Gypsy (50 page)

As always, playing her fiddle that evening soothed her. Maybe she didn’t make anyone want to get up and dance — in fact her mournful tunes brought tears to the eyes of some of her audience. But when the hat had been passed round and come back to her, she counted up over thirty-five dollars, confirmation that she had a unique talent which would ensure she’d never starve.

It was a quiet night, and One Eye let them close up at one o’clock for there were few people around. The girls weren’t moving in until tomorrow, so Jack grabbed a bottle of whisky and said they should drown their sorrows.

‘I bet Theo cooked up this deal with One Eye some time ago, but didn’t have the brass neck to go through with it then,’ Jack said a little later as they sat up at either end of Beth’s bed, drinking, the comforter over their legs. ‘Then when he heard that geezer talking about Soapy Smith and you, he saw it as the perfect way out, without him looking like a complete cad.’

‘But that means he must have stopped caring about me ages ago,’ Beth said brokenly, yet more tears threatening to flow. ‘Why couldn’t he have admitted it?’

‘I doubt it was that. He was a gambler through and through,’ Jack reminded her. ‘I’d bet all he thought about was the money he’d have in his hand. All in all it must have been over eighty thousand with the takings and whatever was in the bank. That would set him up for a lot of big poker games. Or maybe he just saw that money as one huge win, and felt he had to quit while he was ahead.’

‘But I’ve been with him through thick and thin. He said he loved me and he knew I would have gone anywhere with him. So why didn’t he want to take me with him?’

‘I don’t know, Beth.’ Jack shook his head in bewilderment. ‘But look back at how things have been since we left Philadelphia. Sam and I always carried him. Granted, he did share when he had a win, but without us he would never have got across Canada, let alone reached here. Maybe he realized that, and it made him uncomfortable. Taking off with the loot might have made him feel free.’

‘To find some society woman who won’t embarrass him,’ she said bitterly. ‘Look what he was like in Montreal, always looking out for nobs to socialize with. He didn’t care that I had to work in a factory and live in a hovel. I bet he was delighted when I lost our baby and the doctor said I couldn’t have any more. That way he had no responsibilities. What a fool I’ve been!’

Jack reached out and took her hand, squeezing it in sympathy. But he didn’t protest and say she was wrong.

‘Well, I really hope he loses all that money in his next game,’ she said viciously. ‘When he’s down in the gutter with nothing I hope he’ll come crawling back to me. Then I’ll kick him in the face.’

They drank silently for some little while, both deep in bitter thoughts.

‘Was there something between you and Soapy?’ Jack asked later. ‘I know you did spend a night with him, but was there more to it than that?’

‘No, but there could have been.’ She sighed, then told Jack about how she’d met Soapy and had a drink with him on the last day in Skagway, and that it was he who took her down to Dyea later on his horse. ‘I liked him a lot, but as it turned out it was a very good job I didn’t pick him. There wasn’t that much difference between him and Theo, was there? Do you think it was true Soapy ordered someone to kill him?’

‘I think it might have been, but I doubt it was over you. I expect Theo stepped out of line. They were two of a kind, both cheats. I don’t mean just at cards or with women, but in everything. They used their charm to get people in their thrall, just so they could take advantage of them. Theo suckered me, that’s for sure, and what sticks in my craw is that I would have died for him.’

By mid-October, Dawson was a great deal quieter. Snow had fallen and the Yukon was frozen solid, used only by dog teams hauling supplies out to the goldmines or bringing in wood for fires.

The stampeders who’d arrived in June and wandered through the mud like lost souls had mostly gone home while it was still possible to get to the Outside. With no more boats bringing people in or taking them away, the shore was deserted. Smoke from a thousand chimneys rose up to create a grey fog before an even greyer sky.

The lower slopes of the mountains that surrounded Dawson were denuded of trees, the black stumps left behind like so many rotten teeth, and sickness lurked among the many people still living in tattered tents. The town was built on swampland, and all through the hot summer, with no proper drainage or sanitation, diseases like typhoid, dysentery and malaria took their toll. Scurvy was on the increase too, as were pneumonia and chest complaints.

