The second time Michael hit her was when he suggested that she might have been somehow damaged or injured when Corinne was born, and that maybe she was no longer fertile, and she said, "Maybe it's not me." She knew even before she said it that she'd enrage him, but she said it anyway. And sure enough, whap, he let her have a good one on the side of the face. She didn't hit the floor, though, because she had half expected it and was ready for it. She lurched sideways, put out her hand and stopped herself from banging into the wall, then walked into the kitchen for her bag of frozen peas.

The peas helped with the swelling but couldn't do anything about the bruising, and at suppertime both girls looked from her face to their father's face, their eyes accusing. Michael flushed. He knew they knew he was responsible for the bruise. He glared at them, daring them silently.

Michelle didn't say anything about the bruise, or about her mother's face or her father's temper. She found a new and unexpected way to get under his skin. She tasted her supper, then looked at her mother and in the sweetest voice imaginable said, "Momma, this meal is as blah and tasteless as that swill Grandmother makes. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I really don't think I could ram any of this down my throat."

"Me neither," Corinne agreed. "Mikey's right, it's like that cabbagey-tasting pablum Grandmother cooks."

"Eat your supper," Michael snapped.

"May I be excused, please?" Michelle had politeness hanging off her in wads.

"May I leave the table, Momma?" Corinne might have taken a course from Madame Whoozits School of Etiquette, Manners and Charm.

"Yes, dears," Cassidy smiled and she knew they knew she knew what they were up to.

It gave her a hint for the next good battleground. She made two suppers, one for her and the girls, one for Michael. His was cooked exactly the way he said he preferred, theirs was pungent with spices and so loaded with garlic it was practically lifting from the table. The girls started at one side of their plates and worked themselves over to the other side and not one Yum yum or Mmm ever good escaped their simmering father.

It wasn't that Cassidy no longer cared she was a huge disappointment to Michael, it was just that she recognized she couldn't possibly make up for her many inadequacies and failures. So she gave up trying to please him and concentrated instead on making life for the girls as pleasant as possible.

Two or three times a year Michael expected Cassidy to pull together a supper with the boss and his wife, and maybe one or two middle management men and their wives, or to throw a party to which all those he thought he should butter up would be invited. Cassidy practically wore herself to a nub getting everything ready, and it was the one area in their life together which didn't seem to disappoint Michael or leave him staring into space as though listening to a far-away Peggy Lee singing, "Is that all there is?" Cassidy really did bend over backward to make everything as good as it could be. She cooked and cooked some more, she made pate, she made her own sausage rolls, she made mini-quiches, she made Swedish meatballs. She got the biggest prawns she could find, breaded them, cooked them, then arranged them tails in, bodies fanning out on a bed of lettuce. She made her own version of head cheese, which had no "head" in it but veal, rabbit and chicken, boiled, stripped from the bones, boiled some more, then put through a grinder with plenty of onion and seasonings, boiled again, then left to sit in its own jelly, chilled for several days and sliced thin on slices of Cassidy's homemade sourdough bread.

She made two or three kinds of potato salad, several bean salads, green salads, mixed salads and grated carrot with raisin and apple salads, she made sweet and sour chicken balls and a person wouldn't find one, not one, salad made with gelatin or jello. No green jello with peas in it, no red jello with grated cabbage. If there was any jello at all, it was part of dessert.

And every time, for supper or dinner or an all-out party, Cassidy made Baked Alaska. Never fail, absolutely positively guaranteed, because if there was one thing Cassidy loved, it was Baked Alaska, just because it was such an unlikely thing. Imagine cooking ice cream!

The girls always requested Baked Alaska for their birthday cakes and often, when Michael was off on one of his business trips, Cassidy would make one for no reason other than the girls were as much in a party mood as she was. Usually they had it for dessert after a decidedly non-gourmet but much-loved dinner of wieners and beans, but even then the baked beans were homemade.

By the time Cassidy found out Michael had a mistress, the affair was nearly over anyway, so she didn't bother raising any dust about it. She might never have known except for the phone call at three in the morning. Not that she eavesdropped, but ever since the girls were babies it had been an unspoken way things got done that Cassidy was the one who got up during the night. After all, Michael needed his sleep because he worked so hard during the day whereas she could take a nap any time she wanted or needed one. So when the phone went off, Cassidy got up and answered it.

