Gold Fever. Vicki Delany

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СКАЧАТЬ and, as supervision of the dancers was my responsibility, I needed to be there to make sure they all showed up—on time and reasonably sober.

      Once she started to talk, Mary was like the spring breakup of the Yukon River. Nothing could stop her. The gist of it was that she was from Alaska and believed herself to have been sold to one Mr. Smith, a man heading for the Yukon, in payment for some nebulous debt owed by the uncle of her widowed late mother. Mr. Smith had tired of her, and on arriving in the Yukon, he’d passed her on to the infamous madam, Joey LeBlanc. She was honour-bound, Mary told me, to stay with Joey in order to see the original debt paid in full. But the shame was so great that it had eventually taken her to the banks of the Yukon River and the timely intervention of my son. Even now she wanted only to return to the solace of the river, even though the fathers had taught her at school that to take one’s own life was the darkest of sins. Through her tears she asked that neither Angus nor I interfere with her again.

      I took a deep breath and lifted her chin with two fingers. “You don’t have to go back to Mrs. LeBlanc if you don’t want to, Mary.”

      Her dark eyes searched my face. “But my uncle’s debt? There is no one else to repay it. I belong to Mrs. LeBlanc. If I don’t complete my time, she will tell Mr. Smith, who will return to extract payment from my uncle.”

      “Your uncle can pay his own debt. Or not. As he wishes. If they told you you’re bound to Mrs. LeBlanc, they lied. I know this. I have friends in the Mounties. You know the Redcoats?”

      “Don’t condescend to me, Mrs. MacGillivray.”

      I stood up and began unbuttoning the bodice of my day dress. “I mean no insult, Mary. Your English is perfect, your manners beyond reproach. But if people have told you wrong for their own selfish gain, I am not condescending to you if I attempt to set you straight.” I opened my wardrobe and peered in. The wooden cabinet, missing one set of hinges, which housed my entire ensemble, was substantially smaller than what in times past would have stored my shoes or undergarments. I didn’t often miss what I’d left behind, but sometimes… I ran my fingers through my gowns, hoping something forgotten yet perfectly lovely would be waiting to be found.

      “What do you think I should wear tonight? The green satin is the nicest, but I’ve worn that rather a lot lately.” My best dress, a genuine Worth, presented to me in London at the original Savoy Hotel, guarded across seas and continents, carried over the Chilkoot Pass, had recently died an ignominious death. Mrs. Mann was still attempting to salvage something of the crimson silk, the ostrich feathers, and the Belgian lace. Nothing, I feared, would ever replace that gown.

      “Everything you have is lovely, Mrs. MacGillivray,” she said in her soft voice. I knew she was talking about more than my clothes.

      I looked at the garments in question and pulled out the green satin. “What I’m attempting to say, Mary, is that if you think you belong to Mrs. LeBlanc because of someone else’s arrangements, then you’ve been deceived. For heaven’s sake, it’s 1898, and this is Canada. I’ll contact my friend in the Mounties, and he will ensure you don’t have to return to the likes of Mrs. LeBlanc.”

      “Even an Indian woman has to eat,” Mary said, picking at loose threads in the counterpane.

      I dressed quickly, draped a length of fake pearls around my neck, arranged my hair, settled a hat onto my head, thrust several hatpins through it, and regarded myself in the cracked mirror on the wall. I do not succumb to false modesty: if I wasn’t the most spectacular woman in Dawson tonight, I would…what would I do? I would eat the hat on my head.

      I turned to face Mary. “I have decided. Mrs. Mann has only recently begun this foolish enterprise of running a laundry. She complains non-stop about the amount of work, combined with keeping Mr. Mann looked after and caring for this boarding house, although Angus and I are the only residents. She’s been trying to find an assistant, but willing women are scarce on the ground. You will take employment beginning tomorrow as helper to Mrs. Mann in the laundry. Now I must be off.” I slipped pearl earrings through my ears and patted a touch of rouge on my cheeks.

      Mary stared at me. “Mrs. LeBlanc…” she said.

      “If Mrs. LeBlanc has a concern about these arrangements, then she may speak to me. Do you think these earrings match? Perhaps the gold ones would be best?”

      “The pearls,” Mary said.

      “I agree. Let’s tell Mrs. Mann of our arrangement.”

      Mary cracked a small smile. It went a long way towards putting some life into her pinched face. “I’d like that,” she said.

      I’d had a few encounters with Joey LeBlanc, and none of them had been pleasant. Prostitution was technically illegal in the Yukon. Then again, so was gambling, yet the Savoy operated an extremely lucrative casino. But Dawson was a town full of prospectors from every corner of the world, so the police, wisely in my opinion, decided to let vice have its way as long as they could control real crime. Joey ran a stable of prostitutes, mostly operating out of the cribs of Paradise Alley, along with a handful that were a touch more respectable. The Mounties turned a blind eye: after all, women were as eager to enjoy the residue of a prospector’s dreams as was anyone else. But slavery, indentured servitude, whatever it was called these days, Her Majesty’s North-West Mounted Police would not approve of that one little bit.

      I don’t know why I liked Mary so much almost immediately upon meeting her. I’d hired Indian packers to take us over the Chilkoot. They had been, by and large, efficient and taciturn. They kept a respectful distance from me, although on the trail and around the campfire Angus had hounded them for stories from their tribal history and information about their customs. Our packers were Tagish, he’d told me. I had no idea if Mary was of that tribe or another. Other than working as packers and the occasional guide, the Indians kept pretty much to themselves in the Yukon. They weren’t allowed in the bars and dance halls, and there were so many white (and some black) men looking for work in Dawson there was no need to hire Indians. Mary was the first Native I’d seen in town.

      How lonely she must be. And caught in the talons of Joey LeBlanc to boot.

      Everyone looked up as I came back into the kitchen. Mary followed, dragging the overlarge dress behind her like a bridal train.

      “Angus,” I said, “I have to be at the Savoy. Go with Mary and find Constable Sterling. Ask him to accompany you to get Mary’s belongings from her place of…residence.”

      “We don’t need…” Angus began. “Yes, you do. Don’t go there without a Mountie. There might be some opposition to her leaving, and I want this entirely above board. Then take her to one of the empty rooms at the Savoy. I don’t think we have anyone in residence today. Use the back stairs.”

      Occasionally some of the bartenders or croupiers who are temporarily short of accommodation are permitted to sleep in the upstairs rooms beside the offices. Good customers, who collapse over the bar or fall asleep over their cards, we put up in a cot in the big room at the end of the hall. Poor customers, and certainly those who are winning, we toss out into the mud of Front Street.

      “I have no money,” Mary said. I waved a hand. “You can pay your rent out of your wages.

      Mrs. Mann, I have found you a helper for the laundry. I’m sure you can come to an agreement when she arrives for work first thing tomorrow morning.”

      “My friend owns a laundry,” Mary said to no one in particular. “On Fifteenth Street. She works hard, but she makes good money.”

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