Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Which one is Mack Dundridge?’ she whispered to the man next to her.

  ‘The gingery-haired fella,’ he replied. ‘No one can beat him at poker, and he’ll stay until he’s wiped out the others.’

  Beth slunk further back so Theo wouldn’t spot her, and watched him for just a moment or two longer. He looked so casual and relaxed, almost lounging in his chair, the light above accentuating his high cheekbones. But she had enough knowledge of poker to know it was based on bluff, so he could well be as nervous as Jack.

  The tension in the room was growing tighter by the second, and Beth knew she couldn’t bear to witness Theo being beaten.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to stay,’ she said, meeting Wilbur as he came back across the saloon. She took the drink from his hand and downed it in one. ‘Will you take me home now, please?’

  The bright daylight always made it hard to sleep, but Beth was so nervous she could barely manage to shut her eyes. She had grown accustomed to Theo’s losses over the last year, but to her knowledge he’d never before gambled more than he could afford to lose. It was different here: prospectors, saloon owners, shop keepers and dancing girls — they were all basically gamblers. With fortunes casually changing hands nightly, even the most level-headed person could easily lose their grip on reality.

  She must have been lying awake for a couple of hours when she finally heard Theo and Jack approaching the tent. They were stumbling as if they were very drunk and that made her feel even angrier at them.

  Theo stuck his face through the tent-door flap. ‘Are you awake, my sweetheart? he asked, grinning inanely.

  ‘I am now,’ she said sarcastically.

  Theo withdrew his head and spoke to Jack. ‘She’s cross with me,’ he said. ‘D’you think she’ll be even crosser when I tell her our news?’

  ‘You’ll have our neighbours cross with you if you wake them up,’ Beth said tersely. ‘So come in here and be quiet.’

  They came stumbling in and Jack flopped down beside her. ‘Sorry we’re drunk. But we had to celebrate cos Theo’s won a building lot on Front Street.’

  Beth sat bolt upright. ‘He has?’ She was astounded: a building lot on Front Street cost around forty thousand dollars.

  ‘Sure thing, my darling,’ Theo said, dropping down on the other side of her. ‘A knuckle-biting game with Mack Dundridge. They said he couldn’t be beat, but they were wrong.’

  Beth frowned. She didn’t like it when Theo became boastful, and it crossed her mind he might have cheated.

  ‘Don’t worry, Beth.’ Jack grinned at her as if reading her mind. ‘He won it fair and square. And he had the sense to stop once he’d twisted the bloke’s arm to throw the building lot in. Might have been a different story if it had been his goldmine.’

  ‘We’re made now,’ Theo chortled. ‘We can build our own gambling saloon and we’ll have rooms upstairs to live in. We’ll even give you the bathroom you’ve always wanted.’

  They were too drunk to explain properly how it had come about, but Beth understood enough to realize Theo had set out with the intention of getting Mack to use the Front Street lot as a stake.

  ‘I reckoned he wouldn’t care so much about that,’ Theo said smugly. ‘If his goldmine was on the table, he’d have kept me there playing till he won it back.’

  ‘Theo played a blinder,’ Jack said, his face alight with awe. ‘I thought he had a bad hand at the end; he was sweating like a pig and looked shit scared. You could have heard a pin drop when Mack asked to see him. I couldn’t even look. But he had four nines, Mack had four eights. The whole place went wild. Even Mack said he’d met his match.’

  Beth lay down again and tried to go back to sleep when the boys went outside to smoke their pipes, but the rise and fall of their drunken, excited voices as they planned their gambling saloon prevented her from sleeping.

  She was thrilled, and had no doubt they would get it built. Jack would see to that. She even felt it would lessen the sorrow of losing Sam for all of them, for they would be making his dream come true.

  But getting what they had planned for so long, so easily, just by the turn of a card, felt strange and unreal.

  In the days that followed, as the boys started organizing the building of their gambling saloon, Beth often reflected that everything in the town was strange: sunshine that lasted twenty-two hours a day, the mud that didn’t dry up, the false fronts of the saloons, and steamers arriving from Seattle and San Francisco almost daily bringing champagne, oysters and every other kind of luxury.

