lusting for wealth. She could see now why Peter felt such men would need the Word of God, if any bothered to listen.
She looked back at Clint. He understood such men. That’s why he carried on relentlessly. He knew no one would help. It was up to him now to get her to Dawson and warmth and safety. Actually, that had been his burden through this whole trip. She realized she never would have made it without him, and she loved him all the more for it.
He looked so haggard, so tired and so sick. His face was heavily bearded now, and she’d almost forgotten what he really looked like. Only those blue eyes reminded her. And the determination he put forth now to get them to the end of their journey reminded her of his strength and abilities. He was everything a woman could want in a man, but he still had that last hurdle to cross and his own need to put the past behind him and learn to trust God again.
First they had to reach Dawson in one piece.
Within an hour after leaving camp the wind picked up, howling through the canyon from the south and bringing with it a heavy, wet snow. The direction of the wind helped propel them along the river a little faster, but Elizabeth wasn’t sure how much more Clint could handle in his condition. Since they had been back on the river, he’d barely spoken. All he did was try to sleep between fits of coughing.
The only food they had left was beans, a few sweet potatoes and some coffee. They’d used up the last of the oats for Devil, who now had to paw his way through snow to find enough grass to nibble on to keep him alive. The poor horse was looking just as bony and weary as she and Clint.
Last night there had not been enough wood around to make a fire. They’d been forced to huddle together for warmth, and Elizabeth thought how they had already been tested for their ability to stand up to adversity and hard times together. That was one thing they wouldn’t need to learn about each other after marriage.
She no longer worried about what others might think of her traveling all this way with a man. This trip had taught her lot about what really mattered in life, and that appearances meant nothing. She often wondered about Collette, how the woman was doing, if anything she’d said to Collette had perhaps helped turn her to God.
In many ways people like Collette and Clint were just as good if not better than Reverend Selby, for all his pretended righteousness. At least Collette and her friends, and men like Clint, were honest about what and who they were. They recognized their own faults and knew they needed to change their lives. And who knew what lay in Collette’s past that made her what she was? It was such people who could teach pompous Christians about God’s grace and forgiveness.
The river wound through spectacular country, country only God could possibly take credit for. She fully understood Peter’s description of the Canadian Rockies, Alaska and the Yukon surely being a gateway to Heaven. Maybe once she and Clint were safe and warm and well, she could fully appreciate the beauty of this land.
Clint refused to stop at midday for anything to eat or to rest. “The fewer stops we make, the sooner we’ll get there,” he told her. He stopped only long enough for her to run to the shore and find a place to relieve herself. She in turn just looked away when he warned her he’d be doing the same.
Elizabeth had to smile at how familiar they’d been forced to become without being married. Trust was certainly not something they would ever have to doubt. If Clint were an abusive man, he certainly would have shown it by now, but he’d never been anything but a gentleman, although she had to smile at his sometimes grudging reluctance to behave properly.
He was a good man…too good to be so lost and to be living without love. She knew by now that there could never be another man in her life but Clint Brady. How could she live without him if he chose to go after Roland Fisher and continue the life he was leading? She worried that he still felt he wasn’t good enough for her, or perhaps felt God could never forgive him,