Gypsy (53 page)

She smiled and ran one finger over Sam’s stern, unsmiling face in the picture. He’d grown a beard soon after it was taken to make him look tougher, but it didn’t work; he’d still looked young and starry-eyed. Theo, in an embroidered waistcoat and well-tailored jacket, looked what he was: an aristocratic gambling man.

Jack was the only one smiling, almost as if he knew even then what the mountains had in store for them. He had learned to shoot, just as he’d gone out of his way to learn everything about the trail, and to build cabins and a raft. How odd it was that he’d never had the lust for gold, yet he was the only one who finally got to the goldfields.

Just looking at the picture made a thousand little memories pop up in her head. The terrible night squashed up in the hotel in Sheep Camp, and the ones where they nearly froze to death at the top of the Chilkoot Pass. So many people in Dawson had shared that hideous ordeal, yet they all took pride in having suffered it, like a badge of honour.

Beth preferred to savour the good memories — speeding downhill on the sledge to Happy Camp, and the great evenings they’d had at Lake Lindemann and Lake Bennett. Sam was dead now, and Theo gone. Only she and Jack were left.

She thought back to the second day on the immigrant ship to New York, and smiled at the memory of their first conversation. Who would have thought that skinny street urchin would become her dearest friend?

All at once she knew what she wanted to do. Tomorrow she would ask someone to take her out to Bonanza Creek to see the goldfields and Jack.

Chapter Thirty-four

The five-dog team were raring to go, barking and pawing impatiently at the snow-covered ice of the river.

‘Sitting comfortably?’ Cal Burgess asked Beth as he tucked the bearskin tighter around her.

Beth nodded. With a wolf-fur hood, a coon-skin coat and several other layers of clothes beneath, she felt very cosy.

At Cal’s signal the dogs leapt forward, and Beth’s head whipped to and fro alarmingly. But as the dogs got into their stride it was smoother, the fine snow on the ice rising up and sprinkling on her like icing sugar.

She had packed her belongings the previous night. All the gowns she wore in the saloon and her daintier clothes, shoes and boots were packed into a box which this morning she’d left in safe keeping with friends who owned a restaurant. Her valise was packed with everything else, and before leaving she’d bought some luxuries for Jack — fruit cake, jam, chocolate, fruit, a quantity of lamb and bacon, cheese and several bottles of whisky. Her fiddle was wedged in the seat next to her and if it hadn’t been for her run-in with John that morning she would have been bubbling over with excitement at this trip to see Jack.

She had been making some coffee about seven that morning when John came into the kitchen. She could smell whisky on his breath and judging by his heavy eyes and crumpled, grubby shirt, he’d drunk himself insensible and slept in his clothes.

She offered him some coffee, but his only reply was a baleful stare which implied she shouldn’t even be in his kitchen.

‘There’s no need to be so hostile,’ she said gently. ‘I’m leaving for good in a short while.’

‘Where?’ he asked.

She knew this wasn’t concern for her, only fear she was going to another saloon and might talk about him.

‘I don’t think you have the right to ask me that when you’ve been so unpleasant,’ she said airily.

He gave her another baleful look. ‘Whores like you should be run out of town,’ he retorted.

Until that moment she’d had every intention of leaving quietly without any recriminations, but calling her a whore changed everything.

‘Why, you hypocritical arsewipe!’ she exclaimed. ‘You were lusting after me from the first day I moved in here. I held you at arm’s length for three months, and when I did succumb, you couldn’t get enough of me.’

‘You tempted me,’ he whined. ‘You are a Jezebel preying on men’s weakness.’

Beth put her hands on her hips defiantly. ‘You pathetic snake in the grass,’ she hissed. ‘How dare you try and ease your own conscience by putting all the blame on to me? You are the guilty one because you have a wife and children. I think your poor wife would see it as
you
taking advantage of
me
!’

‘My wife is a gentlewoman,’ he snapped back. ‘She would understand that I was no match for a whore like you.’

Beth was outraged. ‘Gentlewoman! What the hell does that mean? That she only lets you fuck her in the dark with her nightdress buttoned up to her neck? No wonder you wanted me — I bet you fulfilled every last little dirty fantasy you’ve ever had. But then there’s every chance someone else has been fucking your wife while you’ve been up here. She might even have found out what it’s like to be loved by a real man, not some sanctimonious weakling.’

