And why were they camped by the lake and not near one of the mountains or beside a stream, both of which were more likely to contain gold than a beach?
Unless they weren’t looking for gold.
Mikhail stood and moved along the edge of the trees, staying far enough from the clearing that the men wouldn’t be able to see him, but close enough that he could keep an eye on them. If he got closer to the tents, he just might be able to tell how long the men had been camping there.
Dare he hope that he’d found his team of missing scientists?
No. It couldn’t be them. He’d clearly followed prospectors here. There was no question that the men he’d tracked had been searching for gold. They’d panned for gold in every stream they’d crossed and stopped to examine several geological formations on the mountain. Besides, there were only four people at the campsite, the two men whose conversation he’d just overheard, and the two other men who were now talking to the first two near the fire. He was looking for a party of six.
Or at least he thought he was, since six people had left Sitka on the botany expedition last spring. But what if there were only four left now?
Something tightened in his gut, and Mikhail cast his gaze toward the heavens.Please let everyone be safe, Father.
But God didn’t give him any kind of clue as to whether he’d answered the prayer, so Mikhail moved closer to the camp, creeping through the trees and brush as he neared the tents with a small fire in the center. There were several unusual things in the camp, like the series of glass jars that held various types of foliage. They sat atop a boulder near the edge of the forest with a journal lying beside them. Finding a journal itself in a camp wouldn’t be terribly unusual. But this wasn’t some small, cheaply bound book that a prospector might use to make notes about where he’d been and what he’d found. It looked heavy and thick and ornate.
Then there were the two small trowels sitting at the base of the boulder, their tips blackened with dirt.
Finally he spotted a botanical press sitting on the opposite side of the boulder. It wasn’t overly large, but he recognized it as the device used to press samples of plants until they were paper thin. He suspected there were herbarium sheets somewhere in the camp, too, to help preserve whatever specimens had been collected.
It appeared he’d found his team of botanists after?—
“Stay right where you are, sir.”
He turned at the sound of the voice to find a woman staring at him from beside a nearby tree. She was dressed in a green woolen coat and matching cap, with fiery, untamed waves of hair falling about her face.
A woman. Memories flashed of his first expedition long ago, of another woman with long blond hair rather than red.
Please, God. Not a woman. Not here. Not when we barely have a chance of getting out of this wilderness before winter.
How could he have missed the fact that a woman was on the botany expedition?
Before he could ask who she was, she opened her mouth and screamed. “Heath! Richard! We have an intruder!”
Footsteps sounded from the direction of the camp, and Mikhail didn’t need to turn around to know that all four men were headed his way.
He was tempted to ask who she was, but he could put it together easily enough. She was married to one of the scientists and was out on a lark, thinking herself special for leaving her fancy life in the city and trekking through the wilds of Alaska for half a year. And the wilderness certainly hadn’t suited her. She was pale and gaunt, with circles under her eyes and tight lines around her mouth and a coat that looked far too big for her bony, narrow shoulders.
The men he’d glimpsed in the camp near the lake hadn’t looked half starved, though. Maybe she’d gotten dysentery or contracted some other disease that had left her weak and emaciated.
Please keep her alive, Father. Please don’t let her be too far gone already.
He expected her to look nervously about and wait for her husband—Heath, he assumed, since she’d called for him first. But instead, she straightened her spine and met his gaze.
“I don’t know why you’re spying on our camp, but we have nothing of interest to you. Certainly not any gold. Just plant specimens, so you best move along.” She made a shooing motion with her hand, as though he were a rabbit or bird or something she could easily scare off.
She might be frail, but she wasn’t spineless. That was a good thing, wasn’t it?
“Bryony? What’s wrong?” The man in the brown coat strode through the trees to the woman. He was tall and lithe, and his shirt looked more white than brown. He had red hair, much the same as the woman’s, with a red beard to match.
The man came to a stop beside her, drawing himself up to his full height and glaring at him with hard green eyes. “Is this man bothering you?”
“Yes, yes, why were you shouting?” A man in a blue coat with snowy white hair and thick spectacles traipsed toward them, followed by a balding, middle-aged man whose hair held only a few hints of gray.
The final man of the group was the only one sensible enough to appear holding a revolver which was something Mikhail would certainly have done if the situation were reversed.
But the sight of the silvery barrel pointed his direction wasn’t what made his muscles coil. That had to do with the familiar face of the man holding the gun. Richard Caldwell.
He’d changed little over the past decade. His dark hair was still meticulously combed back, every strand in place despite the rugged terrain. His high cheekbones and straight nose made him appear as though he belonged in a portrait hung in some grand parlor rather than in the wilds of Alaska. And those calculating, cold eyes of his hadn’t softened with age. If anything, they’d grown harder.
