[Alaskan Quest 03] - Whispers of Winter Read Free Page B

blinding. Jacob could only pray that the men were practicing wisdom and using their sun goggles. Jacob had shown each of them how to make the wooden glasses by carving tiny slits out of driftwood masks. They were crude but efficient, and the man who forgot to wear them quickly learned not to do it again. Several of the men had become snow-blind and suffered brutally; the pain caused by the condition was intense and would last for hours, even days. Now that their normal treatment of zinc sulphate solutions was nearly exhausted, the men were becoming far more cautious. No one wanted to endure such a fate.
    Besides the lack of scenery, the monotony of their routine had nearly driven them all mad at one time or another. Bristol had a deck of cards that the men shared, but Dr. Ripley would have nothing to do with it, swearing they were the devil’s tool of destruction. Dr. Ripley would therefore bury his face in one of three medical books he’d managed to keep with him after leaving the ship.
    Travis, Ben, and Keith were quite good at singing and often entertained the group with their renditions of old folk songs and hymns. Travis, a meteorologist, kept records of their conditions, and Keith planned to keep similar botany records once the ground thawed.
    Jacob often read from the Bible, sharing stories that the men knew from their childhood days in church. Besides botany, Keith was well versed in church history and the Bible, and Jacob had enjoyed dialoguing with the man from time to time. Ben and Matt also enjoyed such conversations, as did Travis. The others, however, avoided religious discussions.
    Generally speaking, the men were a good lot. Jacob had feared there might be troublemakers in their group—men who would steal or kill in order to survive. He was glad to say that hadn’t been the case so far.
    Yet despite the men’s good natures, Jayce was Jacob’s mainstay. Together the two talked of home and of Leah. They remembered times spent in Ketchikan and of Karen’s cooking and Adrik’s stories. Their conversations sustained Jacob’s hope of seeing home again.
    He also often thought of Helaina Beecham. He wondered where she was and how she was doing. Had she gone back to work for her brother? A dangerous job such as bounty hunting should never have been allowed for women. Still, the world was changing.
    Jacob thought of the war going on in Europe. He could only wonder if the war had extended to include America by now. So many people seemed to think it would happen that way. Still, it was possible the European countries had worked out their differences and had ended the war. That would be the best they could hope for, but somehow Jacob doubted it had happened. There had seemed no end in sight the summer before.
    He trudged through the ice to crest one of the bigger hills and scanned the landscape in all directions. Using his binoculars, he spotted a great herd of seals on the ice. They were sunning themselves at the edge of a break—open water clearly available to them should a bear or man make an unwanted appearance. The water was a good sign. Perhaps the breakup would come sooner than Jacob anticipated.
    There was no sign of Latimore, but the storm clouds were thickening and moving toward the island at an alarming rate. Jacob could feel that the temperatures had dropped significantly as the wind picked up and blew in the storm. He hurriedly scanned the rest of the land. There was nothing to suggest that a man had passed this way recently.
    Making his way down the opposite side, Jacob tried to calculate the distance he and the men might cover in an hour. To press for more time would surely risk being out in the storm. He wondered if he’d be forced to leave Latimore to the elements rather than endanger the lives of everyone else.
    The men, however, wouldn’t consider this the loss of a leader. That had happened back in January when Latimore had sunk into a deep depression, isolating himself from most everyone.