by Vicki Delany
“Swallow it down in one gulp,” Ray instructed. “Make you feel better, it will.”
It was probably the first free drink ever handed out in my bar, at least to someone who wasn’t expected to turn a handsome profit in exchange.
“I’m not feeling too well, Ma,” Angus said, his eyes fixed on the bottle in Ray’s hand.
I ignored him. “So this pack of insidious lies has been sent to some seditious rag in San Francisco.” I thrust the crumpled paper into Helen’s hand, the one not holding the now-empty glass. “Burn it and forget about it. If a copy of the paper gets to Dawson, which is highly unlikely, no one will recognize us. He doesn’t name the Savoy, he doesn’t get my name right, and everyone in town knows that I run a respectable business, so why do we care what this Ireland idiot says?”
Helen reached behind her and slammed the glass on the counter. “Mrs. MacGillivray, he’s insulted my good name. An’ the name of my Jim, God rest his soul, an’ my children. My Mary’ll be of marrying age soon enough. No decent man’ll want her after reading these lies.” Her eyes filled with tears. Ray patted her arm.
I thought that a moot point. Mary was twelve, the same age as Angus, and decent men were sparse on the ground in Dawson.
“Take the remainder of the day off, Helen,” I said. “Go home. Try to relax.”
The room erupted.
“But, Ma...” Angus shouted.
“Really, Mrs. MacGillivray,” Hamilton spluttered.
“Fiona, you can’t just brush this off. Poor Helen…” Graham said.
Helen burst into loud sobs.
“Shut up, all o’ ye!” Ray bellowed. “Fee’s right. Letter’s gone, right, Joe?”
Hamilton nodded furiously. “I saw the boat leave myself. Not more than an hour ago.”
“Nothin’ we can do about that then.”
Helen groaned and sagged against the bar. Donohue fetched a stool and eased her into it, and Ray poured another shot. Angus tossed me an imploring look.
My son believes that I can do anything. But flying off in pursuit of a steamship sailing up the Yukon River and catching it is beyond even me. I looked at him and shrugged.
“But,” Ray said, “we can watch out for the San Francisco Standard, now can’t we?” He looked at Graham. Graham opened his mouth, probably to protest that he could hardly confiscate every copy of the paper once it arrived.
Ray threw him a look. Wisely, Graham took the hint. “Of course we can. Look here, Helen, the moment that paper comes to town, I’ll buy up every copy and burn them myself.”
She looked up from her sodden handkerchief. Her eyes were red, her nose swollen with crying, and her cheeks had broken out in patches of a hideous colour. “Would you do that, Mr. Donohue? For me?”
I took her arm and helped her out of her chair. “Mr. Donohue has enormous influence in this town, Helen, as do I. We’ll ensure that Ireland’s lies aren’t spread about Dawson. And if you are besmirched in San Francisco, what does it matter? You must admit that Helen Saunderson could well be the name of a hundred, a thousand, other women, couldn’t it?”
She noisily blew her nose and smiled at me. Helen rarely smiled a full open-mouthed smile, so conscious was she of her missing teeth. And so little did she have to smile about. It subtracted ten years from her work- and worrylined face.
“You’re right, Mrs. Mac. If you can bear the insult to your good name, then I can too.”
Fortunately, no one bothered to remind Helen that my “good” name hadn’t even been mentioned.
“What’s this then?” A voice sounded from the door. “I thought you were closed at this time of day, Mrs. MacGillivray?” Constable Richard Sterling strode into the saloon.
I stifled a groan. Like all the dance hall owners in Dawson, I didn’t know whether to curse the efficiency of the NWMP for keeping us tightly under their law-enforcing thumb, or praise them for keeping the rest of the town, especially our customers, equally in line.
“You know it’s my business what hours I keep in my establishment, Constable. Apart from respecting the Lord’s Day, of course.”
“Of course.”
