Читать книгу Gold Fever - Vicki Delany - Страница 10

Helen Saunderson and I collected the good soap, which cost an absolute fortune, and walked back to town. Mrs. Saunderson was telling me something about one of her children who was having problems with a tooth. I scarcely heard one word in ten. What did Irene think she was doing! Having an assignation—and with a woman at that!—on the street. She must be mad. We sold dreams as much as dances and drinks in the Savoy. The men paid to see the show or to have a brief turn on the floor with one of the girls because they needed some happiness in their generally miserable lives. They admired Irene on the stage and imagined, however foolishly, that one day she might be theirs. Let a little reality into the room—such as a female lover—and the effect would be like a magician telling the audience everything he was doing. Illusions once shattered can not be put back together like a piece of old china. Irene would no longer be the most popular dance hall girl in the North. She would be lucky to be able to make a living as a percentage girl.

What would Ray have to say if his illusions of living happily ever after with Irene were so brutally shattered? He’d probably fire her on the spot. And let everyone in earshot know why.

I sighed so heavily, a passing man paused in the act of lifting his hat to me. I tossed him a self-conscious grin and shrugged slightly. Mrs. Saunderson chattered on. The man walked away with a huge smile on his face. He was perfectly ugly and desperately in need of grooming and the attentions of Mrs. Mann’s laundry, but his eyes were kind, and I was pleased to have made his day.

“Madame MacGillivray, how pleasant to run into you.”

Joey LeBlanc, the most notorious whoremonger in Dawson, had planted her tiny self firmly in front of us, blocking the boardwalk. There was nothing pleasant about the look on Joey’s face. For some reason she’d hated me since the day she arrived in town—only a week after Angus and I—although I don’t recall having done anything to offend her, other than hold my nose (figuratively speaking) whenever we passed. She was less than five feet tall, and her bones were so fine, I sometimes wondered if she would be carried away by a middling wind. As though defying anyone to guess at her occupation, she dressed in the plainest of clothes. Her grey hair was scraped back so tightly that the skin beside her eyes stretched upwards, and her head was topped with a straw hat about two sizes too small. She wore no jewellery save a woman’s simple wedding band, although there was never any sign of a Monsieur LeBlanc.

I didn’t bother to be polite. This was no London drawing room where one cooed over the cut of one’s worst enemy’s new dress (“My dear, I simply loved that frock when I saw it on Lady Morton last month”) or her husband’s new position (“So nice for you that he will be able to dine at home regularly”) and where the sharpest battles were fought with words that could wound more deeply than swords.

In Dawson, I could be so much more blunt. “Get out of my way, Joey.”

She looked at me with eyes as cold as the frozen earth out of which the men pulled their gold. “Is that any way for a lady to talk?” She took the thickness of her Quebec accent up a degree.

I wasn’t about to stand there all day wondering who would step aside first. I lifted my skirts and stepped off the boardwalk, carefully avoiding a recently deposited pile of dog droppings. From an extremely large dog. I tugged on Helen’s sleeve, and she reluctantly stepped into the road beside me. Helen could be even more blunt than I, and I didn’t want a scene.

“You ’ave something what belongs to me, MacGillivray,” Joey said.

Despite my better instincts, I turned around. “I beg your pardon?” I asked in my best dealing-with-the-peasantryvoice, something that I’ve noticed a Canadian or an American can’t quite pull off.

We were attracting a crowd. Some people in Dawson had far too much time on their hands. Joey lowered her voice. “The Indian bitch is mine,” she hissed. “Bought and paid for.”

I wiped spittle off my face. “No longer, it would appear.” I turned and started to walk away, still tugging at Helen’s sleeve.

“I want ’er back.”

This time I kept walking.

“And ’ow are you, ’elen?” Joey called after us pleasantly, her voice back at a normal street level. “Enjoying your employment at the Savoy?”

I whirled around. “Is that a threat, Joey? If you have anything to say, you’d better say it to me.”

“Me?” Joey said. “I make no threats.” This time it was her turn to walk away, head held high under its plain straw hat.

“I’ve encountered the likes of her before, Mrs. Mac,” Helen said. “Not fit to walk on the same sidewalk as decent women, she ain’t. Imagine forcing a lady such as you into the street!”

“I’d rather walk in the mud than engage in a contest of wills with her and create a public spectacle.”

“What do you suppose that was really about?”

“Nothing good, Helen. Most certainly nothing good. If you see her around the Savoy…if you ever see her anywhere near Angus, let me know right away, will you?”

“You think she’d harm Angus?” At the very thought, Helen Saunderson looked ready to go after Joey and clobber her with the package of good soap.

It was an exceedingly hot day, but I felt a shiver under the strings of my corset. Against the likes of Joey LeBlanc I had few defences. It was unlikely she would be reduced to blubbering idiocy by a witty yet scathing comment about the style of her hair or worry overmuch about being cut out of polite society by a well-placed whisper of scandal. “I think she’d do most anything to harm me. If she could.

Take that soap to Mrs. Mann. Tell her I expect to wear the dress tomorrow.”

I didn’t tell Helen that my earlier misgivings about letting Mary stay at the Savoy had disappeared the moment Joey LeBlanc stepped in front of me. It might not be in my best interests, but I wasn’t about to give LeBlanc the satisfaction of letting her think she’d won.