  It seemed bizarre that they’d each been forced to haul a ton of provisions over those mountains only to find no one wanted or needed flour, sugar and rice. Even more bizarre was that all these thousands of people who had hocked everything they had to make the trip, risked their health and sanity for the dream of riches, were doing nothing now to find gold.

  She and the boys had never intended to be prospectors. But almost everyone else had. Yet as soon as they tied up their boats, and they were six deep along the shore now, these people just hung around in town, not even taking a trip out to the creeks where gold had been found. It was as if getting here was enough.

  Beth could understand weariness, for the majority of these people had spent a whole year getting here and they’d been challenged in every conceivable way. Most had burned all their bridges, walked out on jobs, homes, sometimes wives and children, and blown all their money. They’d risked their health, sanity and in some cases their lives. But surely a couple of days’ rest would revive them? Why were they now trying to sell their kit to buy a ticket home on a steamer? How could that lust for gold suddenly vanish? Or was it that the gold had never been the real aim, only to have the biggest adventure of all time?

  It was said that there were approximately 18,000 people now in Dawson, and another 5,000 out prospecting on the surrounding creeks, making it almost as big a population as Seattle. With no more room for tents or cabins, people were now going across the river to a place generally known as Louse Town.

  Down on the shore a huge market place had sprung up. Dogs, horses, sledges, and bags of flour, patched shirts, worn-out axes, long winter underwear, mackinaws and high-sided boots were all for sale. People picked over them endlessly, and to the disappointment of the sellers who wanted to go home, their stuff was mostly rejected.

  But each steamer spilled out many more hundreds of people: dancing girls, actresses and whores, bank clerks, doctors, even ministers. There were whole families, elegant ladies with feathered hats, their husbands with wing collars and tail coats, and small children. They too had mostly only come to take a look, for they surely weren’t intending to pan for gold.

  It was a mad, wild place, a city of runaways, some from the law, or from nagging wives or brutal husbands, debt, dull jobs or city slums. The morality and social status of the Outside meant nothing here. Men took up with dance-hall girls, a woman could drink in the saloons without a man beside her, even the whores were treated with respect. You could be anything you wanted here; where you came from didn’t matter. Those who’d struck lucky helped those who had nothing. It was almost as if people shed their old skin the moment they stepped off the boat, and grew another more comfortable one.

  Yet for now it suited Beth. For as long as she could play her fiddle, she could forget all she had lost and that she had no real place to call home.

  The deep sadness at the core of her seemed to give her music a new dimension and she’d found she was using it to twist her audience’s emotions. If one of her tunes reminded them of an old lover, their mother, their children, they put more money in the hat. She didn’t feel this was exploiting anyone; after all, the money she earned was passed on to the woman who baked bread, the boy who sold eggs, and the couple from Idaho who ran a diner. It would also take her home one day to see Molly.

  Late in the afternoon of 3 July, Beth was down on Front Street watching as Jack and a couple of his hired men built the facade of their saloon.
The speed with which Jack had gone to work on it was astounding. Within a week he had the skeleton of the saloon up; by the end of the second the roof was on and he was laying the floorboards on the first floor. The long hours of daylight and the number of men needing paid work helped. Now the building was close to completion, with three rooms upstairs, a large room for the saloon downstairs and a kitchen and storerooms out the back.

  ‘It’s looking good, Jack,’ Beth called to him. ‘But you aren’t going to work tomorrow, I hope? It’s Independence Day.’

  Despite the fact that Dawson City was in Canada, because such a big majority of its residents were American there was to be a big celebration with dancing, hog roasts and fireworks. Beth had found a good seamstress and had a new dress made with the pink silk she’d brought over the pass with her.

  Jack paused in his work and grinned at her. ‘I guess one day off won’t kill me! Have you seen Theo today? I could do with a hand.’

