Gold Digger. Vicki Delany

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СКАЧАТЬ any event, what with Ray away seeing to Barney. I began to follow Sam to ask if he were feeling sick. He’d have to be on death’s door, he’d have to be on the other side of death’s door, to be allowed to go home early on a night that was shaping up to be as busy as this one.

      “Fee!” A man burst through the door, beaming widely and holding his arms out. “What an honour. Here you are standing at the door, waiting to greet me.”

      I caught a glimpse of Sam Collins disappearing into the crowded street as I permitted the new arrival to give me a hug. It felt nice to be held in a man’s arms, warm and close and safe, but I pulled away after the briefest moment of indulgence. Better not to get men’s hopes up. It spoils them. “Graham,” I said, “you’re back.”

      “In the flesh. You look wonderful, Fiona.”

      I smiled. Of course I looked wonderful. I always look wonderful. But I never mind hearing it. “How are things out on the Creeks?”

      “It’s incredible. Let me tell you, my dear, it’s like the inside of a beehive on a sunny day.” Graham Donohue had been visiting the goldfields, collecting stories from the miners. He pulled off his hat and scratched at his black hair, normally kept short and neat, now hanging rough at the back of his neck. “Sorry, Fee,” he said with a grimace. He plopped his dust-coated hat back on his head. “Think I picked up something that crawls out there.”

      I stepped back. “Really, Graham, you might have had a bath and a haircut before coming here.”

      “I couldn’t last another minute without seeing your fair face. Why, the memory of you was all that kept me going through the long days and nights out on the Creeks.”

      I snorted. In a ladylike manner, of course. “Ran out of whisky, did you?”

      “Any excitement in town during my absence?” Graham took my elbow and led me away from the crowd spilling off the street into the saloon. A roar from the gambling room announced that someone was a winner. For the moment anyway. A small crowd poured back into the bar, led by the winner, sharing his good fortune with all and sundry. The new bartender sweated profusely and poured drinks as fast as he could move. I was impressed; he’d risen to the pressure of the moment.

      “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I said to Graham.

      He laughed. When he was clean and respectable, Graham Donohue was an extraordinarily handsome man. His nose had been broken a few times, but so good was the bone structure of his face that it scarcely mattered. His cheekbones, high in a thin face, were accented by expressive hazel eyes trimmed by lashes so thick that my dance hall girls swooned over them. He was my height, and so slightly built that he verged on scrawny. Graham’s complexion was clear and unlined, and his warm eyes usually sparkled as if they were planning some act of schoolboy mischief such as dipping the pigtails of the girl sitting in front of him into the inkwell. In an attempt to look more his age, he sported a bushy, ferocious moustache that gave him some whimsical charm: so incongruous in his childish face that he looked like a boy who couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to grow up. The slight, boyish exterior concealed a heart as tough as they come. He was a reporter for a major American newspaper, determined to make his name in the Klondike.

      Graham Donohue was exactly my type: not too large, apparently unassuming, handsome. And he worshiped the liquor-spotted, spat-upon, sawdust-coated, cheap wooden planks that I walked on.

      But I wasn’t in Dawson looking for a man.

      “There’s someone new in town you might like to meet,” I said. “A reporter from San Francisco.”

      The seductive grin disappeared immediately. “Who?”

      “Jack Ireland’s his name. From the San Francisco Standard, I believe.”

      “Where?”

      “At the front of the bar. Older guy, well dressed, big crowd standing around him.”

      Graham didn’t give me a second glance and pushed his way through the crowd. Curious, I rounded the bar.

      Ray walked back into the saloon. “Where’s Sam?”

      “Left in a big hurry. I don’t know why.”

      “No’ back in five minutes, and he’s gone.” Ray turned into a blur of motion, pouring drinks, taking money, weighing gold, listening to men’s talk.

      He managed the bar and gambling room staff; I kept the books and handled the money, supervised the performers and dancers, and attracted the customers. We made a good team, Ray and I.

      Graham elbowed men aside to stand face-to-face with Ireland. My friend had his hands on his hips and his chin thrust forward. Ireland smirked with a sort of sick pleasure that gave me an uncomfortable feeling deep in my stomach.

      “Jack Ireland,” Graham said. “I’m surprised you’re not in hell yet.”

      “Nice to see you, too, Donohue, my boy. How’s your dear sister these days?” Ireland turned to his drinking partners. “This lad and I go back a long way, boys.”

      “What are you doing here, Ireland?”

      “Working on a story, my lad. Same as you, I figure.”

      “This is my patch, Ireland. I’ll thank you to stay the hell out of it. And don’t you dare mention my sister again.”

      Ireland threw back his head and laughed. A gold tooth reflected light from the lamps filled with cheap oil. “A real reporter doesn’t put claim to a ‘patch’, boy. Not like a miner marking his stake. A real reporter knows there’s more than enough news to go around.”

      Graham’s face was turning red, which had the unfortunate effect, regardless of the bristling moustache and the layers of mining dirt, of making him look as if he were on the verge of a temper tantrum.

      “Ray,” I said, “I think…” Graham took a swing, but his arm was inhibited by the press of men at the bar. The space surrounding the San Francisco reporter had been thick before, but at the first suggestion of a fight, the people standing at the back shuffled forward to get a good look.

      With no momentum to back it up, Graham’s blow bounced lightly off Ireland’s cheek. The drinkers in striking range stepped back, causing a jam as the two groups of onlookers came together. I knew, along with all the regulars, that Graham’s next punch would have the older man on the floor. Graham had been a champion boxer in his school days. Slight boys often have to be if they’re going to survive a New England boy’s school.

      Ray leapt across the bar, sending men scattering every which way before him. He was a small man, but in Ray’s case his growth had been stunted by the ill-nourishment of a Glaswegian childhood rather than by genes. Ray had never been a boxing champion; he was a street fighter, practically from the moment he vacated the cradle. He grabbed Graham’s arm and twisted it behind his back. “That’s enough o’ that, Mr. Donohue. Time ta be off home.”

      Ireland made a grand show of straightening his hat and tidying his cuffs, trying to recover from the look of sheer terror that had crossed his face in the long second before Ray sailed across the countertop. But I’d seen it. We’d all seen it.

      “Mrs. MacGillivray?” Graham looked at me. He didn’t move in Ray’s grip. “Am I expelled?”

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