by Janet Dailey
Glory screamed as loud as she could, doubting that she would be heard above the growing fury of the storm raging outside. Too quickly he choked off her cries. Kicking and struggling, she clawed at his face, ripping his skin with her fingernails and trying to gouge out his eyes. Her efforts succeeded in preventing him from tightening the stranglehold of his hands and choking off all her breath, but her lungs already felt like they were going to burst. Glory knew she couldn’t hold him off much longer. If only she had a weapon—something—anything to hit him with, but there was nothing at hand.
Her strength was rapidly waning. She felt herself slipping into the blackening mists of unconsciousness and tried to fight it. Suddenly she was free of his hands. With the first gulp of air, she started coughing. She grabbed hold of her throat and dragged herself over to the nightstand by the bed, intent on getting the pistol she kept in the drawer. She looked to see where Gabe was, but it was Deacon she saw standing by the bed. Gabe was just pushing away from the side wall, his left hand rubbing his jaw.
“Are you all right, Glory?” Deacon turned to her just as she saw Gabe reach inside his jacket and pull out a revolver.
“Look out! He’s got a gun.”
Deacon spun around. The spring-action derringer jumped into his hand from its hidden sleeve holster. Before he could aim, Glory saw yellow flame leap from the muzzle of Gabe’s gun and a deafening explosion rent the air. Deacon jerked and grabbed at his right arm. The derringer went off, the bullet going harmlessly through the ceiling.
“No!” Glory scrambled off the bed.
She grabbed the pearl-handled pistol out of the drawer and used both hands to point it at Gabe. She squeezed the trigger, shutting her eyes at the thunderous report as the gun bucked in her hand. The shot went wild, striking the wall several feet from him. Shock was in his expression as Glory struggled to cock the hammer. He bolted from the room.
Deacon was on his knees near the bed, his left hand gripping his right arm near the elbow. His face was twisted in pain as he sucked in air through his teeth. Glory hurried to his side, forgetting for the moment the fleeing Gabe and her own aches and bruises. She took one look at the crimson blood seeping through his fingers and streaming down the back of his left hand, and ran to the door.
“Matty!” She shouted. “Come here! Quick!” She went back to Deacon. Her hands were shaking as she tore a strip of material from the hem of her gown. “We’ve got to stop the bleeding.” She tied the cloth around his upper arm above the wound and retrieved a coffee spoon from the service tray to twist the cloth tighter, fashioning a tourniquet.
“Your face,” Deacon murmured.
His remark made her conscious of her swollen lip and the blood that trickled from the cut—and half a hundred other throbbing places. “I’m all right,” she assured him. Her injuries seemed extremely minor compared to his.
“I came upstairs to tell you the storm’s getting worse.” His voice was husky with pain. “Feel the building rock? That’s the waves hitting it. Others along the street are trying to anchor theirs down. We need to do the same. In the meantime, we better get everybody out and save what we can. Glory”—he paused and she could hear the roughness of his breath—“what happened up here? Blackwood looked like a madman.”
“Sssh, don’t talk.” The pallor in his face frightened her. “I’ll tell you later.” She heard Matty’s footsteps in the hallway outside and glanced at the open door as the woman appeared. “Deacon’s been shot. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Deacon said.
She couldn’t bring herself to answer him. It wasn’t a fatal wound by any means. She doubted that he was in any danger of bleeding to death. But she’d noticed the little bone chips when she’d bandaged it. She was afraid the bullet had shattered the elbow. If it had, his right arm might be permanently crippled. And Deacon was a professional gambler.
Glory donned a long raincoat and a pair of galoshes while Matty fashioned a sling for Deacon’s arm and helped him into one sleeve of his rain slicker. As they started to leave the room, Glory picked up the gun she’d dropped on the floor and stuffed it in her coat pocket, rather than take the time to return it to the drawer.
