Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘It’s foolish to say such things,’ Theo replied, his voice softening. He sat down beside her on the floor of the tent and wiped her tears from her face with his handkerchief. ‘It was fate, just as Sam’s death was too. I don’t believe we can change our destiny, whatever we do. But you can’t stay here moping for ever, that won’t make it better. If you put your energy into turning our new place into a home, it will take your mind off Molly. So come with me now and look around. Jack was going to put the name up today. We’ve decided to call it the Golden Nugget.’

  Beth was tempted to refuse, but in her heart she knew everything he’d said was right, and staying in the tent wallowing in grief wasn’t going to make anything better. So reluctantly she got up, found a comb and ran it through her hair.

  Theo patted her on the shoulder in approval. ‘You can have a bath tonight if you want. Jack managed to get the boiler going. Imagine that, sweetheart, a real bath, we’ll be the envy of everyone else in town. That is, if you don’t run out on us and take the steamer back to Vancouver at the end of August.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing for me there.’

  Realizing that sounded self-pitying, she blushed. ‘We’ve got the gambling saloon we wanted, and I’m glad about that,’ she continued. ‘Just be patient with me a little longer. Two deaths in such a short time are more than anyone could bear.’

  ‘I know, darling,’ he said, enfolding her in his arms. ‘But you must play on opening night, everyone’s expecting it.’

  Beth washed her face and walked with Theo to the new place. It seemed many people had heard about her loss, for they stopped her and said how sorry they were. She hadn’t expected that, and it helped to know people cared about her.

  Jack had just finished putting up the sign as they approached the new place. He shinned down the ladder and hugged her.

  ‘What d’you think?’ he asked.

  Beth stepped back into the street to look properly. When she’d last seen it the facade was only half done, and raw timber at that. The wood was painted red and shiny now, with a black sign bearing the words ‘The Golden Nugget’ painted in gold.

  ‘It looks marvellous,’ she said, and smiled for the first time since she’d received the news of Molly’s death. ‘You are a miracle worker, Jack.’

  He glowed at the praise. ‘I had a lot of help,’ he said quickly. ‘Now, come and look inside.’

  Beth had grown accustomed to the tricks used to create a sense of permanence and luxury in saloons since her time in Skagway. False facades led into the most flimsy of buildings, often tents, and even those that were built of wood had only canvas tacked on to the timber posts to make interior walls.

  But Jack had lined the wood walls with another layer of timber, making it warm and windproof, and he’d painted them the same red as outside.

  But even more astounding was the picture painted on the side wall opposite the bar. It was of the Chilkoot Pass, complete with the endless winding ribbon of climbers against the snow.

  ‘Who did that?’ she asked.

  ‘Enrico, that little bloke from San Francisco I helped with his boat at Lake Bennett.’

  Beth nodded. She remembered the small, dark-haired man who she had thought was a Mexican. ‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘It really sets the whole place off. But the bar is marvellous too, Jack, you are so clever.’

  It was first-class timber, planed and varnished to a gleaming finish. She ran her hand along it admiringly.

  ‘I’ve got to put another coat of varnish on the floor tonight, then we can get the furniture in tomorrow morning,’ Jack said. ‘It’s all piled up out the back.’

  Beth looked at the big mirror behind the bar and noticed it was covered in fingerprints and smears. ‘I’d better polish that,’ she said.

  Jack and Theo grinned at each other. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

  ‘We left it like that purposely. We thought it would stir you into action,’ Jack said.

  Beth smiled. ‘You’d better show me upstairs, I expect some action will be required there too.’

  Jack hadn’t had time to do anything much upstairs. Just three rooms with bare, rough timber walls and floors, but after living in a tent it would be luxury to all of them. As for the bathroom, she could hardly believe that Jack had been clever enough to run pipes from the boiler downstairs to fill the tub with hot water.

  ‘I had a lot of help from an engineer,’ he said modestly.

  ‘But there was no possibility of putting in a lavatory as there are no sewers in the town yet. So we’re stuck with an outside privy until there are.’

