Gypsy (48 page)

Jack couldn’t find an answer to that, but he stayed all evening and held her, letting her spill out all her grief. When it grew darker, thousands of fireworks were let off and they stood outside the tent watching them together. But the fierce noise from the fireworks wasn’t enough for the revellers in the town; they fired rifles and made huge explosions with dynamite, too. The town dogs were so frightened they swam across the Yukon to Louse Town in one long streak to escape.

Beth hated everyone for celebrating while she was so desperately unhappy, and she wouldn’t even allow Jack to persuade her to put on a pretty dress and go and play at the Monte Carlo. ‘I’ll never play again,’ she vowed.

Since Independence Day, Beth had hardly set foot outside the tent, preferring to lie there feeling bitter and hurt. Jack and Theo had been working long hours on the saloon, and although Jack had tried many times to persuade her to come down and see how the work was progressing, or to go back to the Monte Carlo to play, Theo had said little on the subject until today.

‘You
have
got someone left, there’s Jack and me,’ Theo said wearily. ‘The saloon is finished, so we can move in tomorrow. But you haven’t even been to see it.’

‘I don’t care about it. I don’t care about anything,’ Beth sobbed. ‘I left Molly with the Langworthys because I thought she’d have a good life with them, but she still got sick and died. Maybe if I’d stayed with her she’d be alive now.’

‘It’s foolish to say such things,’ Theo replied, his voice softening. He sat down beside her on the floor of the tent and wiped her tears from her face with his handkerchief. ‘It was fate, just as Sam’s death was too. I don’t believe we can change our destiny, whatever we do. But you can’t stay here moping for ever, that won’t make it better. If you put your energy into turning our new place into a home, it will take your mind off Molly. So come with me now and look around. Jack was going to put the name up today. We’ve decided to call it the Golden Nugget.’

Beth was tempted to refuse, but in her heart she knew everything he’d said was right, and staying in the tent wallowing in grief wasn’t going to make anything better. So reluctantly she got up, found a comb and ran it through her hair.

Theo patted her on the shoulder in approval. ‘You can have a bath tonight if you want. Jack managed to get the boiler going. Imagine that, sweetheart, a real bath, we’ll be the envy of everyone else in town. That is, if you don’t run out on us and take the steamer back to Vancouver at the end of August.’

‘Why would I do that?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing for me there.’

Realizing that sounded self-pitying, she blushed. ‘We’ve got the gambling saloon we wanted, and I’m glad about that,’ she continued. ‘Just be patient with me a little longer. Two deaths in such a short time are more than anyone could bear.’

‘I know, darling,’ he said, enfolding her in his arms. ‘But you must play on opening night, everyone’s expecting it.’

Beth washed her face and walked with Theo to the new place. It seemed many people had heard about her loss, for they stopped her and said how sorry they were. She hadn’t expected that, and it helped to know people cared about her.

Jack had just finished putting up the sign as they approached the new place. He shinned down the ladder and hugged her.

‘What d’you think?’ he asked.

Beth stepped back into the street to look properly. When she’d last seen it the facade was only half done, and raw timber at that. The wood was painted red and shiny now, with a black sign bearing the words ‘The Golden Nugget’ painted in gold.

‘It looks marvellous,’ she said, and smiled for the first time since she’d received the news of Molly’s death. ‘You are a miracle worker, Jack.’

He glowed at the praise. ‘I had a lot of help,’ he said quickly. ‘Now, come and look inside.’

Beth had grown accustomed to the tricks used to create a sense of permanence and luxury in saloons since her time in Skagway. False facades led into the most flimsy of buildings, often tents, and even those that were built of wood had only canvas tacked on to the timber posts to make interior walls.

But Jack had lined the wood walls with another layer of timber, making it warm and windproof, and he’d painted them the same red as outside.

But even more astounding was the picture painted on the side wall opposite the bar. It was of the Chilkoot Pass, complete with the endless winding ribbon of climbers against the snow.

‘Who did that?’ she asked.

‘Enrico, that little bloke from San Francisco I helped with his boat at Lake Bennett.’