The minute they stepped outside the front door of the Palace, the gale-force winds slammed into them. Debris was flying everywhere. Water flooded the street as the storm lashed the shallow Bering Sea into a fury and drove it ashore. There was hardly a tent anywhere still standing. Some of the flimsier wooden structures on the beach side of Front Street were collapsing, unable to withstand the powerful battering by the sea. A larger, stronger building had been moved off its foundation. Several men were frantically at work trying to anchor it down.
As they attempted to cross the flooded street, fighting the gale winds that tried to flatten them, Glory realized this was no ordinary equinoctial storm. Its destructive force was beyond anything the city of Nome had seen before. Before leaving the Palace, she had passed on Deacon’s recommendation to Oliver to evacuate everyone and save what he could. Now she was glad she had.
Anything that wasn’t securely nailed down was either flying or floating. As they climbed onto the planked boardwalk on the other side of the street, a large barrel nearly rolled them down. Deacon’s features showed the pain that not even his iron command of expression could conceal. Glory realized how far they had to go to reach the doctor’s office. In this storm, it would be an ordeal for him.
“The hospital!” she shouted to make herself heard above the roar of the wind and the sea. It was closer, only a couple blocks. Matty nodded her understanding, and they changed directions, the two of them flanking Deacon.
Within minutes, Glory was soaked to the skin, her clothes plastered to her body, water running into her boots. All her attention was centered on staying upright in the seventy-five-mile-an-hour wind and dodging the flying scraps of wooden crates and pieces of roofs.
A block from their destination, Glory saw a man emerge from a small office and start toward them, hugging the walls of the buildings for support. He had some sort of satchel clutched to his chest as he staggered forward, hunched over to battle the wind. A split second later, Glory recognized Gabe, even though she couldn’t see his face clearly. Suddenly, she could feel the sensation of his hands on her throat. The rage and terror she’d felt resurfaced. He would pay for what he’d done.
As she moved away from Deacon, Matty started to pause. “Go!” Glory motioned for her to continue. Deacon said something, but the storm carried away his words. Glory knew she wouldn’t have heeded them anyway.
When Gabe recognized her, he stopped and looked wildly around. She remembered the gun in her pocket and searched the opening in the wet cloth, never taking her gaze off Gabe as she continued forward, constantly buffeted by the wind. At last her fingers located the wet, slick metal, and she pulled it free of the material. She had no conscious intention of killing him. She just wanted to make him pay and it wasn’t really clear in her mind what that meant.
Something smashed into a window a few feet in front of her. She lifted her arms to protect her face from the flying glass revealing the gun in her hand. He started to retreat, then abruptly charged into the mud- and water-logged street, awash with floating debris. Glory waded into the street after him, angling on a course to intercept him, but it was hard going with her wet skirts constantly tangling around her legs. She was conscious that he was laboring too, handicapped by his age and the strain of all his recent exertion.
In the middle of the street, he halted and dropped the satchel, then fumbled for something inside his coat. He pulled out the revolver. Glory hesitated, then saw a sheet of tin come flying through the air and striking his arm. It knocked the gun from his hand into the muddy soup near his feet. He started to search for it, then apparently thought better of it, and began running, staggering and stumbling through the muck. Lifting her skirts, Glory hurried after him.
The buildings on the opposite side of the street off
ered partial shelter from the howling wind. Glory scrambled onto the sidewalk’s slippery boards and chased after Gabe. He ducked between two buildings just ahead of her. Afraid of losing him, she sprinted to close the distance.
When she rounded the corner, he had just turned back, the inrushing sea blocking that avenue of escape. There was no place left for him to run. He was trapped. He stood facing her. Slowly, brokenly, he shook his head in some silent denial.
“I’m not my mother.” The wind whipped away her words. She raised the pistol and stared at the sodden, bedraggled, pathetic-looking old man.
Something distracted her, a roar that seemed louder. Her gaze lifted. In shock, she stared at the monstrous breaker rising above him. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t speak. She watched in horror as the towering wave smashed into the rear of the buildings on either side and came crashing down on Gabe, swallowing him up.