  Front Street was the main artery of Dawson City. It pulsated with people all round the clock. By day it was like a gigantic market where you could buy anything from medicine to a horse or dog and every kind of foodstuff and luxury item brought in by traders. By night it was a rip-roaring hedonistic paradise, where you could drink, gamble, see a show or just parade up and down watching others if you were broke.

  Even on Sundays when the law stated that nothing should open, and this was rigorously enforced by the Mounted Police, people still thronged up and down. All the most popular saloons, dance halls and theatres were in Front Street and they vied with one another to be the best. They wanted the prettiest dance-hall girls, the highest stakes in a poker game or the best singers and entertainers.

  Although Beth, Theo and Jack had only been in Dawson a short while, they had an advantage over other new arrivals setting up in business because they had already attracted enough attention in town to be given nicknames. People liked nicknames here; Lime-juice Lil, Two-step Louie, Billy the Horse and Deep-hole Johnson were just some they’d heard. Theo’s English gentleman image and his reputation as a good poker player landed him with ‘The Gent’. Jack was affectionately called ‘Cockney Jack’ and widely regarded as the man to talk to if you wanted to build anything. Beth was still called ‘Gypsy’, for the name had come with her on the trail, and at the Monte Carlo she’d been billed as ‘The Klondike Gypsy Queen’.

  Yet when they opened the saloon doors for the first time at six in the evening, they were still very anxious. Most of the other places on Front Street were owned by Eldorado Kings, men with claims that had netted them fortunes, and they could afford to splash out on chandeliers, velvet carpets, a five-piece band and a host of girls to lure big spenders in. But Theo’s money had run out, and he owed a couple of thousand dollars for drink, timber and the tables and chairs.

  He had hung a sign outside proclaiming half-price drinks, and they had to hope that that, and Beth playing, would be enough. Theo was wearing a white tuxedo he’d accepted in settlement of a gambling debt back at Lake Bennett. With a frilled shirt and bow tie and his dark hair shiny with oil, he looked the image of a successful saloon owner. Jack sported a red waistcoat, a red and white spotted bow tie and a straw boater.

  Beth had put on the new pink dress she’d planned to wear on Independence Day. She’d lost weight because she’d barely eaten anything since she got the letter about Molly, and she looked so peaky she’d even resorted to rouge on her cheeks.

  She began to play a jig as soon as six men walked up to the bar.

  They’d hired Will and Herbert, two men from Portland they’d got to know at Lake Bennett. They were desperate to raise the cash to get a boat home, and Theo had promised if they worked for two weeks for him, he’d buy their tickets and give them fifty dollars each too.

  By the time Beth was on the third number, a goodly crowd had come in, and all at once she felt exhilarated because she was pulling people in to spend money in their place. She hoped Sam was looking down on them, thrilled that they’d finally reached their goal.

  As the evening progressed, more and more people came in, until they were jammed up like tinned sardines. Theo was running a game of faro, a favourite in Dawson because it was fast, and gave the players a fighting chance.

  Theo had bought the faro table from a steamship owner who was
short of cash. Every card from ace to king was painted on it, and the players laid their chips on the card they wanted to bet on. The dealer lifted the top card off the deck; if the one beneath was one someone was betting on, he lost, but if it came up second, he won. If neither, he bet again.

  On the wall behind Theo there was a rack which held the players’ pokes. Into the rack went a slip of paper charging the owner for the chips he bought. At the end of play, chips were balanced against slips, and the player’s poke was increased or decreased, according to whether he’d won or lost.

  Gold, dust or nuggets, was the main currency in Dawson, and every shop, saloon or other business had scales to weigh it out. When Beth and the boys first got to Dawson they were all astounded by the casual way men tossed pokes containing hundreds of dollars worth of gold around, but they were used to it now.

  While Theo was dealing at the faro table, Jack greeted customers, keeping an eye on the bar and on Will and Herbert. Later, Jack would take over at faro, leaving Theo to begin a poker game, and in between her fiddle sessions, Beth would keep her eye on things.

