Gold Digger. Vicki Delany

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СКАЧАТЬ Ma, too. She wasn’t at all pleased, not with mud on her face and her hair in a mess.”

      “Your ma’d be the most beautiful woman in Dawson even if she’d been swimmin’ in mud, son.” The miner sighed.

      Donohue’s face was turning red, and the veins in his neck had suddenly doubled in size. “Are you telling me that bastard, Ireland, had a photographer out in the street when the bakery was burning?” The words came out as an angry hiss, spoken through clenched teeth.

      “Watch your language, Donohue,” Sterling warned. “Boy here.”

      The miner tugged at his beard. He grinned, showing a mouth empty of teeth. “Guess that’s what I’m sayin’, all right.”

      Donohue shoved the man aside and pushed his way to the bar. Angus steadied the miner, who was now chuckling heartily. “That got under his skin right enough.” The old man downed his drink. A few drops spilled out of the corner of his mouth and disappeared into the bushy beard.

      “I don’t think you should’ve told Mr. Donohue that, sir,” Angus said. “He looks real mad.”

      The miner wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Stir the pot and see what rises to the top, lad. Best fun to be had in this miserable town.” He went to the bar, still chuckling.

      “Great fun for some,” Sterling muttered so that only Angus could hear. “But it makes work for the Mounties. Have you got some reason to be hanging around?”

      “My ma gave me a message for Mr. Walker, sir.”

      “Deliver your message and get out of here. Or I’ll have to take you in.”

      Angus grinned, the prospect of a night in jail speaking more of adventure than hardship.

      Sterling smiled back. “Hurry up, son.” Generally, the men who’d come through so much and travelled so far from home looked fondly on the few children in town. They slapped Angus’s back and tried to talk to him about their own family. He was too polite to push them aside. When he stopped for a second time to look at the photographs that a young cheechako had pulled out of his jacket pocket, Sterling yelled, “Angus, deliver your message and go home!”

      Angus bolted, and the would-be prospector stuffed the photographs back into his pocket as if they were about to be confiscated and used as evidence.

      “Ma’s gone upstairs, Mr. Walker, to clean up. She’ll be back real soon.” Angus shouted across the last few yards to the bar as he dashed for the door.

      “Hold up, just a minute, Angus,” Sterling said. He caught up with the boy out on the boardwalk. The traffic streaming up and down Front Street was heavy. Horses and carts struggled through the mud; women crossed the street on the duckboards, lifting their skirts in an attempt to keep them clean. A few doors down, the building that had once been a bakery was a blackened shell. “I spoke to Sergeant Lancaster this afternoon.”

      “The boxing champion?”

      “The very one.”

      “What did he say? Will he teach me?”

      “He’d like to meet you. Then he’ll decide.”

      “Can we go now?”

      “No, I’m on duty. Tomorrow’s Saturday. How would that do? Saturday morning.”

      “That would do fine, sir.” “Good. Come to Fort Herchmer at eight. You can meet Lancaster then.”

      “We have to keep this a secret from Ma, right?”

      “I won’t lie to her, Angus. If she asks me what’s going on, I’ll tell her.”

      “I guess.”

      “But if she doesn’t ask, then there’s no need to bother her, now is there?”

      “No, sir!”

      “See you tomorrow at eight.”

      Angus walked down the boardwalk, almost skipping. He passed a young woman, dressed in a well-worn and heavily stained calico dress, topped by a limp hat, which looked as if a dog had enjoyed an afternoon romp with it. Angus touched his cloth cap politely and skipped happily on his way.

      Boxing lessons. Time to become a man.

      The door to the Savoy burst open, and the house musicians spilled out into the street. There were four of them to provide the music in the dance hall for the rest of the night and long into the early hours of the morning. One man tucked a violin under his chin, another picked up his clarinet, and the trombonist put his instrument to his mouth. The caller, who normally played the piano, took up his bullhorn and announced to all that the Savoy, “the finest establishment west of London, England”, was open for their entertainment. As the caller shouted out the wonders to be found inside, the orchestra played “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” loudly, and none too well. All along the street, musicians and callers were setting themselves up to advertise the pleasures to be found inside their own dancehalls. It made quite a racket, not at all what Richard Sterling’s mother would have called a “joyful noise”, although it was joy, to be bought and paid for, that they were advertising.

      Eight o’clock on a Friday evening in Dawson, Yukon Territory. The dance halls were open for business.

      Chapter Eleven

      “He lose much?” Sterling asked.

      “’Bout five thousand,” Jake said, his face showing not a glimmer of emotion as he gathered up chips. “Fellow’s been in here since opening. That last bet musta wiped him out.” Jake was nattily dressed in a stiff white wing-tip collar, a colourful silk neck piece and sharp bowler hat. His enormous black moustache curled up at the edges. Turning his attention back to the job, he spun the big wheel. “No more bets.”

      “What a fool,” Sterling mumbled. But he wasn’t surprised. He’d seen as much, more, lost and won in one hand of poker or one throw of the dice.

      The dim space of the gambling room always reminded Sterling of the shack of a church his father had preached in all the years of his childhood. The walls were cheap wood, the floorboards no better, the kerosene lamps much too dim. Men crowded into the room as eager to make their fortune at the tables as Reverend Sterling had been to save the souls of his flock. The results would be the same— disappointment and despair.

      The smoke in the poorly ventilated room was so thick, it was difficult to see the far side of the room, where a serious poker game was underway. Mouse O’Brien sat at the table: the game would be nothing but serious. O’Brien was a giant of a man, not much off seven feet tall, with a chest the size of that of an ox, and shoulders and thighs to match. He kept his hair cut short and his moustache neatly trimmed and wore custom-made suits, starched white shirts, and a diamond stick pin in his perfectly folded cravat. He always carried a bag containing a pair of spare shoes to put on in place of his muddy boots whenever he walked through any door. He was called “Mouse”, a nickname he accepted with good grace—recognizing that he had no choice in the matter—ever since he’d been heard to squeal, as loudly as a pigtailed schoolgirl, when a tiny brown field mouse had crossed his path on the trail to Bonanza Creek.

      Stacked in neat rows on the green-baize table СКАЧАТЬ