Gold Mountain. Vicki Delany

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      Graham dropped into the visitor’s chair in front of my desk. “You know this person, Fiona?”

      “Regretfully, yes. Odious man.”

      “Do you think more gang members are following? The Mounties won’t put up with that.”

      “To be honest, Graham, I don’t know. A year ago, I would have been positive Soapy wouldn’t be such a fool as to come directly up against the forces of her Majesty, but who knows what the intervening time has done to him. Rumour has it he’s losing control in Skagway. Perhaps he’s desperate enough to think he has no choice but to move into the Yukon.”

      Graham peered at me. “Are you telling me, Fiona, you know Soapy Smith? Personally?”

      “Regretfully, yes.”

      Graham pulled out his notebook and pencil.

      “Put that away,” I said. “I am not granting you an interview.”

      “An informal interview. Authoritative yet unnamed sources and all that.”

      Graham Donohue was a newspaperman. A reporter with a big American paper, here in the Klondike to report on the hottest story in North America, if not the world. He was no taller than I, lean and wiry, and he sported a ferocious moustache that clashed with his schoolboy complexion, sparkling brown eyes, thick black eyelashes and perfect bone structure. Any one of my dance-hall girls would be more than happy to give him the time of day, but Donohue never seemed interested in them. I patted my hair. Graham, well I knew, had eyes elsewhere. He was always attempting to lure me onto the badly sprung couch in my office.

      “Angus and I were in Skagway in August of last year,” I said. “Sensing that the environment for an independent person of business was not, shall we say, welcoming, I decided it would be best to decamp for Dawson.”

      Graham’s pencil stub hung over the paper. “And?”

      I smiled at him. “And, it is time for me to get my accounts done. I am running behind this morning, having made a stop at the police detachment office to report the arrival of one of Soapy’s henchmen.”

      Another round of footsteps coming up the stairs and down the hall. Helen came in, bearing a tray with a single cup plopped in the centre. Most unrefined, to be serving tea already prepared, but I’d given up trying to insist that Helen bring the milk and sugar in separate bowls. “Oh,” she said, “didn’t know you was here Mr. Donohue. Shall I fetch another tea?”

      “Yes, please,” Graham said.

      “No,” I said. “Mr. Donohue is leaving momentarily.”

      She put the tray down and hurried away.

      “Come on, Fiona. What was he like? Smith wasn’t in Skagway when I went through.”

      “Graham, go away.” I took a sip of tea. Barely satisfactory. Helen had added too much sugar. I prefer lemon, but needless to say, citrus is non-existent in the Yukon.

      Grumbling, Graham stood up and returned his notebook to his pocket.

      “You may take me to tea this afternoon,” I said. “Four o’clock at the Richmond. Provided you promise my name will not appear in any way in your epistle.”

      He touched his hat and left.

      I picked up my own pen and bent my head over the ledger. I found it difficult to concentrate. Like every other building in town, the Savoy had been constructed with great haste out of green wood and inadequate materials. The noise from below came right up through the floorboards. I pushed away from my desk and went to stand at the window. I could see across Front Street, over the mudflats to the river and the hills beyond. The shore was packed with watercraft of every conceivable type, from steamboats to barges to a mismatched collection of logs slashed together to form a raft. Boats were tied to boats tied to other boats far out into the river. Tents and shacks lined the waterfront, and men and horses struggled through the river of mud that was Front Street.

      Ray and some of the men had strung a banner Angus had created across the street: THE FINEST, MOST MODERN ESTABLISHMENT IN LONDON, ENGLAND, TRANSPORTED TO DAWSON. Our sign seemed to be achieving its aim. As I watched, five men came down the street, their hats and jackets thick with grime, their faces dark under unkempt beards and dust. One of them stopped and looked at the sign. He spoke to his companions, gestured to it, perhaps reading it to them, and then pointed to the door of the Savoy. As one, they nodded and trooped up the step and disappeared from my sight.

      I studied the faces on the street below. Almost all were male, with a scattering of women and even fewer children. I recognized a few of the men — those who came to the Savoy, whom I’d seen on the streets, who worked in restaurants, banks or shops which I frequented. No one from Skagway.

      It had been a year since I was there. Hundreds of men might have joined the gang since and come over the Pass with Paul Sheridan.

      He had been alone last night in the Savoy. Enjoying himself, dancing with Irene. No one in Soapy’s gang would have stood by and watched one of their fellows being evicted physically from the premises.

      It was unlikely Paul had come alone, but not impossible. Perhaps he’d had a falling out with Soapy — easy to do — and decided to strike out on his own.

      He might be on his own, but if he were here to dig for gold, I’d join a nunnery.

      I felt a prickling of unease as I remembered running into Angus at the NWMP office. Paul had approached my son. That I did not care for one bit.

      Chapter Five

      It had been only a year ago when Angus and I departed Toronto with an unseemly degree of haste. We took the first train pulling out of Union Station, paying no heed to where it was heading.

      We ended up in Vancouver in July of 1897.

      Every person we encountered was talking about nothing but gold. Yukon gold. On July 14, the steam ship Excelsior had arrived in San Francisco carrying half a million dollars worth of gold, and then on the 17th, the Portland pulled into Seattle with a million dollars worth. Newspaper headlines screamed the weight of the precious metal; store fronts were instantly covered in advertisements for the equipment one supposedly needed to go prospecting; waiters and butlers and shop clerks and policemen discarded their uniforms and walked out the door, heading for the Klondike.

      Although a great many didn’t exactly know where that was.

      Or what they would find there.

      I stood on the street corner outside our hotel while the bellboy unloaded our trunks and Angus peppered him with questions. He told Angus that his three older brothers were preparing to leave, that he wanted to go with them but his widowed mother was begging him not to abandon her.

      I watched a cart go by, laden with pickaxes, burlap bags of flour, wooden boxes stamped canned corn, and three men, the youngest of whom was seventy if a day. “Ho! The Klondike! Ho!” they cried to cheering onlookers. A group of small boys and a scrawny dog ran after them. The boys waved and shouted. The dog barked.

      The bellboy took our things into the hotel, and we followed. It wasn’t a particularly good hotel. Definitely second rate, not the sort of establishment I was СКАЧАТЬ