In my less, shall we say, self-controlled past, I would have found Richard Sterling to be an extremely attractive man. He was tall, well over six feet, with a fit to the scarlet tunic of his uniform that hinted at the bulk of the shoulders underneath. His brown eyes were thickly lashed and specked with yellow, along with intelligence and humour. Prominent cheekbones framed his face, and his mouth was so wide and his lips so full that they were almost, but not quite, feminine. I’d never seen him without his broad-brimmed NWMP hat, but once I’d caught the briefest glimpse of dark curls tumbling over themselves at the back of his neck. The next day he’d had a haircut, and all the lovely curls were gone. He spoke well, which indicated some education in his past. A quality that I am constantly trying to drum into my son.
“This is none of your concern, Constable,” Ray said.
Sterling lifted one eyebrow. “Mrs. Saunderson, are you in need of assistance?”
“Now see here.” Graham Donohue stepped forward. The hair on his head bristled, and I’m sure that if he had hair on his chest (a fact that I am not in the position to know—someday perhaps), it would have been standing up as well. “Mrs. Saunderson has received some bad news. The nature of which is none of your business.”
“Everything that happens in the public places, and some of the private ones, of Dawson is the business of Her Majesty’s North-West Mounted Police,” Sterling said.
His tone was so pompous that I choked back a laugh.
Angus applauded, almost falling off his chair in approval of his hero’s brief speech. “Well said, sir.”
Ray watched me, waiting for a clue. I nodded and looked towards Helen.
My partner lifted her arm. “Allow me to walk ye home, dear.”
“You take the rest of the day off, Helen,” I said.
“With full pay, o’ course,” Ray added. Graham and Sterling looked at me, waiting for a reaction. Hamilton clutched his hat to his chest and stared at me wide-eyed, looking as if he were ready to recommend me for sainthood. Angus watched Sterling.
“Thank you, Mrs. MacGillivray. That’s mighty thoughtful of you.” Helen opened her hand, and the scrap of paper fell to the floor. She permitted Ray to help her off her chair, and took his arm. “Haven’t I always said the Savoy is the best place to work in all of Dawson?”
I choked back an objection. Feeling generous, I’d been about to offer her half-pay for the day off. Instead, I forced out a smile and wiggled my fingers in farewell.
The door swung shut behind them. Sterling picked the letter off the floor. He made a big show of smoothing it out before reading it. “Nasty.”
“All lies.” “Don’t you think I’d know, Mrs. MacGillivray, if you were running a whorehouse in this town?”
Angus momentarily forgot that this man was his hero. He stepped off his stool and puffed up his chest. “Please, Constable. Control your language in the presence of my mother.”
Sterling and I exchanged a look, both of us stifling an inappropriate burst of laughter. I’d been on the verge of reprimanding the constable for saying “whorehouse” in my son’s hearing.
“That was most inappropriate. Please accept my apology, Angus.”
My son sat back down. A slice of toast with a thin scraping of butter and a single bite taken out of it lay on the table in front of him. He mumbled something and returned to his cold food, trying to hide his embarrassment.
We don’t have a kitchen per se in the Savoy—this most certainly isn’t a restaurant. But when punters on a losing streak feel the need to break for food, Helen, or one of the bartenders if she’s not here, can whip up something quick enough. Beside the wood stove in the pokey back room that doubles as a broom closet, we keep a kettle and a few cups and plates, a frying pan and toasting fork and supplies of potatoes, bacon, beans, jam, bread, tea and canned milk.
Helen pushes food on a not-at-all-
resisting Angus whenever he shows up.
“I’d better get back to the docks,” Hamilton mumbled. “There might be something important requiring my attention.”
“Fiona.” Graham glared at me and tossed his head towards Hamilton, heading reluctantly towards the door.
“Mr. Hamilton,” I called, in my lightest, friendliest voice. “Thank you so much for bringing that unfortunate letter to my…our…attention.”
The man plopped his tortured hat onto his head and turned the full force of his smile onto me. His teeth were badly stained, and several were broken almost to the gum line. “My pleasure, Mrs. MacGillivray. My pleasure.” The smell of rotten teeth and the remains of breakfast wafted towards me.
“Offer him something,” Graham whispered.
I ignored him. I can be gracious without anyone’s help, thank you very much. “If you’ll drop by this evening, Mr. Hamilton, perhaps around nine, Mr. Walker and I will be happy to offer you the hospitality of the Savoy.”