The woman on the other end of the line was weeping, and Cassidy wanted to say Now now, there there dear, everything will seem better in the morning, but it was nobody she knew, so it was none of her business, she just went back to bed and nudged Michael awake. "It's for you," she yawned, and crawled back into her still-warm spot. She probably would have gone to sleep in a minute if Michael had just talked in a normal voice, but he whispered. Not a little whisper which could only be heard by someone sitting next to him, but a stupid stage whisper, the kind a person has to use to be heard by the person on the other end of the phone. The whisper caught Cassidy's attention, enough that she sat up and listened long enough to know Michael was in a perfect fury. Just in case his fury had to be targeted on something, or someone, she lay back down, snuggled herself into a little half ball and yawned a few times, deliberately ignoring him. She didn't ask him anything about the phone call, he didn't offer anything. At no time did she demand to know whether or not he was having an affair, and at no time did he volunteer the information. But Cassidy knew there could be no other reason in the world for a weeping woman to phone an angry man in the middle of the night. She also knew her husband well enough to know that one phone call, on its own and by itself, would be enough to make him call a halt, even if things hadn't been in a rough patch to start with, and they must have been in a rough patch or why did the woman phone, and why did she weep?

The phone call, and the way they both dealt with it by not dealing with it, wasn't exactly a sharp corner in their relationship, but it certainly was the start of a slow curve, sending them in a different direction. Cassidy felt a huge relief. No matter how many stupid mistakes she might make, no matter how idiotic Michael might think she was, it was he, the perfect one, who had broken not only the moral and religious vows, but the legal civil contract they had made. Whatever Michael felt-and she was sure embarrassment was among his feelings, because Michael hated to feel anyone had outsmarted him, or even figured out what he was up to when he was being what he thought of as his private self-he seemed to consider Cassidy's silence another sign of her stupidity, or some kind of tacit permission to stray into any other bedroom he chose. He didn't flaunt his affairs, a person could be passed over for promotion if he got too sloppy or outrageous in his personal life, but Cassidy knew he made what she thought of as pit stops when he was away from home.

She didn't care. Whether they're vacuuming your floor, cleaning the drapes, washing the windows, doing the ironing or screwing your husband, if they're doing your job, they are your servant.

The shore of Dawson City was a trampled mess of mud. The banks of the Indian River were thick with boats, most of them empty, and not a tree was to be seen. They hauled their boats in anywhere they could find a place, acutely aware of the envious looks given to the teetering heap of peeled poles and strong branches they had tied to their freight. They all blessed whatever gods and goddesses had ensured they would make the trip in with experienced packers who knew enough to stop in a heavily wooded arca and spend two days cutting and peeling the supports they would need for a decent, half-dry camp.

Dawson had been thrown together in a marsh of mud, the streets beaten in, around, through, and among the stumps left when the trees were cut. There were log-butts and rounds set in mud and stacked to form walls which, roofed with whatever came to hand, were called houses. There were log houses, pole houses, and board houses. Canvas walls, canvas roofs, anything that would stop or even slow down the wind and give some semblance of privacy, had been used to make shacks, shanties, cabins, hoochies, stores, hotels, and saloons. The hillsides were covered with tents, the streets were a press of anxious and tense men. Dogs, mules, horses, and oxen wandered the banks looking for scraps, unguarded food, forage, grass, green shoots, and if the animals had once belonged to someone, nobody claimed them now.

Everywhere Ceileigh looked, she saw stores and saloons. Two men stood swinging at each. other in the middle of a muddy street, both of them too drunk to aim, too drunk to hit, too drunk to feel pain if they did happen to get hit, and too angry to stop flailing. A group of children stood watching, giggling, pointing at the mud-smeared inebriates.

"Children," Cora gasped, "in this place?"

"Sure," Chilkat Joe shrugged. "Come in on the steamer before everything iced up last fall."

Gambling halls, dance halls, blind pigs, brothels, and saloons vied for the gold dust the few fortunates had managed to wrest from the streams and rivers. Unemployed, desperate men with no money to file a claim, no money for supplies, no chance of persuading anyone to front them to a grubstake, and no way to either improve their situation here or get back out to civilization, stood waiting to do whatever needed done to make a few dollars to buy food.

They set up their camp, tents half floating in the mud, the peeled poles rafting them out of the goo. They shared a meal and sat dazed, unable to believe that after three and a half months of struggle and discomfort, this mud bog was what was waiting for them.

"I can have me a job," Ceileigh said quietly, "starting tonight, fifteen dollars a night, playing in a saloon." She shook her head in disbelief. "I never thought to make fifteen dollars a night guaranteed."

"What, Mary dared, "do you plan to do when your baby is born?"

