Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  There were many familiar faces in the crowd, all qualifying for the title of Sourdough now they’d spent a winter here. Some had been fresh-faced boys back in Skagway, innocents who had left their small towns in search of a dream. Now they were rugged men who could turn their hand to anything. As they were still here, that meant they’d found some sort of niche, even if they hadn’t struck gold.

  Here and there were the dance-hall and saloon girls with their gaudy dresses and elaborate hair styles. They might look plump, pretty and welcoming, but most were calculating, tough and mercenary. Yet they had injected Dawson with glamour and no doubt given comfort to many a miner, even if he was down on his luck.

  Other faces, equally familiar to Beth, were of those who had set up businesses here. Some she’d met on the trail, some came by other routes, but they were entrepreneurs all. A lot of them had lost everything in fires, for even before the big one in April there had been many others. Defeat was not in their nature; as one venture crashed, they began another. Doggedly determined, with steel in their spines, they would probably survive anything life threw at them.

  Yet the majority of the customers were strangers to Beth. Among them were the latest cheechakos, gaunt-looking men in shabby mackinaws and high trail boots, yet most of the strangers were sleek, well dressed and prosperous looking.

  ‘They are just tourists,’ Turnball said disparagingly when he caught her curious stare. ‘No trails and hardships for them; they’ve come with their leather trunks, even their maids in some cases, just to say they’ve seen Dawson City. None of us knew last year that newspapers all over the world were following everything that went on here. Some of these newcomers know more about us than we do ourselves! Of course, there’s still plenty coming here thinking they’ll find gold, but more just want to see what it is all about.’

  At ten Turnball got up on the small stage and banged on a cymbal to get everyone’s attention.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said when the place was hushed. ‘All of you here will have heard some of the legends of the Klondike. Even if you came here the easy way by boat, you know about those courageous ones who defied death on the infamous Chilkoot and White Passes, carrying their kit on their backs.

  ‘The little lady I’ve got here tonight climbed the Chilkoot in February last year. She lost her brother to drowning in the Squaw Rapids too. But she battled on here, carrying her famous fiddle, and enchanted us all with her music.

  ‘I remember the first time I heard her play, and it was in this very saloon, just a couple of days after she’d arrived. Her reputation had gone before her, but I hadn’t expected that the English fiddle player that captured hearts in Skagway would be a mere slip of a girl.

  ‘That night she brought tears to my eyes, she made my feet tap and my heart sing, and like every other man in town I was dazzled by her guts, talent and beauty.’

  Turnball turned towards Beth, indicating she was to come up on stage.

  With a flamboyant, open-armed gesture, he raised his voice to a boom. ‘I give you now, our very own darling. The world-famous Beth Bolton, the Klondike Gypsy Queen!’

  To a round of applause Beth jumped up on to the stage with her fiddle in her hand and dropped a curtsey to the huge crowd beneath her. For old times’ sake she began with ‘Kitty O’Neill’s Champion,’ and within seconds the crowd were tapping their feet and smiling up at her. Next was ‘The Days of ’49’, the old ‘California Gold Rush Jig’, then ‘The Lass of Glenshee’.

  She paused to tumultuous applause. Waving her bow for silence, she addressed her audience.

  ‘I composed this next number myself,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll hear in it the blizzard blowing in my face on the Chilkoot Pass, the saws of the boat builders on Lake Bennett, and our joy at setting sail when the ice broke. A middle section is the heartbreak of my brother’s drowning, and the beauty of the Yukon in spring. Finally, there is the gaiety of Dawson City at the end of the trail.’

  Jack had heard her playing something beautiful many times while he was working at Oz’s claim, a number he hadn’t heard before. He had thought it was a classical piece, and had always meant to ask her to play it one evening, for him.