He almost fainted, the poor man. Barely recovering his equilibrium, he backed out the door, bowing and scraping like a eunuch at the Sultan’s court.
Graham laughed and slapped my arm. If an officer of the law hadn’t been present, I would have slapped him back, right enough. “Now that I’ve done my good deed for the day, I’ll be off. See you later, Fiona, Constable.”
Sterling touched the brim of his hat. His eyes had far too much spark in them to be accounted for by the thin northern sunlight pouring in through the dirt-encrusted, narrow windows of my seedy bar. “Mrs. MacGillivray. Angus.” He followed Graham out.
“That was nice of you, Ma,” Angus said. “To invite Mr. Hamilton to stop by.”
I turned on him. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t—call—me—Ma.”
Angus tossed back the last piece of toast. “Everyone says that.”
“Well, you won’t. It’s…it’s…uncouth. Lower class. Even well-bred Canadians don’t talk like that. Do you hear me?”
He shrugged and bounced off his stool. I grabbed my son by the front of his shirt. “Do you hear me, Angus MacGillivray?”
For a slice of time he loomed over me, dark and threatening. I saw his father in his face, and I released the shirt and stepped back, my heart pounding with emotions spinning out of control. But my son’s eyes looked back at me, filled with a deep blue that, until I saw the open sea for the first time, I had only ever seen in my own father’s face. They shone without malice, without lust, loving and innocent. As my father’s eyes had always looked.
And still did, in my dreams. I buried my head in my hands. Angus touched my shoulder, lightly. “I’m sorry, Mother.”
I brushed away the tears, pushed aside the curtains of memory, and smiled at my son. “Perhaps you could drop by Mrs. Saunderson’s place later. See if she needs any help with the children.”
“Certainly, Mother.” He walked out the door, from the back looking exactly like a man, albeit a skinny one.
Out on the street, a wagon driver shouted at his horses to get themselves out of the mud, a woman yelled that she’d been cheated, and a couple of drunks called to my boy asking if this place was open. Most of the houses of entertainment in Dawson operate twenty-four hours a day, but when Ray and I first bought the business (my share coming from the last of the money from the sale of some stolen jewellery), I’d insisted on more civilized arrangements.
I like to keep an eye on my property and can’t do so all hours of the day and night. At the Savoy, the bar and the gambling rooms shut down when the dance hall closes at six in the morning, and they open again for business at ten.
We never seem to have trouble drawing the customers back, although I’d been warned that once out the door, they wouldn’t return.
I pulled my watch out of the folds of my dress. Ten o’clock, and no one here to serve bar.
“Mornin’, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Sam Collins walked through the doors. “Nice day out. Hope it don’t keep the customers away, eh?”
“Good morning. It seems that nothing keeps the customers from our door. Ray’s running an errand; he’ll be back soon. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
Angus chafed at my insistence that he speak properly at all times. Who in Dawson, other than the odd toff and women such as me, trying to keep themselves respectable, bothered with how anyone spoke? Some of the richest men in town could barely string an intelligible sentence together. And some of the educated ones, such as Joe Hamilton, judging by his speech and handwriting, couldn’t afford to have a rip in their coat pocket repaired or enough hot water for a bath.
In all of this wild, untamed town, dropped down just a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle, where the only thing that anyone cared about was the amount of gold in a man’s pocket, never mind how it got there, the way my son spoke mattered only to me. But no one knew better than I the importance of education and proper speech.
I climbed the stairs, sat at my desk, settled my skirts around me, picked up my pen, opened the big ledger, and began to do calculations.
I’d told Sam to let me know if Jack Ireland came in. Time, I thought, to have a quiet word with the newspaperman.
Chapter Seven
Men were pouring into the Savoy when I set off for home to have the evening meal with Angus. I stood on the step to catch my breath. It had been a fine day, warm and sunny, but the wind was picking up.