He lifted his hand to strike her, but Beth slapped it away. ‘Lay one finger on me and you’ll regret it,’ she snarled. ‘I could go out on to Front Street right now and raise a posse who would skin you alive. I have friends in this town. Now, get out of my way!’

He slunk away then like the snake he was, leaving her shaking with anger and a little ashamed that she hadn’t seen what he was right from the start.

Tearing along at what seemed a great speed, the cold wind prickling her face like tiny pins, Beth did her best to wipe the memory of John from her mind. She did feel a little pride that she’d stood up for herself and had put him in his place — a year or two ago she’d never have been able to do that. But it shouldn’t have come to that, and now she felt bruised and ashamed.

The snow lay in a thick and pristine white blanket on the river banks, the stumps of all the felled trees making a curious lumpy pattern. But further back, where the hills were too steep for logging, the snow-covered firs looked beautiful. There was no sound but the dogs panting, their paws thudding rhythmically and the swish of metal skids on the snow. She knew Cal was standing on the back of the sledge, but he was so silent, it was as if she was entirely alone with the racing dogs.

Weak rays of sun were slanting through the clouds, and it was good to leave the noise, ugliness and gossip of Dawson behind.

It occurred to Beth that she’d never experienced such utter peace before. As far back as she could remember there had always been people and noise all around her. Even up in the mountains on the trail, there had always been people close by. Back in Dawson, she often asked old Sourdoughs who lived miles from their nearest neighbour how they stood such isolation. Almost all of them said they loved it. She had an inkling now why that was. Silence was a great healer.

‘Almost there now.’ Cal bent down by her ear to speak to her. ‘In a couple of minutes we’ll be in Bonanza. It was called Rabbit Creek until they found the gold and I bet it was a pretty place then.’

The dogs veered off from the Yukon into the creek. Within minutes they passed the first of many small snow-covered cabins, smoke rising from the chimneys. Dogs barked as they went by, and from then on others joined in, almost as if each dog was passing the message along that a stranger was coming their way.

All Beth’s imaginings about the fabled goldfields were set in summer, an idyllic scene with flower-strewn meadows, men in shirtsleeves panning in the water and shady trees overhead. Perhaps it had been that way before the stampede, but the trees were cut down now, and each tiny cabin or shack they passed was surrounded by snow-covered machinery; sluice boxes, picks, shovels and wheelbarrows were strewn around on the dirty, trampled snow. Men who looked more like apes in their heavy coats and hats were bent over fires or shovelling out dirt from holes in the ground.

‘This is Ostrich’s claim up ahead,’ Cal shouted to her. ‘See his flag flying? He hoists it up every morning. He sewed it himself.’

Beth could see a blue flag fluttering, with something brown on it, but it wasn’t until the dogs began to slow down that she smiled as she saw that the brown shape was an ostrich cut out of leather.

Two big malamutes, one black and white, the other grey and white, came charging down from the cabin, tails wagging and making that woo-woo sound Beth had come to know was typical of their breed.

‘They know I always bring them something,’ Cal said, pulling up his dogs and jumping off the back of the sledge. ‘But you give it to them.’

Beth got off the sledge and took the bag Cal was holding out. It contained two large bones and she gave them to the dogs a little nervously. She must have met thousands of sledge dogs, this breed and huskies too, since she’d started out in Skagway. She admired their strength and courage enormously, but she had never been at such close quarters with them before.

‘Don’t be scared of them,’ Cal said. ‘Malamutes like people, and they’ll like you.’

‘Howdy, Cal,’ a voice called from the cabin, and an older man with a bushy beard, in a thick coat and matted fur hat, came shuffling down the path towards them. ‘You stoppin’, or are you taking that purty young lady on a jaunt?’

Beth smiled.

‘Her jaunt ends here, Oz,’ Cal said. ‘This is Miss Bolton, the famed Klondike Gypsy Queen. She’s come to see Jack.’

Before Beth could even shake Oz’s hand, he turned and yelled to Jack to come, his voice so loud it made the sledge dogs howl.

‘Well, missy,’ Oz said, turning back to her. ‘I sure do hope you’ve brought your fiddle with you, for I’ve heard a great deal about how sweet you play it.’

