and she half expected him to tell her she was stupid for attempting to catch some meat. Heath surely would have made fun of her for it, and Father would say she was wasting time.
But Mr. Amos only reached out and rubbed her homemade rope between his fingers. “Did you make this yourself?”
Something thick lodged in her throat, and she nodded.
“It’s very good. The rope, the snare, all of it. The problem is that the snare is too high off the ground, and the loop itself is too small. At this size, only a small rabbit would get caught in it, but that becomes impossible given the height of the snare.”
He picked up the snare, then pushed to his feet and extended a hand to help her up. She let him take it, his warm strength surrounding her palm for a handful of seconds before he released her. “I’ll keep this in my pack. We’ll fix it and set it out when we stop tonight. Could be we end up with rabbit stew for breakfast tomorrow. Now let’s head back to camp. We need to get out of these mountains.”
And with that he set off, moving through the trees with the swiftness and stealth she was starting to expect from him.
He didn’t wait to see if she followed, and with anyone else, she would have thought the actions rude.
And yet she couldn’t help but remember the kindness in Mr. Amos’s voice when he offered her food last night, or how he’d told her that she’d done a good job trying to feed everyone with so few resources. He’d even told her that her snare was good—though it clearly wasn’t.
There was no question that Mikhail Amos, famous Alaskan explorer, had a layer of porcupine quills covering his back, but beneath those quills, his heart might be softer than she’d thought.
* * *
There wasno way to quickly hike down one mountain and over two others. Mikhail looked over his shoulder, his jaw automatically clenching at the sight of Heath and Richard carefully carrying the large wooden trunk over the rocky ground. He understood why the scientists needed it, just like he understood they had originally been planning to stay by the river and not transport the trunk overland. But that wasn’t how things had worked out.
It had taken them over an hour simply to move the trunk through the canyon. He and Richard Caldwell had been the first to carry it, with Mikhail leading the way and Richard taking the handle on the back.
The waterfall inside the canyon had been frozen, meaning they’d had to pick their way over patches of ice. But they’d made it without dropping the trunk or damaging any of the specimens inside.
After that, Heath and Dr. Ottingford had carried the trunk for a bit, but progress was still slow.
Mikhail had been hoping to make it down the mountain by lunch, but at this rate, it would take all day.
“Is something wrong?”
He looked over to find Miss Wetherby still walking beside him. He wasn’t quite sure how long she’d been next to him. The better part of an hour perhaps? Yet she’d been content to walk in silence—until now, apparently.
“Why do you assume something’s wrong?” he growled.
She bit the side of her lip, then ducked her head. “It’s a rather pretty view, and I was trying to figure out why you were frowning at it. Forgive me for being so nosey.”
She wasn’t nosey. She was correct. If any of his siblings had been with him, they would have teased him for being too dour.
Well, except for his oldest brother, Alexei. He didn’t know how to be anything other than serious.
Mikhail had to admit the current section of the trail afforded a beautiful view. Around them, snow-capped peaks stretched upward against a vivid blue sky, the brilliant sun illuminating their rugged slopes. In the valley directly below the mountain, a sprawling forest of deep green blanketed the earth, the tops of the trees swaying in an unusually calm wind for this time of year.
And here he was, frowning at all of it.
Because he was trying to figure out how to keep everyone safe. Not because the scenery itself deserved a frown.
“I want you to know that I’ve read your articles,” she said from beside him.
Miss Wetherby’s voice was whisper soft against the breeze, but he found himself tensing anyway, just as he did whenever a person brought up those dratted articles.
He slanted a glance in her direction, but she wasn’t looking at him.
Probably because he was trudging around the mountain scowling rather than looking like a decent human being.
When he’d written those articles, he’d been trying to convince the people of San Francisco they needed to preserve Alaska instead of opening it up to mining, especially open-pit mining. But the city’s newspaper editors had removed his comments on how mining would damage the beautiful land he’d described and left out descriptions and notes from some of his expeditions. Then other newspapers had picked up his articles, and before he knew it, everyone considered him the foremost expert on Alaska. He’d even ended up with a reporter on the expedition he guided over the summer. The man had wanted to see the tundra for himself. Plus, a publisher from New York City had taken to writing him on occasion, asking if he would write a book on Alaska.