Joey LeBlanc strolled down the centre of the street, not bothering with the boardwalk or duckboards, the hem of her ragged skirt dragging through the mud. She looked me straight in the eye, and her lip turned up in a sneer, which didn’t bother me in the least. I’ve crawled my way up in the world, and more than a few times I’ve acted outside of the law without caring a fig, but I never deliberately hurt anyone who had even less than I in order to ease my way. Joey might look like a slightly-better-dressed Whitechapel street urchin, but her heart (if she owned such a thing) was as black as a Yukon winter’s night. Rumour said that she’d killed her husband in a knife fight in St. Louis after he damaged a piece of the merchandise.
“Nice evening, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Sam Collins came out of the Savoy to stand beside me as I watched Joey pick her way through the mud. He was heading home for supper with his wife, Margaret, as he did every evening.
“It’s going to be busy tonight.” “Yes, ma’am.” He scratched his nose. Like many of the bartenders in Dawson, Sam had grown his fingernails long, so that when he weighed the gold dust in the scales set up on the velvet cloth on the mahogany counter, the residue could collect under his nails. At the end of the night, he might, and often did, scrape a handsome profit out of his own fingernails.
We stood together, enjoying the fresh air of the early evening.
“Strange town, this,” Sam said.
I stretched my arms wide and turned my face to the sun. “Can you think of anywhere you’d rather be?” And for sure, I couldn’t: this was the most thrilling, intoxicating place I had ever been. The very air breathed adventure and excitement, gold, and the chance to win—or lose—a fortune by nothing but the strength and courage of one’s own wits. Along with a goodly portion of luck.
“Yes.” His eyes were dark and serious, although I’d meant the question rhetorically. Sam always seemed so serious, but even more than usual in the last day or so.
I opened my mouth to ask him if everything was all right. Perhaps his wife was ill or begging to leave the Yukon. Things were hard for everyone here, but for people of their age?
I never said the words.
The building a couple of doors down, with the walls sagging inwards and the wooden slats on the roof already lifting off, called itself a bakery. Which was pushing the definition of the word, as they sold nothing but waffles at twenty-five cents each, along with coffee. As Sam and I stood in the pleasant evening sun, talking about nothing of consequence, the front door of the bakery blew out in a wall of flame.
Chapter Eight
A screaming woman ran out o
f the bakery and into the street. Greedy flames fed off the air blowing though the loose fabric of her skirts.
No one moved. Everyone of us stood rooted to the spot with shock. The woman’s arms windmilled around and around, as if she were trying to swim through the air. Her mouth formed a dark “O”, and her eyes were wide with terror. Flames licked up the back of her dress and, as I watched, ignited her long hair, come loose from its pins in the initial blast.
A blur of movement crossed the corner of my vision, and the burning woman was knocked off her feet. She fell face first into the wet, sticky mud. Richard Sterling struggled to his knees; he’d lost his hat and mud caked his face and uniform.
“Roll, roll!” he yelled. “Roll, roll!” the crowd screamed. And she did, twisting and turning in the mud like a monster dragged out of a bedtime story to scare a mischievous child into instant obedience. So wet was the street, the fire was soon extinguished.
The crowd moved forward, all ready to cheer, offer a helping hand, have a drink in celebration. A fire was nothing unusual in Dawson, what with wooden buildings hastily constructed and lit by candles and cheap lamps.
Half of the bakery roof collapsed, and flames spat from the single front window. The woman, her face streaked with mud, her hair and dress half burned away, her eyes white and wild, her face as red as my best dress, shrieked and pointed. “My sister! She’s inside! Anna Marie!”
As one, we turned towards the bakery. People were running in all directions, some coming to help or watch the excitement, others running away. Horses screamed with panic, and one pathetically scrawny wretch made a run for it, his owner hanging half out of the cart, sawing at the reins. A shouting Mountie tried to organize men to ferry buckets of water from the river.
I stepped off the duckboard.
Sam Collins knocked me to one side. I kept myself from falling face first into the mud only by reaching out with my left wrist before my knees hit the ground. Pain shot up my arm, my legs buckled, and I screamed. From all sides, men rushed to offer me assistance. Cursing and swearing, I pushed them out of the way and struggled to my feet. Mud clung to my dress, trying to pull me back down.