Nor did I mention that someone had been watching the scene with a far greater degree of interest than the majority of the bored crowd. Chloe, the dancer I’d fired the night before for drinking, reversed her direction and headed up the street after Joey, a look of malicious glee filling her sharp face.

* * *

When I arrived back at the Savoy, men were lining up at the bar five deep. From the back room came the wonderful noise of cards being dealt and the roulette wheel spinning. The sound of money falling into my pocket went some way towards taking my mind off the triple troubles of Irene, Joey and Chloe.

There were two bartenders serving the customers. Murray, the newly promoted head bartender, and another fellow whose name always managed to escape me. “Mrs. MacGillivray.” Murray waved me over. “Thank goodness you’re here. Man’s thrown up under the roulette wheel, and Mrs. Saunderson ain’t around.”

I looked at him. “Have you shown the gentleman the door?”

“Shown him the mud of Front Street, more like.” “Has a beautiful fairy arrived to clean up the mess with her magic wand?” He looked at me, his shiny face blank. A lock of clean blond hair flopped across his forehead. “No, ma’am.”

“Then you’d best clean it up yourself, hadn’t you? Certainly before I see it.”

“Ma’am?”

“You are in charge here in Mr. Walker’s absence, are you not, Murray?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then please act it. Either clean up the mess or have someone do it, whether Mrs. Saunderson is here or not.” I tossed my head towards the bartender who was Not-Murray. Comprehension slowly dawned behind the eyes of our new head bartender. I’d have to ask Ray to re-think that appointment. “I’m going up to my office for about five minutes. Then I intend to tour the gambling hall. If I am not assailed by the invigorating scent of clean sawdust, and nothing else, someone will be seeking new employment.”

I walked away, smiling to my left and right and greeting customers graciously. I’ve had some experience in mingling with minor royalty, and I even moved in the Prince of Wales’s social circle for a brief time (but quite long enough, thank you very much), so I know how to put on airs. The men seem to like it. Makes them feel special, perhaps.

It was early afternoon, and although the place might appear to be full, it was only an illusion. Wait until the show ended at midnight, the dance hall doors opened and men spilled out of the back room. Then I’d scarcely be able to breathe as I made my way through the crowds. In some situations that might prove somewhat dangerous for a lady, but in Dawson the majority of the men were so homesick, so lonely—so sad, some of them—that most of them treated me like a hothouse flower. And for those that didn’t, there was the very long arm of the NWMP. As well as the hefty billy club Ray kept behind the bar.

I walked up the stairs, wondering if I should tell the Mounties that Joey LeBlanc had threatened me. But what could I say: Joey had asked Helen Saunderson if she liked working for me, and I took that comment to mean I should run for the law? Or that an ex-employee had changed her mind and headed north when she’d originally been going south? I’d be laughed out of the station. But not by everyone.

There was always Constable Sterling. I pushed that idea aside. I didn’t want to be beholden to Richard Sterling.

At that moment, as though summoned by my very thoughts, Sergeant Lancaster walked through the doors of the Savoy. As usual, he was all puffed up and walked like the emperor penguin in a photograph I’d seen of such an animal captured on an expedition to the Antarctic.

Also as usual, he made a beeline in my direction. Sergeant Lancaster had recently expressed his entirely honourable intentions towards me. It had been a most uncomfortable situation, and I considered myself fortunate to have escaped without causing any hard feelings. This afternoon he was wreathed in smiles across his battered old face all the way up to the cauliflower ears. He sucked in his stomach as he got close.

“Mrs. MacGillivray. May I say that you are looking particularly lovely this afternoon?”

Of course you may. “A touch of our northern sun does wonders for a lady’s complexion, I’ve always said.”

I refrained from rolling my eyes. “I said to your son…” I took his arm. “I was hoping to have a word with you, Sergeant.” I led him away from the crowd, but no further than the back of the saloon. I was afraid if I took him up to the privacy of my office, Sergeant Lancaster would drop to one knee and burst out a proposal of marriage once again. We stood under a painting of a voluptuous, pale-skinned, redheaded nude lounging languorously on a red velvet settee. Some patriotic soul had driven a pair of Stars and Stripes into either side of the heavy gilt frame. Rather than offend our American customers, I had let the flags remain. I myself had attached a considerably larger set of Union Jacks to the picture beside it.

“Is there a problem, Mrs. MacGillivray?” Lancaster was getting himself ready to mount up and ride into battle on my behalf.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, Sergeant,” I said. “I’ve recently taken a young woman under my protection. A woman of most unfortunate circumstances—I’m sure I don’t have to explain them to you?”

The big man turned a bright red. He tugged at the buttons on his tunic. “Of course not, Mrs. MacGillivray.”

“I am concerned that…certain people…might be anxious to return her to her…previous employment.”

“I assure you, Mrs. MacGillivray…”

I raised a hand and touched him lightly on the chest. “Or to take some…action…against me.”

“Mrs. MacGillivray!” Lancaster was truly shocked. His fellow officers held him in high regard; I thought him a bumbling idiot. But I was hoping that through him the Mounties would extend me protection without my having to humble myself by asking for it.

Foolish pride. Better I should have crawled on all fours and begged for their help.