THE SINGING OF THE DEAD
Kate Shugak 11
DANA STABENOW
Paperbacks
iii NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and
destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher
has received any payment for this "stripped book."
The SINGING OF THE DEAD
Copyright 2001 by Dana Stabenow.
Excerpt from A Fine and Bitter Snow copyright 2002 by Dana Stabenow.
Cover photo of sky and mountain Steven Nourse / Accent Alaska Cover
photo of wolf Sharon Walleen / Accent Alaska
Map by James Sinclair
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For
information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10010.
ISBN: 0312982887
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin's Press hardcover edition / May 2001 St. Martin's Paperbacks
edition / May 2002
Si. Martin's Paperbacks arc published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
iv This one is for
Carl Marrs-
high-school heartthrob,
long-time friend,
and the man who makes things happen.
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Angela Fiori of the Alaska State Archives Office in Juneau,
who disentombed the documents concerning the inquest into the death of
Mrs. William C. Harp, also known as Alice Astor and born Eugenie
Antionette Felicie Roussey, a real-life good-time girl who served as the
model for my own protagonist, and whose 1915 murder remains unsolved to
this day;
and to Lael Morgan, whose marvelous book, Good Time Girls of the
Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, first brought Alice and all of Alaska's early
working girls to my attention;
and to Pierre Berton, for writing what remains the best account ever of
the Klondike gold rush, The Klondike Fever.
vii
viii The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with
a dead girl or a live boy.
- Edwin Toms, governor of Louisiana
ix
x Birth Announcement
Melun, France
from the Melun Journal, 13 Juin 1875
nee a Leon Marc Louis Beauchamp et femme,
une jeune fille, Leonie Angelique Josephine Beauchamp
xi The
Dawson Darling's Alaska,
1897-1915
xii
THE SINGING OF THE DEAD
xiii
1
She walked out on stage wrapped in fifty yards of sheer white chiffon, a
pair of high-heeled shoes with jeweled buckles, and nothing else.
There was a second of stunned silence in the packed, smoky saloon,
before deafening and prolonged approval threatened to raise the roof.
She waited, a faint smile on her face, for the first roar to moderate
and pitched her voice to be heard. "Good evening, gentlemen, and welcome
to the Double Eagle's Christmas Eve auction." Her voice was husky, with
the slight hint of an accent she tried to control. She let her smile
broaden, giving it her special up-from-under and through-the-lashes
look, part Madonna, part whore, all woman, and added, "I'm the best
present you'll ever find under any Christmas tree you ever saw."
This time the stage literally trembled beneath her feet, and she gave a
fleeting thought to all the gold dust spilled on the floor this night,
now being shaken through the cracks in the floorboards. It wouldn't go
to waste. Japanese Jack and Big Ben Bentson would crawl beneath the
building the next morning to sweep it up and add it to the night's till.
Likely she wouldn't see her percentage, but at the moment she couldn't
allow herself to be distracted by that realization.
Big Ben was the owner and Japanese Jack the bartender of the Double
Eagle Saloon, doors open around the clock at the corner of Front and
York Streets in downtown, boom
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town, gold town Dawson City. The Double Eagle was the biggest building
in Dawson, the first to add on a second story. It had a long mahogany
bar that matched the mahogany wainscoting, eight mahogany gaming tables,
a polished brass footrail that matched the brass spittoons, large,
elaborate paintings of reclining nudes lit by tiered crystal
chandeliers, windows made of stained and beveled glass, and a dozen
rooms upstairs with thick carpets, many more mirrors, and furnished with
suites in the very latest style. A cleaning staff of a dozen kept the
place spotless, although they kept leaving to stake claims in the search
for their very own Eldorado.
They were all men, the cleaning staff. Women could do so much better,
selling dances for a dollar, a pint of champagne for eighteen dollars,
an hour in one of the rooms upstairs for considerably more. Big Ben got
fifty cents on the dance dollar, three-quarters of the price of the pint
of champagne, and she never told anyone what the split was on the third.
She had been headlining there for the past year, specializing on stage
in the Flame Dance that kept two hundred yards of chiffon in the air at
one time, and specializing in what one reporter called "the long, juicy
waltz" in the clubrooms upstairs. At the end of fourteen months, she had
twenty-seven thousand dollars in the bank. She was twenty- two years
old, although she admitted to nineteen, and it was her great good
fortune that she looked even younger than that. Most laboring men
Outside, of any age, were lucky to earn a dollar a day.
She could have kept working for years, especially here, where men
outnumbered women six and seven to one, but she had plans, big ones. One
more winter, one last contribution to her savings, and she would be
ready to move on.
She looked around the room, at the sea of faces upturned to her, and
felt that thrill of power she always felt at being the center of so much
concentrated male attention. The
3
chiffon began in a spiral of fabric at her ankles and finished up in a
graceful swath around her shoulders, the loose end draped over her bare
arm. So closely bound together were her feet that she could take only
tiny, mincing steps, which was just as well given the height of the
heels on her shoes, big Ben had wanted her to go barefoot, but she knew
what the heels did to the line of her legs, displaying their graceful
and well-turned length to best advantage, making a man imagine them
wrapped around his waist.
One miner had fought his way forward to the edge of the stage. He was
/> ragged, bearded, and smelled as if he hadn't bathed since the river
froze over. He looked hungry, and so very hopeless. She gave him a
special smile all his own, inviting everything, promising nothing. She
was a whore, but she was an honest whore. She gave value for money
received, so long as the money was received. That didn't mean she
couldn't be kind.
"It's going to be a long, cold, lonely winter, boys," she said, and
there was a shout of agreement. She walked down to center stage and out
onto the catwalk thrusting into the room, the little mincing steps
causing her breasts to shimmy. The tuft of hair at the vee of her legs
was a shadowy patch beneath the chiffon; she put a little extra into the
roll of her hips to underline just what was on the auction block that
evening.