"Who has a choice? I've got until October to make some money. After that ... well, do as best I can, I suppose."

"What would you do, Joe?" Aggie asked. Chilkat Joe looked around at the horror that was Dawson, then spit carefully over the edge of the planking, into the mud. "lf l was you?" He grinned at her. "I'd find me a millionaire, get married, then take his money out of this mudhole, put it in a bank in the south, and wait for him to either join me or die and leave me the whole kit and caboodle. l would not stay in Dawson."

"Why?" Lily asked.

"Because the cream's been sucked already." He tilted his head in the direction of a ragged young man begging on a street corner. "He had dreams, too, l bet. And now ... all the best opportunities are taken." He turned to Ceileigh and smiled apologetically. "Fifteen dollars a night sounds good but it's going to cost you five dollars for supper. And it won't be worth eating. And that's now, when the thaw's making travel easier. Wait until winter when it's frozen solid. Fifteen dollars won't hardly keep you fed, let alone give you a warm place to sleep."

"What would you do?" Aggie repeated.

"Serious?" He looked at her, then at the mountain of gear they had toiled so hard to bring so far. "I'd move tomorrow. I'd send my packers into the saloons to find out where the rumour of strike is, then I'd get myself to that creek and I'd forget any idea of a store! I'd build me a clean hotel, sell drinks and meals, and I'd try for something that no place in Dawson has got. Clean plates, clean cups, and good food."

"I don't have any money to hire. . . " Mary began.

"I do," Lily said quietly. "Mind you, I don't have a whole helluva lot of freight. But," and she smiled slowly, "I bet it wouldn't be hard to send some packers back up the river we just came down ... meet that steamer he was talking about ... buy the freight before it even gets here. . . "

"What I'd do," Cora said, bending forward eagerly, "I'd round up all these abandoned and forgotten sleds, rafts, and whatever else I could find, and I'd get those mules, horses, and everything else left to starve, and I'd go meet those poor souls trying to get here across the lakes ... and charge 'em, either cash or freight, I don't care, to bring 'em to Dawson. There isn't enough wood left back there to float a flea, and the quicker this place thaws, the wetter and muddier it's going to be."

"What we seem to have here," Ccileigh said thoughtfully, "is some people with money, some people with ideas, and one or two people with a bit of both."

"I got no money," Aggie laughed. I don't even have many ideas. Except," she looked at a gaunt ox wandering down the muddy strip that passed for a street, "that poor animal might be better off boiled up with some beans than it is dying slow like that. I am," she confessed, "godawful tired of salt pork."

"The steamboat will be up from the south by the end of the month," Chilkat Joe said, "and it'll be jammed from front to back with people who are going to need just about everything you can think of. The whole world wants to get rich panning gold, and all the claims around here are already taken. So the newcomers will spread out from Dawson. lt would be a fine idea to be waiting for them."

"Why don't you pan gold?" Ceileigh asked. "You know this place like the back of your hand, and you'd probably get rich a lot quicker that way than you'll ever get packing other people's gear across the wasteland."

"Because no white man is going to let no Indian strike it rich and live," he said flatly, his eyes narrowing, his anger showing. "As soon as I stop being a mule for those people, I'm dead."

Ceileigh walked from one mud-smeared end of Dawson to the other, watching everything. Something inside her wanted to dispute Chilkat Joe's estimate, but she couldn't argue with the evidence of her own eyes. lt wasn't just the mud. It wasn't even the desperate, penniless men. The place reminded her of what she had left behind when she headed away from the squalor of an eastern city. She looked at the prices scrawled on the few things still available for sale. She thought of what Joe had said about the price of food, and something squirmed inside her throat, a kind of contempt for her own folly, her own eagerness to believe that something other than bitterly hard work would get her what she wanted and needed. A warm dry place to call her own, and enough food to take the ache from her belly. "Ah, Ceileigh," she muttered aloud, "and to think after all you've seen, heard, and known you'd still fall for the bait.

She trudged back to camp, hunkered next to Chilkat Joe, and tried to grin. "Five dollars a meal, huh?" she managed.

"It's the hotel owners make the money," he agreed. "And sure, there's a few of the entertainers made a bundle; but they made it when Dawson was young, and new. Now . . . " He shrugged. "Well, you saw it. Mud, mud, mud, and half of that mud is shit."

"And it's only just started to thaw." She shook her head, suddenly bone-tired. "Thank you, Joe."

He poured a mug of tea for her. "You should get some rest," he advised.