A second later, the flood wave was sweeping into her. She tried to reach the relative protection of the building, then grabbed hold of the corner, clawing frantically to keep the sucking water from dragging her out to sea. The force of the wave lifted the building up and pushed it forward. Glory nearly lost her grip, but she managed to hang on. As soon as she regained her footing, she staggered into the street to escape the next breaker.
Someone saw her and rushed to help her to safety. Glory looked back once. There was nothing but debris and surging water in the place where she’d last seen Gabe.
The storm raged on, not reaching its peak until that night. Tents by the thousands were ripped apart and blown away. All mining equipment on the beach was demolished and carried out to sea. Four ships, including the mammoth barge Skookum, broke apart in the savage surf. Nearly half of Nome’s business district, virtually every building on the beach side of Front Street, was destroyed, including Ryan Colby’s Double Eagle saloon. Colby himself was missing and presumed drowned. Many lives were lost, but there was no accurate estimate of the number. Soldiers and looters were out in force.
Nothing was left of the Palace except kindling wood. An eyewitness told Glory that the waves had picked it up and smashed it into the building across the street. The girls had thoughtfully grabbed some of her clothes, and Oliver had rescued a few of the more valuable items before they’d fled the storm. Everything else was gone.
As for Deacon, Gabe’s bullet hadn’t shattered the elbow joint as Glory had feared, but it had chipped the bone and damaged a main trunk nerve. The latter was the cause of his excruciating pain that only regular dosages of morphine could dull. The doctor wouldn’t speculate on how much the nerve would heal.
Like thousands of others in Nome, they were homeless. Roughly fifteen thousand people left Alaska for the states that autumn, many of them penniless. But Glory, Deacon, and Matty stayed on, and Glory started rebuilding the Palace, but this time not on the beachfront.
On the fifteenth of October, two deputy marshals from California arrested Alexander Mackenzie on felony charges and transported him on the last ship leaving Nome to San Francisco for trial. Glory almost wished Gabe was alive to see his grand dream dissolve.
CHAPTER L
That winter, Glory discovered she was pregnant. Within minutes after the doctor had confirmed her suspicion, she knew exactly what she was going to do. She would have the child and raise it herself, regardless of the complications he—or she—might create in her life. She had grown up knowing her father hadn’t wanted her, that he would have gotten rid of her if the choice had been his to make. Her mother had loved her, but that had never fully compensated for the feeling of rejection she had known. Now a life was inside her, and she wasn’t going to reject it.
When Deacon learned of her decision, he insisted they be married. His wound had healed, but the damaged nerve hadn’t. He had the full use of his hand and arm, but he’d lost most of the sensation. The sharp, tingling pain stayed with him. More and more he had come to rely on morphine to help him make it through the day.
But he cared for her. Of that, Glory had no doubt. And she had grown to care very much for him. It was love—of a kind—perhaps stronger than the romantic kind she had once dreamed about. His days as a professional gambler were over. While he could still play cards and deal hands, he couldn’t handle the holdouts, slip in the cold decks, or recognize the strippers any more—because of the accident, because of her. Glory felt responsible for that, but she also felt she owed him so much more.
On February 11, 1901, the same day that Alexander Mackenzie was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison in California, Glory married Robert “Deacon” Cole. When the spring thaw came, they built a small house with gingerbread trim a few blocks from the new Palace. In her condition, Glory could do no more than supervise, and she left much of the running of the business to Deacon and Matty.
Summer didn’t bring a horde of gold seekers to the beaches of Nome. The sand had played out. More than two million dollars in gold had been taken from it. Now it was gone. And the city’s economy had to rely on the inland mines, which was no great hardship, since they were rich and productive. The first ship to arrive that summer brought the news that President McKinley had pardoned Mackenzie on the grounds that his health was “too feeble” for him to serve the remainder of his prison term. The reports also added that the supposedly ailing Mackenzie had been seen sprinting to catch the train out of Oakland. It seemed to Glory that Gabe had been right, after all, about Mackenzie’s connections in high places.