Beth nodded. She remembered the small, dark-haired man who she had thought was a Mexican. ‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘It really sets the whole place off. But the bar is marvellous too, Jack, you are so clever.’

It was first-class timber, planed and varnished to a gleaming finish. She ran her hand along it admiringly.

‘I’ve got to put another coat of varnish on the floor tonight, then we can get the furniture in tomorrow morning,’ Jack said. ‘It’s all piled up out the back.’

Beth looked at the big mirror behind the bar and noticed it was covered in fingerprints and smears. ‘I’d better polish that,’ she said.

Jack and Theo grinned at each other. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

‘We left it like that purposely. We thought it would stir you into action,’ Jack said.

Beth smiled. ‘You’d better show me upstairs, I expect some action will be required there too.’

Jack hadn’t had time to do anything much upstairs. Just three rooms with bare, rough timber walls and floors, but after living in a tent it would be luxury to all of them. As for the bathroom, she could hardly believe that Jack had been clever enough to run pipes from the boiler downstairs to fill the tub with hot water.

‘I had a lot of help from an engineer,’ he said modestly.

‘But there was no possibility of putting in a lavatory as there are no sewers in the town yet. So we’re stuck with an outside privy until there are.’

Front Street was the main artery of Dawson City. It pulsated with people all round the clock. By day it was like a gigantic market where you could buy anything from medicine to a horse or dog and every kind of foodstuff and luxury item brought in by traders. By night it was a rip-roaring hedonistic paradise, where you could drink, gamble, see a show or just parade up and down watching others if you were broke.

Even on Sundays when the law stated that nothing should open, and this was rigorously enforced by the Mounted Police, people still thronged up and down. All the most popular saloons, dance halls and theatres were in Front Street and they vied with one another to be the best. They wanted the prettiest dance-hall girls, the highest stakes in a poker game or the best singers and entertainers.

Although Beth, Theo and Jack had only been in Dawson a short while, they had an advantage over other new arrivals setting up in business because they had already attracted enough attention in town to be given nicknames. People liked nicknames here; Lime-juice Lil, Two-step Louie, Billy the Horse and Deep-hole Johnson were just some they’d heard. Theo’s English gentleman image and his reputation as a good poker player landed him with ‘The Gent’. Jack was affectionately called ‘Cockney Jack’ and widely regarded as the man to talk to if you wanted to build anything. Beth was still called ‘Gypsy’, for the name had come with her on the trail, and at the Monte Carlo she’d been billed as ‘The Klondike Gypsy Queen’.

Yet when they opened the saloon doors for the first time at six in the evening, they were still very anxious. Most of the other places on Front Street were owned by Eldorado Kings, men with claims that had netted them fortunes, and they could afford to splash out on chandeliers, velvet carpets, a five-piece band and a host of girls to lure big spenders in. But Theo’s money had run out, and he owed a couple of thousand dollars for drink, timber and the tables and chairs.

He had hung a sign outside proclaiming half-price drinks, and they had to hope that that, and Beth playing, would be enough. Theo was wearing a white tuxedo he’d accepted in settlement of a gambling debt back at Lake Bennett. With a frilled shirt and bow tie and his dark hair shiny with oil, he looked the image of a successful saloon owner. Jack sported a red waistcoat, a red and white spotted bow tie and a straw boater.

Beth had put on the new pink dress she’d planned to wear on Independence Day. She’d lost weight because she’d barely eaten anything since she got the letter about Molly, and she looked so peaky she’d even resorted to rouge on her cheeks.

She began to play a jig as soon as six men walked up to the bar.

They’d hired Will and Herbert, two men from Portland they’d got to know at Lake Bennett. They were desperate to raise the cash to get a boat home, and Theo had promised if they worked for two weeks for him, he’d buy their tickets and give them fifty dollars each too.

By the time Beth was on the third number, a goodly crowd had come in, and all at once she felt exhilarated because she was pulling people in to spend money in
their
place. She hoped Sam was looking down on them, thrilled that they’d finally reached their goal.