The Front Street residents were mostly unaware of or uninterested in the plight of the poorer citizens for they could afford to keep their boilers, fires and stoves blazing away, their privies emptied and their larders full. Electricity had arrived, so had the telephone, and for those with adequate means, Dawson was as gay and colourful as Paris, even if it was bitterly cold.

Beth found she couldn’t ignore the plight of the poor and sick. Every day she made a large pot of soup and took it on a sledge up to Father William Judge, the frail and bony priest who ran a little hospital under the hill at the north end of Dawson.

To her mind, Father Judge was a saint. He worked tirelessly from early morning till late at night, wearing nothing but a ragged cassock despite the extreme cold. Beth suspected his nurses were not so pure, and stole from the patients while they lay dying, so she’d stay until she saw the sick drink the soup, to be certain it wasn’t being spirited away and sold somewhere else at a profit.

Jack was also becoming increasingly disillusioned about the way things worked in Dawson. Most people toadied to the rich and admired their flamboyant displays of their wealth, while doing their best to make sure some of it came their way. He found it offensive that many of the very richest people in town cheated the poor, paying them a pittance to do their laundry, chop their wood and other menial tasks. When One Eye ordered him to throw people out of the saloon who sat in the warm nursing one drink for long periods, Jack refused. He knew some of these men would die of cold in their tents and unheated cabins, and it was his view that One Eye should show some Christian charity.

There had been many spats between the two men, for One Eye showed no respect for Jack’s honesty or his humanity.

‘I’ve got to leave,’ Jack finally announced to Beth one night in November after the bar was closed. ‘If I don’t, one of these days I’ll lose my temper and attack One Eye. He’s watering down the spirits, he’s turned the girls into whores and takes most of the money they make, and I think he’s got the games rigged. I can’t stand by and be part of it any more.’

Beth had been horrified too when the four saloon girls began slipping off upstairs during the evening with men, for though none of them had been innocents when Theo took them on, they hadn’t been whores. Dolores had confided in her and said One Eye told them he would fire them if they refused to go with any man he ordered them to.

He had the girls over a barrel, and Beth had the utmost sympathy for them. None of them were outstandingly pretty or even very bright, and all the other saloons had their quota of girls, so they wouldn’t find work anywhere else. The best they could hope for was that one of the miners would take them for a ‘winter wife’, to warm his bed and cook his meals. But a cold, primitive cabin on the edge of town, with no money of their own and a man they didn’t love, was probably as bad as being a whore.

‘Where will you go?’ Beth asked Jack. The prospect of him leaving made her feel as though a cold steel clamp was being squeezed around her heart. She thought she’d come to terms with losing Sam and Molly, but when Theo left her it was as if every one of her past sorrows had come back at once. Without Jack, her one entirely true friend, she would have caved in, perhaps even been tempted to end it all, as other jilted women had done in Dawson.

But for weeks she’d been aware that Jack hated and despised One Eye, and it would be wrong to try to make him stay purely for her sake.

‘Out to Bonanza.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s plenty of work there.’

‘But it’s such a very hard life,’ she protested.

‘Not as hard as bowing and scraping to old One Eye,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ll come back when the ice breaks up in spring, and if some rich and handsome man hasn’t claimed you by then, maybe we’ll both be ready to go back to the Outside.’

Beth smiled weakly. She could tell by the glint in Jack’s eye that he was actually savouring the idea of working out at Bonanza. He had never been afraid of hard work or rough conditions, and he had more in common with many of the miners than he did with the gamblers, parasites and toffs here in Dawson. It was only Theo’s influence that had got him into being a bartender, and in reality he was worth far more than that.

‘I’ve no interest in any more love affairs, but I know I’m going to miss you terribly.’ She reached out to hug him. ‘Take care of yourself, and send notes with someone so I know how you are.’

Jack left two days later with a miner called Cal Burgess on his dog sledge. Beth went down to the frozen shore to wave him off, smiling brightly even though she wanted to cry. The malamutes were barking furiously and straining at their harnesses to go. When Cal jumped on the back of the sledge and gave the dogs their signal, they leapt forward eagerly.

