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trees. Sitting up, alert now, he peered closer and saw a shape dart from cover, moving fast and low to the ground, parallel to the train.
    A wolf.
    Jack smiled and his chest filled with warmth, for this was not just any wolf. It was his wolf, the near-mystical beast that had been his companion and savior when he had last been this far north. He ought to have felt its nearness, because it had certainly sensed his return to these lands. Watching it now — its grace, primeval power, and the delight with which it seemed to lope across the landscape — he wondered if perhaps the beast was nothing more or less than his own heart set free to run.
    Jack closed his eyes and reached out into the wild terrain with the senses that Lesya had taught him to use. It had been as if she had opened a door inside of him, and once he had walked through he could perceive the world in ways that other men never would. Now he felt a hare sleeping in its den, protecting its newborn brood. And there he sensed an owl taking flight, its eyes searching the ground below for something foolish enough to be out in the moonlight. As the train steamed on, he felt other creatures, touched on them for an instant, and then let his senses move on.
    All except the wolf. Just as it kept pace with the train, Jack matched its heartbeat with his own.
    He was elated. His wolf had come out to greet him, showing that this truly was where he belonged.
    Then Jack felt another awareness that was neither the wolf's, nor the sleeping thoughts of the werewolves who had become his allies. And this was something he had known before.
    He opened his eyes and looked around to see that Ghost had entered the train car again. The pirate loomed there, filling the passageway and blocking the door, but his attention was not on Jack. Ghost was staring at the window with a profound longing. And when Jack looked through the glass again, he realized that Ghost was watching the wolf running alongside the train.
    Jack bristled, the small hairs rising on the back of his neck. This wolf was a part of him. If Ghost were to try to harm it, Jack would not hesitate to kill him. There would be no mercy. No second chances.
    Sabine shifted uneasily against him, mumbling something in her sleep, and in that moment the wolf vanished back into the trees. He could still feel it there, racing along, keeping pace with them, but its attention had been partially diverted, for it had caught the scent of some prey. Jack pulled his thoughts away, releasing whatever hold he might have over the wolf. It should hunt and eat. He knew they would see each other again.
    The back of his neck still prickled with the weight of Ghost's presence. But when Jack glanced back again, the pirate had once again retreated to the next car, leaving only doubt and mystery behind.
     
     
    An hour after dawn, wagons carted trunks and crates from the train station at Whitehorse to the dock along the Yukon River. Several passengers were greeted by carriages to transport them, but the river was within walking distance, and most went by foot. Waiting at the dock was the stern-wheel steamboat that would carry them north to Dawson.
    Jack thought that the railroad builders had made an error in choosing Whitehorse as their terminus. If they'd laid tracks all the way to Lake Laberge — the last bit of water to hold onto its winter ice every spring — they'd have gained a good couple of weeks' worth of business every year. The train could have been running long before the ice thawed enough for the steamboats. Though, at this point, he wasn't sure how much business the rail line was going to have. There must have been some sort of upper limit on how many people were going to make the trek north searching for gold, and he suspected that most of them had likely already done so.
    Of one thing he was entirely certain; if the railroad and the steamships had been in place two years ago when he had arrived on the shore at Dyea with his brother-in-law,