  It was soon clear that they would require several more staff, just as they would need more supplies of drink and another entertainer to keep things going all night. But that first night they muddled through, all working flat out. The whisky ran out at four in the morning, but most of the customers stayed and drank anything available. Theo had a huge smile on his face because Sam Bonnifield, known as ‘Silent Sam’, the owner of the Bank Saloon and Gambling House on the corner of Front and King Streets, had come in to play faro. He got his nickname because he never said a word or smiled as he played. His luck was not in tonight and he was five hundred dollars down, yet he kept on playing.

  At six in the morning, Theo finally closed the doors. He was too tired to count what they’d taken that night, but he reckoned it was close on 15,000 dollars. Enough to pay off the debts, restock with drink and get some furniture upstairs.

  ‘Later today I’ll buy you a big brass bed with a feather mattress,’ he said as he embraced Beth. ‘I promise you that you’ll never sleep on the ground ever again.’

  The Golden Nugget soon became established as one of the most popular gambling saloons in Dawson. Theo used his charms to lure four girls to work there, paying them a small commission for every glass of champagne they managed to persuade men to buy for them. It wasn’t real champagne, but then very few people in Dawson knew what the real stuff tasted like. The girls added colour to the place as they teased and flirted with the men, and if they sold their bodies later to the highest bidder, no one was concerned.

  Paradise Alley, behind Front Street, was where the real whores did their business, in a row of tents called cribs, each with her name above the door. They were mostly plain, sturdy women, for the difficult journey across the mountains to get here ruled out the delicate. They serviced around fifty men a day and their pimps took most of their earnings, and to Beth they had the worst life she could imagine.

  But then, women generally had a poor deal in Dawson. They baked bread, did laundry and cooked in restaurants, and though some of them made an excellent living, they had to work incredibly hard, and often had men who spent it as fast as they earned it. Those who were married to miners spent their days panning for gold in remote creeks, living in terrible conditions with no other female company.

  Only a small percentage of women lived the high life, and they were the actresses, singers and dance-hall girls. Most of the dance-hall girls took far more from men than they gave. For a dollar, a man got less than a minute with them in his arms before they moved on to their next partner. One girl had a belt made with seventeen twenty-dollar gold pieces, a present from a miner. Almost all the girls made no secret of the fact that they were there to separate the men from their pokes.

  Beth worked too hard and for too long hours to live the high life, but she didn’t mind, for it stopped her dwelling on Sam and Molly. True to his word, Theo had bought furniture for their rooms upstairs, including the promised brass bed and carpets too. Every night in the saloon was fun, and to see it becoming such a big success gave her great satisfaction.

  When sad thoughts came into her mind, she reminded herself she was living her dream. It wasn’t hard to be happy in Dawson; people were warm and friendly, and never a day passed without someone doing something outrageous that made them all laugh. She might feel a little disappointed that she and Theo had so little time together alone, but as August arrived and the cold weather and dark days grew imminent, many people began departing on the boats for the Outside, and she knew their time alone would come.

  She knew, too, that she had forged herself a place in Dawson’s folklore. There were many fiddle players in town, but no one as good as she, and they were all men. She was also considered the prettiest girl in Dawson, something Theo and Jack took great pride in.

  People in Dawson liked stories, and there were enough bandied around about the Eldorado Kings, the fortunes they’d won and lost at gambling tables, and all the lesser characters, to fill several books. It didn’t surprise her one bit when she found people were embellishing tales of her, Theo and Jack. One night in the saloon, she overheard one man telling another that Theo had carried her on his shoulders up the Chilkoot Pass. Then he went on to describe how Sam died in Squaw Rapids, as if he’d been standing there while it happened.

  Yet what intrigued people most, it seemed, was her relationship with Theo and Jack, for word had got around that she wasn’t married to Theo.

  She was well aware that many of the dance-hall girls had their eyes on him. She couldn’t blame them — he was handsome, charismatic and rich now too, for they were making money hand over fist. It made Beth smile when they came slinking into the Golden Nugget in their best finery, flirted with him and tried to lure him away to whatever dance hall they worked in. She knew Theo well enough to be fairly certain that if he was to be lured away by another woman, it wouldn’t be a mere dance-hall girl.