  ‘He went to the post office,’ Beth called back. ‘You know what that’s like!’

  Getting mail was a big problem in Dawson. It was brought in and out on many boats, but was often dropped off by mistake in Juneau, Haines or any of the little towns along the Inner Passage. With so many thousands of people here, the queues at the post office were so long it could take all day to reach the front, and most came away disappointed that there were no letters for them. Beth hadn’t bothered to queue, for the only people who wrote to her were the Langworthys, and even if they’d got the letter she’d written in Lake Lindemann with the approximate date they’d reach Dawson City, a reply could take a month or more to reach her.

  She had written again when she got here to tell them of Sam’s death, but that would still be on the steamer to Seattle.

  Theo, however, had gone to join the long queue to send his folks a telegram to let them know where he was. He laughingly said that even if his father and older brother didn’t care, his mother and younger sisters would. Beth privately thought his real motive was to boast he was doing well, knowing word would reach all his old friends.

  ‘If you see him, tell him I need him,’ Jack said. ‘He’s a lazy devil, never around except when it suits him.’

  Beth made no comment. Theo wasn’t pulling his weight, but then he never had. He seemed to think that winning the building lot and handing over the money for the lumber and other materials was enough. Jack had to handle everything, from building the saloon to buying the timber and hauling it here. At night Theo rarely came into the Monte Carlo to hear Beth play, she often had to eat alone, and he seldom came back to the tent before seven or eight in the morning, then slept all day. Sometimes she wondered if he valued her at all.

  She decided to walk down to the post office and check how far up the queue he’d got. But as she took the turn off Front Street, she saw him coming towards her through the crowd. She waved, and as he saw her his face broke into a wide smile.

  Despite having become a little disenchanted with his character, hardly a day went past without Beth thinking how handsome he was. Even back in the winter, bundled up in a heavy coat, with a hat and a muffler and a thick beard covering half his face, his dark, expressive eyes could still make her heart flutter.

  He had somehow achieved the image of the perfect English gentleman even here in this rough-and-ready town. He had shaved off his beard back on the river, and one of his first priorities when they arrived here was to get his hair cut. Wearing a fawn linen jacket, a red cravat at the neck of his shirt and a Panama hat, he could have been on his way to Ascot. Only the mud on his brown leather riding boots spoiled the image, something he groused about almost daily as he cleaned them.

  ‘You’ve got a letter,’ he called out as they drew closer, and he took the envelope from his pocket and waved it at her. ‘They weren’t going to let me have it as it’s addressed to Miss and Mr Bolton, but when I told them that was Gypsy of the Monte Carlo’s maiden name, they gave in.’

  Beth laughed. ‘It’s from the Langworthys,’ she said, recognizing the handwriting even from a distance, and she rushed forward the last few feet to grab it from him. ‘They surely hadn’t got my letter from Lake Lindemann already?’

  ‘Dawson City’s in the news everywhere in the world,’ Theo said. ‘I guess they decided to write here knowing you’d get here eventually.’

  ‘It looks as if it’s been in the wet,’ Beth said, for the envelope was stained and the ink smeared.

  ‘Some of the mail was so badly soaked the envelopes are unreadable or missing,’ Theo said. ‘There were lots of disappointed people today, but you’re a lucky one.’

  Beth tore it open, unable to wait till later. ‘My dear Beth and Sam,’ she read. ‘There isn’t any way to give you this terrible news, except straight out.’

  A cold shudder ran down Beth’s spine, but she had to read on.

  So please forgive my bluntness when I tell you our precious little Molly died of pneumonia, ten days ago on 7 March. She had a bad chesty cold in February and despite everything we and the doctor did, all the medicine and care, it turned to pneumonia. She died in her sleep while I was sitting with her.