  Now, as she began to play, he realized this was what he’d heard before. From the achingly beautiful, chill-to-the-bone opening bars, he found himself reliving the Chilkoot Pass. He could feel himself bent almost double with the load on his back and dragging the sledge behind him as he struggled onwards and upwards through the snow. Somehow she’d managed to portray in her music the desperation, exhaustion and fear all the stampeders went through. Yet at the time he only remembered her smiling brightly whenever he looked at her.

  There was gay humour in the saws of Lake Bennett, and he noticed many of the Sourdoughs looking at one another and smiling as they recalled their bitter arguments.

  Everyone in the audience, whether they’d been on the trail or not, could feel the joy of setting sail, for Beth had managed to inject the flavour of a sailor’s hornpipe, the fluttering of wind in the sails and even the warmth of the spring sunshine on their backs.

  A fast, spine-tingling passage mirrored the thrill and terror of the rapids in Miles Canyon, but it flowed into a plaintive memorial to Sam. Jack could see him as they pulled him from the water, dark red blood from the wound on his head staining his blond hair. He could picture Beth kneeling beside his body, her sobs cutting through him like a knife. And then laying him to rest in his riverside grave, and singing ‘Rock of Ages’ after they’d prayed over him.

  A lump came up in Jack’s throat because all this was in the music. When he looked around him he could see that even those in the audience who knew nothing of Sam or the Miles Canyon understood Beth’s anguish.

  In her portrayal of the voyage on down the Yukon, all her heartbreak and feeling of hopelessness were there, but she’d also managed to paint in the beauty of the winding river, the surrounding mountains, spring flowers, and moose drinking at the water’s edge.

  On that journey, they had come upon Dawson suddenly. Beth illustrated this by an abrupt change of tempo. All at once her composition was frantic, loud and gay, prompting Jack to remember the market by the shore, the thick mud, the thousands of people. She had the Spielers there, shouting out that their saloon, restaurant or dance hall was the best. She portrayed the romantic ‘Long Juicy Waltz’, so heavily promoted by the kings of the dance halls. Men soon discovered their dollar bought only one minute to hold the girl in his arms, yet some spent a hundred dollars a night for that privilege.

  A touch of burlesque in the theatre at the Monte, saucy, vulgar, but never indecent or the Mounties would close it down. The faro tables, the girls in Paradise Alley, the howling of dogs, the drunks, the losers and the winners, they were all there in Beth’s music, and Jack had never been more proud of her.

  He looked at her up on the stage, head bent over her fiddle, dark curls tumbling down her back, her slender body moving sensuously with the music. He realized she’d grown from a pretty girl into a beautiful woman in the years he’d known her, without him noticing the changes.

  As the piece ended and Beth lowered her bow, the audience went wild. Those sitting leapt up, stamping their feet, clapping their hands and cheering. On and on it went, everyone calling for an encore. But Beth smiled and shook her head, mouthed her thanks to the audience for she couldn’t be heard above the applause, and turned to leave the stage.

  Jack understood why. That composition of her own had drained her. All the pain, hardships, joys and delights were in it. She couldn’t surpass it, and didn’t even want to try.

  They couldn’t leave Dawson the following day as they’d hoped, for all the boats were fully booked, but Jack managed to get them a first-class cabin on the Maybelline on 3 August, in five days’ time.

  The following afternoon, while out on her own buying a few things she needed, Beth spotted Dolores, who used to work in the Golden Nugget, coming out of a grocery shop. She was heavily pregnant.
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  When she saw Beth she came running over, almost breathless with excitement at seeing her. ‘I was so worried about you when you disappeared. No one seemed to know where you’d gone!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I went off to Bonanza to stay with Jack,’ Beth explained. ‘I’d had enough of Dawson. But what about you? Where did you go after the Nugget burned down?’

  Dolores laughed. ‘That fire was a lucky break for me. I met Sol that night, he was one of the firemen. He took me back to his place and we’ve been together ever since.’

  They chatted for some time, Beth telling her that she and Jack were going off to Vancouver. Dolores said she helped out in the laundry, and Sol was building an extra room on to their cabin for the baby.