Jack turned, his face half hidden in his wolf fur-lined hood, his mittened hand raised, but she guessed by the straight line of his lips that he was worried about leaving her.

It
had
been terrible when Theo walked out on her. She felt exposed, humiliated and that her hopes and dreams were shattered. But she had been able to pick over the bones of their relationship, list his many faults and past failings, and see for herself that he’d always been out for the main chance. She really ought to have known better than trust him implicitly.

But there were no such feelings to counterbalance the sadness she felt at Jack moving on. Hardly an hour went by when she didn’t miss him. When she made the first cup of coffee of the day, she’d imagine his sleepy morning face with a dark rash of stubble, breaking into a smile as she woke him. Later, when the saloon was open, she’d remember how in quiet times she used to sit up on a stool by the bar and chat to him as he cleaned the shelves and polished glasses.

There were the jokes they shared about customers. Jack could convey a message to her about a very large nose, a speech impediment, a compulsive liar or any other defect, with no more than a smirk or a raised eyebrow. Sometimes they couldn’t contain their laughter and had to duck down under the bar or rush out to the back, for fear of being asked for an explanation.

But it was in the evenings that she missed him most, for they had always gone to get supper together around six. She would change and do her hair when they got back, and later, when she walked back into the saloon to play, he’d give her a wolf whistle. He was always there, always admiring and supportive, always the friend who never let her down. He had been ready to talk at any time, night or day, and happy to sit in companionable silence too when that was what she wanted.

When she looked back, that was the way it had always been. If he hadn’t fired her up to go to Heaney’s, maybe she would never have played in public, but found a job in a store. He didn’t falter when she jilted him for Theo, and despite all the girls he’d had, and there had been many, he’d never let them come between them.

He gave her strength and consolation when she lost her baby and took control of everything in Skagway. He had got them up the Chilkoot Pass. He’d shared her grief at losing Sam, and understood how she felt about Molly’s death. He’d even shared her hurt when Theo ran off.

But now he was off to have a life of his own, and however much she missed him, she was glad for him. He’d spent too long supporting her, Sam and Theo; it was time he used all that energy and ability he had for himself.

She realized too that she must do the same.

From the moment she met and fell for Theo, she’d virtually given her life into his keeping. She’d never stopped to ask herself if she really wanted to be part of his grandiose plans; in fact she lost the ability to make any of her own. Looking back, it seemed incredible that she’d travelled so many thousands of miles, put up with so many hardships, just to be at his side.

She was brushing her hair in her room one morning a few weeks after Jack had gone, when all at once it occurred to her that One Eye was using her in just the same way as Heaney had back in New York. Accepting the money put into the hat each night and being grateful he let her keep her room was playing into his hands. She was being exploited, and if she wasn’t careful she’d become trapped like Dolores and the other saloon girls.

She was making some 200 dollars or more a week, but the high cost of everything in Dawson soon whittled that down, for she’d bought new dresses, a fur to keep warm outside, and thick, fur-lined boots.

In all the giddiness of getting here and being part of the madness that was Dawson, she’d lost sight of the reason why they made the hazardous journey in the first place. The plan had been to make their fortunes.

Theo had done that, but all she’d got to show for her hard work was savings of 160 dollars. That wasn’t going to get her very far.

‘Come on now, honey, give me a kiss!’

Beth recoiled in horror as One Eye drunkenly tried to lunge at her. He was wearing his yellow and black checked suit, the waistcoat so tight around his middle that part of his belly protruded beneath it. His face was red and shiny with sweat and his breath was rank.

It was four in the morning and it had been a very busy night, with a poker game running for huge stakes. As usual, One Eye had sat at a table drinking with his cronies all evening, only shifting himself to call for more drinks, to order one of the barmen to eject a drunk, or to fondle one of the Paradise Alley whores who had taken to frequenting the place lately.

The poker game had finished an hour ago. All the gamblers had gone home, and the only customers left were six or seven men so drunk they were either asleep with their heads on the table, or wavering precariously on their seats.