Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Maybe it’s a good thing you left Soapy when you did,’ he suddenly said to Beth. ‘He told me you was his girl, but I guess it must’ve been hard for you to swallow all his badness. Especially when he had that other fella of yourn shot.’

  Beth’s stomach lurched, and she saw Theo’s face had stiffened. ‘There was nothing between Soapy and me,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure it wasn’t him who had Theo shot, you’ve got that all wrong.’

  Moss laughed scornfully. ‘I ain’t got nothing wrong, babe, I was with Soapy when he ordered the shooting. “Take out the English guy,“was what he said, “I’ve got plans for his lady.“I saw you dozens of times with him, too, so if that don’t mean there was something between you, then I’m a Dutchman.’

  Jack intervened at that point, suggesting it was time Beth played again. Moss left the saloon soon after.

  The following day was Saturday, and as they’d slept late, they had to rush to open the saloon at midday. Beth was aware Theo was being a bit cool with her, but they were so busy there was no time to bring it out into the open.

  On Sunday they didn’t wake until mid-afternoon, but when Beth snuggled up close to Theo, expecting that they would make love as they usually did, he got up and began dressing.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ he said curtly.

  After he’d gone out, Beth stood at the window, looking out across Front Street on to the river, and she could feel winter drawing close. The trees on the mountains were all evergreen so there was no autumnal colour like back in England, America and Montreal. She’d been told that the temperature could reach 50 degrees below freezing here in the winter months, and she shivered at the thought of it

  Four hours later, Theo still hadn’t come back. Beth had spent the time catching up on little jobs, stitching up the hem of one of her dresses, doing some washing and writing a letter to the Langworthys. Outside it was still raining heavily, and she couldn’t imagine where Theo could have gone as nothing was open.

  She and Jack made a meal down in the kitchen later, and stayed down there afterwards as it was warm by the stove.

  ‘He’s angry about what Moss said,’ Beth blurted out later. ‘But I don’t understand why he’d take it out on me. After all, he was the one that went off with that whore in the Red Onion, and I took care of him after he was shot.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take the word of anyone who worked for Soapy Smith,’ Jack said. ‘And I’d be surprised if Theo did. But the word was all over town by last night, and several people made jokes about it to him. I suppose he’s smarting a bit.’

  Theo didn’t come home that night. He turned up at midday on Monday to open the saloon but offered no explanation as to where he’d been. As he didn’t seem to be brooding on anything and was just a little quiet, Beth let it go and went out to do some shopping.

  She was gone a couple of hours and as she was walking back to the Golden Nugget, she heard the now very familiar sound of a steam horn on a departing boat. As she turned into Front Street, a large crowd were gathered to wave goodbye, and she waved too, as was the custom if you were nearby.

  ∗

  When Beth got back, Jack said Theo had gone to the bank with the takings. An hour passed, then another, and still he hadn’t returned.

  ‘He’ll be having a game of poker somewhere. Let’s just hope he took the takings to the bank first,’ Jack said laughingly.

  It was just after seven when Wilf Donahue, better known as ‘One Eye’ on account of having a glass eye, came in. He was a regular at the Golden Nugget, even though he owned a similar establishment on King Street. Beth thought the rotund, red-faced man from Kansas coarse and over-familiar, but Jack and Theo found him amusing and claimed he was a man’s man.

  ‘I want you up there playing, my girl,’ Wilf said to Beth, pointing to the little stand she usually played from. ‘We won’t get any punters in without some music.’

  ‘Since when did you give the orders around here?’ she asked lightly, assuming it was his idea of a little joke.

  ‘Since two o’clock this afternoon when I bought the place,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  ‘Where are Jack and I going to sleep?’ Beth asked One Eye indignantly the following day. She was livid as she’d just overheard him telling Dolores and Mary, two of the saloon girls, that they could move in upstairs.

  ‘I won’t be taking your room unless you keep giving me lip,’ he said. He was half turned away from her, his one good eye lookinginher direction but the glass one staring sightlessly ahead. ‘Jack will have to move down to the kitchen, though, as I’ve promised his room to another couple of girls.’

  Beth felt she might explode, but she didn’t dare for fear he’d boot her and Jack out. ‘This isn’t right, Mr Donahue,’ she pleaded. ‘Jack built this place and it’s our home. Don’t do this to us! It’s been enough of a shock that Theo sold the place to you without a word to us.’

  The previous day, she and Jack had thought at first that One Eye was pulling their leg by saying he’d bought the saloon. He was known as something of a joker, and every time he’d come into the Golden Nugget in the past wearing a loud checked suit and stetson hat decorated with feathers, he’d said something outrageous. He was prone to splashing his money around too, and though they’d thought him a fool, they’d seen him as a harmless one.

  But to their shock and dismay, he pulled out a legal document drawn up by a lawyer here in Dawson, and signed by Theo, proving he had bought the place, lock, stock and barrel, for 80,000 dollars.

  They had found it astounding that Theo had been ruthless enough to clinch this deal on Sunday, but so cowardly that he stayed out all night so he didn’t have to face them. Yet he’d had the nerve to return on Monday after he’d signed the document and cashed the banker’s draft, and coolly pick up the takings and secretly pack a few of his things. He’d even spoken jovially to Jack, reminding him they needed more supplies of whisky, then calmly left to catch the steamer — ironically, the very one Beth had waved at.

  Jack was incandescent with rage; Theo wouldn’t have got the saloon built but for him. But the glint of tears in his eyes suggested that the thing which hurt most was that he’d thought he and Theo were like brothers, and he couldn’t believe he’d betray him.

  Beth saw the utter treachery of it. She would have stood by Theo whatever life threw at him, even if he’d lost the saloon in a poker game. Maybe their affair had grown cooler of late, but she still loved him and thought that love was returned. But to find he could just walk away from her, after all they’d been through and been to each other, that he cared more for money than her, was simply devastating.

  There was no legal recourse, however. Theo had owned the land, and no agreement had ever been drawn up to give his partners a share in the business, even though he’d always said this was what he intended. If One Eye chose to throw her and Jack out on the streets he could legally do so.

  To add insult to injury, they now had to be grateful he was prepared to keep them on in his employ and give them a roof over their heads.

  Since the Golden Nugget opened, they hadn’t even had proper wages, and Jack had never been paid for the building work. All they’d had was a few dollars here and there when they needed something, foolishly trusting that the money going into the saloon account belonged to all of them, just as they’d shared everything in the past.

  One Eye looked at Beth with cold calculation. He didn’t like the hurt and anger in her eyes; wronged women were invariably trouble. But he had to find some way of appeasing her, for he knew only too well that she was the Golden Nugget’s real attraction. In truth, he wouldn’t have wanted the place if not for her. Smart dealers, dancing girls, skilled barmen were all as common as drunks. But pretty fiddle players were as rare as a domesticated grizzly bear.

  He knew he must string her along for another week or so till the river froze, then she’d have no choice but to stay all winter. And i
f he could get rid of Cockney Jack without putting her back up, maybe she’d even end up in his bed.

  ‘Look, my little Gypsy Queen,’ he said in honeyed tones. ‘I feel bad your man ran out on you; he was a louse to do that to you. But I’ve paid top dollar for this place and now I’ve got to make it work for me. So I’ve gotta let those two rooms. But I tell you what, I’ll pass the hat round when you play, and you can keep whatever they put in it. How’s that?’

  Beth felt too numb to protest any further. It wouldn’t feel like her home without Theo anyway, so she supposed it didn’t matter if there were going to be four girls living in it.

  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 o
wn 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.