  ‘So when is it due?’ Beth asked, pleased to hear it had all worked out for the girl.

  ‘Well, the doctor thinks it’s going to be in November,’ Dolores said. ‘But we can’t be sure of the date cos I can’t remember when I had my last do-da.’

  Beth smiled at Dolores’ name for menstruation. Having ascertained that Sol appeared to be delighted he was going to be a father and that Dolores was well and happy, she said goodbye and went back to the Fairview.

  Thinking over their conversation as she walked, it suddenly occurred to Beth that she hadn’t had a do-da either for some time. She could remember having one soon after she got to Jack’s, and a second one which must have been a month later in early June, but nothing since then.

  Because she’d been told back in Montreal that she’d never get pregnant again, she’d had no reason to expect or want any man to be careful, and it certainly never occurred to her that the doctor could have been wrong.

  Back in the room at the Fairview, she looked carefully at herself in the mirror. She could see nothing different about herself, she certainly didn’t feel any different either, yet she was over a month late. What if she was pregnant?

  She closed her eyes and held her stomach, wishing with all her heart that she was. To have Jack’s baby would be the very best thing in the whole world.

  But she said nothing to him when he returned. She needed to be sure first, and as he’d run into some old friends that afternoon and was full of their news, it was easy for her to hide her excitement.

  The following day, Jack went off to help someone build a new cabin, and Beth tried to put the thought of a baby right out of her mind by going to visit some old friends. But it didn’t work; whether it was just the power of suggestion, or for real, her breasts felt tender, and she’d even had a touch of nausea in the morning. She chatted and laughed as she visited people, but foremost in her mind was how happy Jack was going to be when it was confirmed.

  On the evening of the 31st, a rumour ran round Dawson that gold had been found in Nome on the Bering Sea in Alaska.

  Beth and Jack first heard about it from a fellow guest who’d just received a telegraph from a friend somewhere nearby. They thought nothing of it, for there had been a rumour about another new gold strike back in January, and many men had rushed off to it, some of them so ill prepared they got frostbite, only to find it was a hoax.

  But when they walked down Front Street later, everyone was talking about it. In the saloon they went into, men were saying that the gold was just lying on the beach waiting to be picked up, and all of them were intending to leave for Nome as soon as they could get a passage.

  The rumour spread like wildfire, and suddenly all the men with vacant expressions who had been spending their days lounging around on the boardwalk had that old familiar fire in their eyes.

  Jack found it very funny. He roared with laughter when an old Sourdough stopped him in Front Street to ask if he’d be going. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of gold fever to last me a lifetime. I just want to go home with my girl.’

  The following day, the whole town was buzzing with excitement. People were fighting to get on to boats, and when they couldn’t get tickets were commandeering pole and row boats to sail themselves.

  Jack seemed to find the whole thing very disturbing, and said he was going off for a tramp up the hills. Before he left, he peeled off five hundred dollars from their stash of money and suggested Beth went to Madame Aubert to buy something smart and fashionable to wear in Vancouver.

  The Frenchwoman was a marvellous dressmaker, but she also had ready-made clothes in her shop that were the latest fashions from Paris.

  ‘I can’t buy something there,’ Beth said in horror. ‘She’s too expensive.’

  Jack laughed. ‘We’re rich now, and all your clothes will look very shabby in Vancouver. Besides, with so many people leaving for Nome, I bet you can beat her down in price.’

  Beth wanted a new dress, but she told Jack five hundred dollars was far too much to give her.

  ‘You hang on to it,’ he said. ‘You’ll need shoes and other things too.’

  Jack was a little distant over dinner that evening. Beth had found a lovely costume at Madame Aubert’s, a dark green and cream striped peplum-style jacket with a matching plain green skirt, and a little green hat with a veil. She was excited about it, and all the gossip she’d got from the Frenchwoman, and she felt rather disappointed that Jack wasn’t more receptive.

  She had a couple of glasses of whisky after the meal and it went straight to her head. She could barely stand, and Jack helped her up to the room and into bed.