In July, Glory gave birth to a seven-pound boy. Deacon stood beside her bed, the red-faced infant lying in the cradle of his good right arm. Propped up by a half dozen pillows, Glory watched him gaze at the sleeping baby.
“Glory,” Deacon murmured, “I do believe that we’ve been dealt an ace.”
That’s what they named him—Ace Matthew Cole—the Matthew after Matty, the other person who was dearest to her. Between the three of them, they managed to spoil him outrageously, but Ace was the happy kind of baby who was easy to spoil. Glory was so content with her new family and new life that it didn’t seem to matter at all when she heard that the widow Mrs. Sarah Porter who ran a popular boardinghouse in Nome had married Justin Sinclair.
That summer the city council outlawed both gambling and prostitution, but both enterprises flourished openly. The vast majority of the townspeople were not ready to give up their vices. That same summer the streets of Nome were planked with boards three inches thick and a foot wide. Glory and Deacon were able to take Ace out in his baby carriage without getting the wheels mired in the mud.
The following year, Glory went back to work at the Palace full time and left Matty to look after Ace. The times were good those first few years after Ace was born. While the profits they made never did come close to equaling what they had earned during the wild years of the gold rush, they were enough for Glory to hire a Chinese cook, Chou Ling, to fix their meals at home; and to install a piano in the parlor and import crystal and china for their dinner table. If Deacon disappeared more frequently now into the back office at the Palace where he kept his supply of morphine, Glory tried not to notice. After all, how much pain could she expect him to tolerate without seeking some relief?
On the night of September 12, 1905, exactly five years to the day of the disastrous storm, Deacon staged a prizefight at the Palace—illegally, since prizefighting, like gambling and prostitution, was outlawed. People forked over the gate fee just the same and jammed inside to see the sixteen-round fight between the Waco Kid and Bruiser McGee. Every available inch of space was taken as the men crowded around the makeshift ring erected in the center of the Palace and bet their money on their favorite.
Once the bell rang to start the opening round, the shouting never stopped. The excitement was contagious, yet Glory didn’t find much pleasure in watching the two bare-chested men in short boxing trunks beat each other to a pulp. Admittedly, she didn’t know an uppercut from a kidney blow, but the blood-splattered spectacle of the two men was enough to convince her o
f the utter brutality of the sport. She was glad she’d insisted on having the Persian carpet taken up when she saw the blood-smeared floor of the ring. Actually she had more fun watching Oliver on the sidelines, punching and jabbing, bobbing and weaving, as if he was in some imaginary fight himself.
The favorite, Bruiser McGee, was knocked out in the fourteenth round, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind as they bellied up to the bar. They seemed satisfied that they’d seen a good fight, even though most of them suspected it had been fixed. Actually it had been, but Glory didn’t admit that to any of the customers as she circulated and encouraged them to drink.
Fights were a drawing card to bring in business. Tonight the crowd stayed until well after midnight, drinking and gambling and generally having a good time. Sometime after three in the morning, it started to quiet down. Glory wandered over to the bar.
“What’ll ya have?” Paddy smiled at her while continuing to polish dry the glass in his hand.
“Coffee, if there is any.” She leaned tiredly on the counter. A little smile stole over her mouth as she thought of her sandy-haired blue-eyed boy, picturing him asleep in his bed, innocent and beautiful as only a child can be.
Deacon came up and stood beside her. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” She carefully didn’t ask where he’d been the last hour or so. “It’s been a good night.”
“A very good night.” He sounded so fresh and chipper.
Glory suddenly noticed the changes in him, changes that had come about so slowly. He’d lost weight, she knew, but she hadn’t realized how thin he was until now. His skin looked pale. His eyes weren’t the same. They didn’t have that sharpness, as if they were permanently dulled by pain or drugs. She remembered the old Deacon and wanted to cry.
Suddenly, from the street came the clang of a fire bell, followed by shouts of alarm. For an instant she stood staring at the door. Those closest to it went outside to take a look.