  One rainy evening in early August a man came into the Golden Nugget who not only had a story to tell but was to start a chain of events that would alter everything for Beth.

  She was playing her fiddle as he walked in, a tall man in a mackinaw and a broad-brimmed hat who looked slightly familiar, but the saloon was too dark and smoky to see him clearly.

  As always, she played for around half an hour before having a short break, and as she went up to the bar to get a drink, the man caught hold of her arm.

  ‘Howdy, Miss Gypsy,’ he said. ‘I was hoping I’d run into you.’

  Looking up into his face, Beth recognized him as Moss Atkins, one of Soapy’s henchmen from Skagway. He had often come into Clancy’s when she was there, and though she hadn’t ever spoken to him, he had a reputation for being vicious. He also had the kind of face she couldn’t fail to notice, for his eyes were a brilliant blue and he had pock-marks on his cheeks.

  ‘Hello, Moss,’ she said. ‘Good to see you again. Have you just arrived?’

  ‘It’s been a few days now, just asking myself whether it would be smarter to push off before the river freezes, or to stay for the winter and do some business here.’

  ‘I think you’d do better in Skagway,’ she said with a smile. ‘The Mounties are very vigilant here. No guns, no skulduggery. If they catch you putting a foot out of line they’ll give you up to ninety days on the woodpile.’

  It was said that few people caught out in a crime cared much about the fine given to them — they could usually afford it. But the punishment of being forced to chop wood for the town council did act as a deterrent. It was boring, back-breaking work, and most high-tailed out of town rather than do it.

  ‘Well, maybe I’d best skidaddle,’ he said, giving a humourless chuckle. ‘But to where I don’t know. Skagway’s lost its way since Soapy was gunned down.’

  ‘Soapy’s dead!’ Beth exclaimed.

  Maybe if she hadn’t been so surprised, she might have realized people were listening to their conv
ersation. But she was so keen to hear how it came about that it never occurred to her it would be wise to be more discreet.

  ‘You ain’t heard? It was back on 8 July. Shot down by Frank Reid on the dock.’

  ‘But why?’ she asked, as she recalled Frank Reid was an innocuous sort of man who was more interested in town planning than fighting.

  Moss launched into the story of how a prospector called J. D. Stewart had come back to Skagway from the Yukon with 2,800 dollars in gold dust. It was stolen, and the general view was that it was by one of Soapy’s men. The Skagway traders were afraid that if word got around that it wasn’t safe for anyone with gold to leave from their town, all prospectors would take the sea route and bypass it, robbing them of lucrative business. Demands were made that Soapy was to give Stewart back his gold immediately, and the townsfolk began to turn against him.

  ‘The upshot of it was that Soapy started drinking, got his dander up and went off down to the docks with a derringer in his sleeve, a .45 Colt in his pocket and a Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder,’ Moss told her. ‘Frank Reid was down there, and told Soapy not to go any further. Soapy put his rifle to Reid’s head. Reid seized the muzzle with his left hand and reached for his own six-gun in his belt with the other. He fired, but the cartridge was faulty, and instantaneously Soapy fired his rifle, shooting Reid in the groin. But Reid fired his six-gun again; this time he shot Soapy right through the heart. He died instantly.’

  Beth gasped, as did others within earshot, for everyone in Dawson had heard about ‘Soapy’ Jefferson Smith, even if they hadn’t actually gone through Skagway on the way here.

  People around them started asking Moss questions, and he was clearly delighted to be the one to bring the news of this to Dawson and find himself the centre of attention. ‘Yeah, Reid died too, but a slow, lingering death. At least Soapy’s was quick.’

  Both Theo and Jack came closer, as interested as anyone else in such a big story. Moss continued to hold forth, saying that many of Soapy’s men had taken to the trails and the mountains to avoid being captured by the gang of vigilantes who had lynching on their mind.