"For me, too," she added, pouting, and they howled like wolves on the scent.
Again she felt the thrill, a flush of power that began somewhere low in
her belly and spread up her torso and down her limbs. A faint shine of
perspiration broke out over her skin, and a commensurate low, prowling
growl rose from the crowd. She performed a three-quarter turn and paused
to cast a roguish glance over her right shoulder. "We have a saying here
in the north country, boys. I know you've heard it. The odds are good,
but the goods are odd." She winked a violet eye at one man standing in
the. back.
4
watching her over a glass of Big Ben's watered-down whiskey. He was a
regular of hers, a banker who was as conservative with his own money as
he was acquisitive of others'. He hadn't liked the idea of his favorite
dance partner taking herself out of circulation for the entire winter,
but then he wouldn't be bidding this evening, either. She had no doubt
that he was ready to take her evening's earnings in deposit, however,
just as soon as it had been paid over and Big Ben's commission deducted.
She let one hand skim suggestively down her cocked hip, reminding him of
what he'd be missing. His eyes narrowed against the smoke of the cigar
clenched in his teeth, and she laughed her husky laugh. "I'm sure you'll
agree, these goods aren't the least bit odd."
Big Ben and Japanese Jack had been priming the bidders for the last week
with announcements of the auction, including tantalizing hints as to
exactly what skills and services the highest bid would bring. The flyers
were papered all over town and every claim from Log Cabin to Circle
City. The always needy miners of the Klondike had been quivering for
days at the prospect of the Dawson Darling dancing the slow, juicy waltz
just for them for six exquisite months. No one would notice the dark or
the cold with the Dawson Darling waiting in his bed.
"Here I am, gentlemen," she said. "It is generally held that my looks
are pleasing and that my figure is good." She waited for the chorus of
agreement and was not disappointed. "What are my terms?"
She tossed the end of chiffon over her shoulder, where it trailed behind
her like the train of a wedding dress as she walked Down stage again.
She came to the end of the catwalk and met the fierce blue eyes of a
tall blond man standing near the double doors. In a room full of men who
wanted her without reservation, the biting intensity of his look gave
her pause, but she rallied and held his gaze, a definite challenge in
her own. "Terms? Well, I'm willing to
5
sell myself tonight to the highest bidder, to act as his wife in word- "
she paused, delicately "-and in deed- " there was another roar "-for the
next six months, from this night, December 25th, until June 25th."
"Start the bidding!" yelled one man who had yet to look above her chin.
"Yeah, stop talking and start bidding!"
"But," she said, raising one white, well-tended hand without breaking
away from the stare of the blue-eyed stranger, "I reserve the right to
accept the next lowest bidder if I do not like the highest." Her eyes
lingered on the Greek, who looked at her out of cold, acquisitive eyes
that held no lust for her personally, only for the money she could make
him when he put her to work in one of his cribs.
"You'll like me all right!" someone yelled.
"The man who buys me must provide a decent cabin and a good stock of
food. I'll cook for him, and I'll clean for him, and I'll-" she paused
"-dance for him," and again, she was forced to wait for the noise to
subside.
"But understand this," she said, smile vanishing, and there was
something in her expression that caused all comment to pause. "The man
who buys me, and lifts a hand to me ..."
"I'd like to see him try!"
"We'd fix him for you, Darling, never you worry!"
She waited, and then repeated, "The man who buys me, and lifts a hand to
me, will have attended his last auction on this earth. Am I understood?"
She looked at the Greek, whose calculating expression didn't change. She
waited long enough for her words to sink in, and smiled again to take
the sting out of them. "You'll want to know, she said, dropping her
voice, "I'm not exactly an iceberg." She turned, contriving so that the
top fold of chiffon covering her breasts slipped down to be caught and
held, barely, by her nipples.
6
No one looking at her doubted that she was telling anything but the
absolute truth.
Into the dead silence that had fallen, she said softly, "So here. I am,
boys. Ready and willing." She smiled, making a slow, graceful pirouette,
caressing the faces in the crowd with a warm, welcoming gaze. "What are
you waiting for?"
Big Ben had a hard time getting them quieted down after that. The
bidding opened at one thousand. It was at five thousand thirty seconds
later, offered by a squat, dark man with a matted bush of greasy hair
and a mouthful of rotted teeth. She repressed a shudder and paraded down
the catwalk again. "Now, boys," she said, laughing, "that last bid was
only five thousand. Aren't you going any higher than that?" She paused
at the edge of the catwalk and put up a hand to the thick auburn hair
tucked into a graceful swirl. When the hand came down, it traced an
invisible line from throat to breast to waist, to settle again on her hip.
"Sure, girlie," called out an Irishman with a handlebar mustache and a
white, wide-brimmed hat, "I was only waiting for the pikers to drop out.
Ten thousand, and that's only two days' cleanup on my claim!"
"Twelve!" the squat man growled.
"Thirteen!" yelled a man in spectacles and bib overalls with a watch
chain made from gold nuggets hanging from the front pocket.
"Fifteen," the Greek said, his voice as flat as his eyes. There was
neither lust nor longing in his tone, only a look that calculated how
much she could earn for him when he turned her out. She repressed a
shiver, and reminded herself that she had right of first refusal.
"Sixteen," the banker snapped. She met his eyes, startled. He shrugged.
She couldn't help it. She laughed. "Sixteen," he repeated, looking
faintly irritated at the sound of the
word forced out of his own mouth.
"Seventeen," a new voice boomed, and she looked up to lock eyes again
with the tall blond man at the door.
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Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 11 - The Singing Of The Dead Page 1