  ‘I think I’ll go out for a bit of a wander and see what’s going on,’ he said. ‘It’s too early for me to go to sleep. Sweet dreams.’

  Beth was woken abruptly in the morning by noise in the street below. But to her surprise she was alone in the bed. She got up and looked out of the window to see what the noise was about, only to see hundreds and hundreds of men with packs on their backs heading down to the landing stage.

  It was just like it had been two years ago in Vancouver, and she assumed Jack had slipped out quietly to watch. But when she looked back at the bed, it didn’t look as if he’d slept there. No indentation on the pillow, and the sheets and blankets were still tucked in on his side.

  Yet even more curious was that his new suit was hanging on the back of the chair, his best boots beside it. He must’ve come back here last night when she was asleep and changed into his old clothes.

  She looked in the closet and saw his bag of tools was gone too. Jack had always been a sucker for a hard luck story, and if someone had asked for his help last night, he would’ve found it hard to refuse. But what she didn’t understand was why, if he came back here for old clothes and his tools, he hadn’t either woken her to tell her where he was going or left her a note.

  She felt nauseous again, but decided that was due to hunger, and went downstairs to have some breakfast, hoping there might be a note from Jack at the reception desk.

  But there was no note, and she had to rush out of the dining room to be sick after just smelling the coffee.

  Back in the room, she sat by the open window looking down at the men trooping past the hotel, and suddenly her heart contracted with fear. Could Jack have left for Nome?

  That seemed an absurd thought, for he’d shown nothing more than amusement and curiosity about the gold strike. He’d even said that if prospecting for gold here was hard, it would be even worse there, for Nome was almost in the Arctic Circle.

  Yet a cold chill ran down her spine, for this whole town wouldn’t exist but for the irrationality and greed which gold brought out in men. She couldn’t even say that there was only one kind who would succumb to the lure of it, for she knew they came from every walk of life, and honest, decent men were far more common than crooks and swindlers.

  She also knew that how much money a man already had made no difference, for she’d seen men with fortunes lose it all at the turn of a card. Theo had his dream come true when he got the Golden Nugget, yet he’d sold it behind her back and disappeared with the money. Why should she think Jack was any different?

  She turned from the window and looked at the bed. They’d put the money
in a cloth bag under the mattress after they got it from the bank. Jack had only kept back about a thousand dollars, and five hundred of that he’d given to her. If the bag was gone, so was he, just like Theo.

  Shaking with nerves, she gingerly approached the bed and lifted the mattress. She slid her hand under it, but could feel nothing. An involuntary cry of despair came from deep within her. She ran her hands right round the bed, and on finding nothing, grabbed the mattress and tossed it on to the floor. But there was nothing beneath it, just the thin horsehair padding above the springs.

  The shock made her reel, for however much she had rationalized that Jack was no different to other men, in her heart she’d felt he could never do anything so low.

  He’d claimed he didn’t come here for the gold, only to be near her, and she’d believed that.

  The betrayal was too much to bear, far worse than what Theo had done, for she’d always known he was a wild card. But Honest Jack, the man she had trusted implicitly for so many years, her comforter, her friend, how could he do this to her?

  Sobbing hysterically, she flung herself down on to the bedding. She remembered how he’d pressed those five hundred dollars into her hands and said she couldn’t arrive in Vancouver looking like a pauper.

  The rat must have been planning his escape then, and only gave her that money to salve his conscience so she wouldn’t be utterly destitute.

  How could he do that to her?

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Beth lay crying on the heap of bedding for hours. As the tickets were still there on the dressing table it seemed obvious to her that Jack wanted her to leave on the boat in the morning. That way he’d be free to go with that deranged brotherhood of men who would rather spend their lives in stinking shacks in remote places, dreaming of finding gold, than have a wife and family who loved them.

  She relived the past few weeks, trying to see if she’d ignored something which might have been a hint that Jack wasn’t as deeply committed to her as she’d believed him to be.