Suddenly Jack was up on a hill above them, running down as though the hounds of hell were after him, whooping as he came.

‘I’d say the lad is pleased to see you, missy,’ Oz said with a toothless grin.

Jack had grown a thick beard, his hair was touching his shoulders, and in mud-daubed clothes and boots he looked just the way all the miners did. But his face glowed with health and he’d lost that strained look he’d had in the last weeks at the Golden Nugget.

He hugged Beth and spun her round, laughing with delight.

But her heart sank when Oz asked them into his cabin for a cup of coffee, for she couldn’t see how Jack could fit in there, let alone her too. It was tiny, with a hard-packed dirt floor, a bed made out of old packing cases, a table, stool and another chair, all made out of rough wood. But it was very warm, for there was a tin stove, and Oz laced the coffee liberally with whisky.

Both Jack and Oz were anxious to hear every detail about the fire. They’d got news of it a couple of days after the event, and Jack said he’d been set to come to Dawson to see if Beth was all right. But then he was told that the Monte Carlo was still standing and she’d been looking after the homeless.

It was only when Cal got up to go, saying that he’d get her bag from the sledge, and then he must be on his way to pick up a load of timber, that Beth realized both Jack and Oz thought she’d just come for the day and would be returning with Cal.

‘I had hoped I could stay with you for a while,’ she explained. ‘But I can see there’s no room. So perhaps I’d better go back with Cal.’

‘You certainly won’t,’ Jack exclaimed. ‘I don’t live here with Oz. I’ve got my own cabin up on the hill. If you can stand the roughness of it, I’d be more than glad for you to stay.’

They waved Cal off and, picking up Beth’s valise, Jack led the way round Oz’s cabin and on up the steep hill, past a great deal of snow-covered equipment.

‘It’s real good to see you,’ Jack said, his dark eyes shining the warmest of welcomes. ‘I guess something went wrong with you and Fallon? But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

Beth was too out of breath to speak, and she was a little horrified that Jack had heard that there had been something between her and John. She ought to have expected it, though, for no one could do anything in Dawson without everyone hearing about it.

Jack’s cabin was a log one, much like Oz’s, but larger and newer and the furniture was less crude.

‘You can have the bed,’ he said as he stirred up his stove and put some more wood on it. ‘I’ve got a camp bed, that’ll do me.’

‘What did you hear about Fallon and me?’ she asked, sitting down on a miner’s string chair.

Jack shrugged. ‘Just that you’d taken up with him, but I was a bit sad you didn’t feel able to tell me in any of your letters.’

‘Do you tell me every time you have a new woman in your life?’ she retorted.

‘I would if she meant anything special.’

‘Well, Fallon wasn’t special. It was just a bit of—’ She paused, not knowing how to explain without admitting it was just sex.

‘A fling?’ he prompted.

‘Yes, that’s all it was.’

Jack nodded in understanding. ‘So who ended it?’

There was nothing for it but to tell him how it was. But as she began to tell him what John had said after the fire, she saw the funny side of it and began to laugh.

‘Oh, Jack, it was so weird. I’d never have put him down as a Holy Joe, and when he came out with all that turning away from wickedness, and saying Dawson was like Sodom and Gomorrah, I couldn’t keep a straight face.’

Jack laughed too. ‘I sometimes think that all the strangest people in the world end up in Dawson. I always found Fallon a bit of an oddball. He used to come into the Nugget and have just one drink while you were playing. He didn’t seem to have any pals, he never gambled, I couldn’t see what attracted him to the Klondike, or why he bought the Monte Carlo.’

‘He never told me why.’ Beth shrugged. ‘But then we didn’t talk much about anything now I come to think of it. He said I was a whore this morning. Isn’t that awful, Jack? But I guess I brought it on myself.’

Jack came over to her chair and knelt in front of her, his eyes full of understanding. ‘I’d like to go into Dawson tomorrow and beat him to a pulp, but that would only create more gossip. He’s to be pitied if he doesn’t see the difference between a woman who gives herself willingly and one who demands payment.

‘Don’t torture yourself, Beth, just put it down to experience. You are still the prettiest girl I know, my best pal and the greatest fiddle player. So the way I see it, you haven’t lost anything but a bit of pride.’