  Edward and I are bereft. We loved her so much, and everything is so bleak and cold without her. But my heart goes out to you and Sam so far away too, for we know this will be a tremendous shock to you as it has been for everyone who loved her. Please believe we did everything we could for her. Her funeral was a week after her death on the 14th, a beautiful moving service at St Brides… Edward, Mrs Bruce, Cook and Kathleen all send their condolences, and we sincerely hope this letter will find its way to you. We always read everything in the papers about the Klondike, wondering if you got there safely. You are in our thoughts and prayers, please come to see us when you return to England. And Edward and I wish to thank you for all the past joy you gave us by leaving Molly in our care. She may have only had just four short years with us, but they have been the happiest times we’ve known.

  Thinking of you at this saddest of times

  Ruth Langworthy

  ‘What is it, Beth?’ Theo asked, shocked by her stricken face.

  ‘Molly’s dead,’ she replied in hushed, anguished tones, looking at him beseechingly. ‘She died of pneumonia.’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  ‘I know it’s terribly sad to hear of a child dying, Beth, but you’ve got to pull yourself together,’ Theo said, a sharp undercurrent to his voice.

  ‘She wasn’t just any child, she was my sister,’ Beth retorted, breaking into fresh tears. ‘First Sam, now Molly. I’ve got no one left.’

  A week had passed since she received the shattering letter. Theo had been kind and comforting then, yet the day after, Independence Day, he left her crying in the tent and joined everyone else in Dawson for the celebrations.

  Jack came back to the tent in the early evening, having run into Theo in a saloon and realized he’d left her all alone.

  ‘I expect he just doesn’t know what more he can say to comfort you,’ he said in Theo’s defence. ‘I don’t either, Beth, I just knew you shouldn’t be alone.’

  ‘Why is it that you know that and he doesn’t?’ she asked Jack bitterly. ‘It wasn’t your baby I lost, it was his. He promised me up on the Chilkoot Pass that he loved me and wanted to get married; he knows how hard Sam’s death hit me, so surely if he really loved me he could put himself in my shoes now and understand?’

  ‘Oh, Beth, you’ve had so much sadness.’ Jack sighed and sat down beside her, holding her. ‘Right from when you first told me about Molly on the ship, I could see how low you felt about leaving her behind. But you did do the right thing for her. Look at all the hardships we all had in New York. You wouldn’t have wanted to put her through that?’

  ‘But I keep thinking if she’d been with me she wouldn’t have died.’

  Jack stroked her hair back from her face and mopped her eyes. ‘She would’ve been even more likely to have caught something nasty. At least she had four happy years, in a loving,
caring home. It’s tragic that she died, a terrible thing, and all I can offer you is a shoulder to cry on.’

  He listened patiently as she sobbed out all her sadness, for Molly, Sam’s death and losing her baby and being told she’d never have another. ‘It’s like I’m jinxed,’ she said. ‘What have I ever done that was so bad I had to have all this thrown at me?’

  Jack couldn’t find an answer to that, but he stayed all evening and held her, letting her spill out all her grief. When it grew darker, thousands of fireworks were let off and they stood outside the tent watching them together. But the fierce noise from the fireworks wasn’t enough for the revellers in the town; they fired rifles and made huge explosions with dynamite, too. The town dogs were so frightened they swam across the Yukon to Louse Town in one long streak to escape.

  Beth hated everyone for celebrating while she was so desperately unhappy, and she wouldn’t even allow Jack to persuade her to put on a pretty dress and go and play at the Monte Carlo. ‘I’ll never play again,’ she vowed.

  Since Independence Day, Beth had hardly set foot outside the tent, preferring to lie there feeling bitter and hurt. Jack and Theo had been working long hours on the saloon, and although Jack had tried many times to persuade her to come down and see how the work was progressing, or to go back to the Monte Carlo to play, Theo had said little on the subject until today.

  ‘You have got someone left, there’s Jack and me,’ Theo said wearily. ‘The saloon is finished, so we can move in tomorrow. But you haven’t even been to see it.’

  ‘I don’t care about it. I don’t care about anything,’ Beth sobbed. ‘I left Molly with the Langworthys because I thought she’d have a good life with them, but she still got sick and died. Maybe if I’d stayed with her she’d be alive now.’