As the evening progressed, more and more people came in, until they were jammed up like tinned sardines. Theo was running a game of faro, a favourite in Dawson because it was fast, and gave the players a fighting chance.

Theo had bought the faro table from a steamship owner who was short of cash. Every card from ace to king was painted on it, and the players laid their chips on the card they wanted to bet on. The dealer lifted the top card off the deck; if the one beneath was one someone was betting on, he lost, but if it came up second, he won. If neither, he bet again.

On the wall behind Theo there was a rack which held the players’ pokes. Into the rack went a slip of paper charging the owner for the chips he bought. At the end of play, chips were balanced against slips, and the player’s poke was increased or decreased, according to whether he’d won or lost.

Gold, dust or nuggets, was the main currency in Dawson, and every shop, saloon or other business had scales to weigh it out. When Beth and the boys first got to Dawson they were all astounded by the casual way men tossed pokes containing hundreds of dollars worth of gold around, but they were used to it now.

While Theo was dealing at the faro table, Jack greeted customers, keeping an eye on the bar and on Will and Herbert. Later, Jack would take over at faro, leaving Theo to begin a poker game, and in between her fiddle sessions, Beth would keep her eye on things.

It was soon clear that they would require several more staff, just as they would need more supplies of drink and another entertainer to keep things going all night. But that first night they muddled through, all working flat out. The whisky ran out at four in the morning, but most of the customers stayed and drank anything available. Theo had a huge smile on his face because Sam Bonnifield, known as ‘Silent Sam’, the owner of the Bank Saloon and Gambling House on the corner of Front and King Streets, had come in to play faro. He got his nickname because he never said a word or smiled as he played. His luck was not in tonight and he was five hundred dollars down, yet he kept on playing.

At six in the morning, Theo finally closed the doors. He was too tired to count what they’d taken that night, but he reckoned it was close on 15,000 dollars. Enough to pay off the debts, restock with drink and get some furniture upstairs.

‘Later today I’ll buy you a big brass bed with a feather mattress,’ he said as he embraced Beth. ‘I promise you that you’ll never sleep on the ground ever again.’

The Golden Nugget soon became established as one of the most popular gambling saloons in Dawson. Theo used his charms to lure four girls to work there, paying them a small commission for every glass of champagne they managed to persuade men to buy for them. It wasn’t real champagne, but then very few people in Dawson knew what the real stuff tasted like. The girls added colour to the place as they teased and flirted with the men, and if they sold their bodies later to the highest bidder, no one was concerned.

Paradise Alley, behind Front Street, was where the real whores did their business, in a row of tents called cribs, each with her name above the door. They were mostly plain, sturdy women, for the difficult journey across the mountains to get here ruled out the delicate. They serviced around fifty men a day and their pimps took most of their earnings, and to Beth they had the worst life she could imagine.

But then, women generally had a poor deal in Dawson. They baked bread, did laundry and cooked in restaurants, and though some of them made an excellent living, they had to work incredibly hard, and often had men who spent it as fast as they earned it. Those who were married to miners spent their days panning for gold in remote creeks, living in terrible conditions with no other female company.

Only a small percentage of women lived the high life, and they were the actresses, singers and dance-hall girls. Most of the dance-hall girls took far more from men than they gave. For a dollar, a man got less than a minute with them in his arms before they moved on to their next partner. One girl had a belt made with seventeen twenty-dollar gold pieces, a present from a miner. Almost all the girls made no secret of the fact that they were there to separate the men from their pokes.

Beth worked too hard and for too long hours to live the high life, but she didn’t mind, for it stopped her dwelling on Sam and Molly. True to his word, Theo had bought furniture for their rooms upstairs, including the promised brass bed and carpets too. Every night in the saloon was fun, and to see it becoming such a big success gave her great satisfaction.

When sad thoughts came into her mind, she reminded herself she was living her dream. It wasn’t hard to be happy in Dawson; people were warm and friendly, and never a day passed without someone doing something outrageous that made them all laugh. She might feel a little disappointed that she and Theo had so little time together alone, but as August arrived and the cold weather and dark days grew imminent, many people began departing on the boats for the Outside, and she knew their time alone would come.