A Handful of Heaven

One look inside and her legs turned to warm molasses.

Uood God" she groaned. "You must be joking."

22

23

"Do I strike you as a man with a sense of humor?"

Her stomach did a wrenching flip. The space was so small She could feel him beside her, his big body like a cloud foul-smelling smoke, hovering, plunging her into the dark

He was gloating. She knew it without looking at him. He' thought she'd take one look at this . . . this . . . Words failed her. Nothing in her past had provided a word worthy of I"" place. Filthy rathole was far too kind.

The tent floor, what she could see of it beneath the laye of dirt and mud, was a series of rough-hewn planks chinke with gobs of moss. The planks formed a three-foot-high wall that ended where the taut canvas began. The ceiling sagge sadly, its once-white surface grayed by soot and smoke, the exact center of the room was a little sheet-metal bod perched precariously on wooden slats. If not for the batter metal pipe that rose from its misshapen surface and disappeared through a hole in the tent's ceiling, she wouldn't have known it was a stove.

There were no windows, and the air in the tent, if in truth there was any, was stagnant and fetid. The table was a thick board set on two stumps, and four stumps made up the chairs. Two hooks jutted from the left-corner support pole.

She immediately thought about the two trunks she'd packed so carefully. Then she looked back at the rusty hooks and

It was worse than she could have imagined. Much worse. She scanned the room for a bright spot, a ray of hope. There had to be some redeeming quality. She forced a tight-lipped smile. Maybe, with a little elbow grease . . .

She glanced to the left and froze. Every hopeful thought fled her mind. Her mouth dropped open. The word "no'* hung soundlessly on her lips. "It can't be . . ."

"Yes," came Stone Man's gloating declaration. "That1) the bed."

Her eyes rounded in horror. There was only one bed. big, rough-hewn bed with a splintery partition down the middle.

One bed for both of them.

She forced herself to meet his triumphant stare."You mean

to tell me that if I had been a man, I would have slept there? With you?"

His grin expanded. "Yeah. All us miners sleep that way. It's warmer." He turned back to the others. "Go to the log cabin and get her things, Cornstalk, the lady's going home."

The tone of his voice struck her with mallet-hard force. Anger surged through her blood. "Don't move, Cornstalk," she yelled. "And you," she hissed at her partner, "you wait a minute."

"I'm just helping out."

"Don't help me," she snapped. "It's your help that got me here. Your help that has me standing in the middle of a darn tent, faced with the prospect of freezing my ... gentle parts for months in a rathole. So don't help me anymore."

"No, you're not."

"I'm not what?"

"You're not going to freeze your butt off until spring in my tent."

"Our tent," she corrected grimly.

"My tent."

She whipped the letter out of her handbag again. "It's our tent. Unless you're planning to build me one."

"Quit flinging that damned letter in my face like it was a presidential decree. I wrote it. We both know it."

Unfolding the letter, she held it up and read aloud, "As stated in my advertisement, you will be made my equal partner in the trading post immediately upon your arrival. The position requires full day work approximately eight months a year and includes room and board."

Folding the now-muddy letter back into precise quarters, she placed it in her handbag and glanced up at him.