She was spared a decision by Denby himself, who passed out.
Chapter 21
Spring came to Augusta, bringing with it cascades of flowers but no new business. Then summer arrived, and carriages, filled with laughing ladies, their parasols and their escorts, heedlessly clipclopped past the little glover’s shop. A winter storm had damaged the sign—it had not been repaired. Nor were the window displays changed any more. No new ads appeared. But though his temper flared up regularly, Denby held on.
His boyish expression had changed. It had become sullen and bitter. His lips often wore a twisted sardonic smile, and his voice was seldom free of a tinge of sarcasm when he spoke to Roxanne. Geared only to success, failure crumpled Denby.
Had she not felt so deeply to blame for his present condition, Roxanne would promptly have left him. As it was, she stayed and took her anger out in long exhausting walks that wore through her shoes but enabled her to keep a civil tongue in her head when Denby raged at her.
On a beautiful summer Sunday, Denby’s temper peaked for the first time in public violence. It happened on the way to church. They made a handsome couple, Denby and Roxanne, strolling in the shade of the dark green waxy-leaved magnolias: Denby with his tall stiff collar, leaning on the horsehead-tipped cane he affected; Roxanne like a swaying flower in peach silk with a long bell-shaped skirt and a little train her white-gloved hand held up carefully as she walked.
Almost at the churchyard, a flamboyantly dressed stranger with handlebar mustaches paused to smile at the handsome figure Roxanne cut in the clinging peach silk that outlined her lissome figure and heightened the gold of her hair.
With his hair-trigger temper, Denby took exception to that admiring smile. His boyish face contorted with rage, and he struck the stranger a smart blow on the shoulder with his cane. The stranger, who was considerably more muscular than Denby, paled and struck Denby a blow that measured his length on the dusty sidewalk.
A little murmuring crowd gathered. Roxanne cast an appealing look at the stranger, who turned and marched away. As Denby got up, she dusted him off with her gloved hands and a lace-trimmed handkerchief.
“We can’t go into the church—everyone will stare at us,” she whispered. Denby gave her a glazed look. She wasn’t sure he even heard her.
Sick at heart, Roxanne took her defeated champion home.
There he accused her of flirting. He flung his gloves at her.
White-faced, Roxanne burst out of the house almost running. She charged ahead blindly—anywhere, just so it was away from him. Her hands trembled. Not only was her husband’s business venture in ruins; her marriage—frail at best—was being destroyed.
She clenched her hands so hard the bones hurt, and bent her head with a sob. She had brought him to this, she told herself in agony, through her wild desire to leave Baltimore. It was all her fault.
On a hot night when he had sold no gloves all week, Denby broke down suddenly and wept in her arms. She held him, crooning to him, rocking him. And then she said, ‘‘Listen to me, Denby. We must leave here. This town isn’t right for us.”
“Of course it’s right for us,” he said in a smothered voice. “It’s where you were born, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps that’s why” she said reluctantly.
Denby sat up. “What do you mean?” His voice was harsh. “What is it you haven’t told me, Roxanne?”
' “My mother . . . made enemies here,” she explained. “Bitter enemies. I never realized how bitter. And we have inherited them, Denby.” Her mouth twisted. “I suppose it’s my birthright. I look just like her, you know.”
“So-o-o!” Denby sucked his breath through his teeth. “That’s it! I knew there had to be something . . . and you seemed to have so few friends.” He grasped her by the shoulders, shaking her. “Why didn’t you tell me, Roxanne? Why?”
Her voice was muffled. Tears were streaming down her face. She was glad it was dark and he could not see them. “At first I didn’t know,” she said. “And then ... I suppose I was ashamed.”
He released her shoulders and moved to the window. She could see his slim body silhouetted there in the soft Southern night. His whole stance looked beaten. “Your enemies ” he said bitterly. “And I didn’t know you had any.”
Her voice sounded wooden to her own ears. “They are my inheritance,” she said. “They came with my face and figure that you admire so much.”
“You’re a hard wench,” he said spitefully.
“I am what men have made me,” she retorted. And suddenly she was not as sorry for Denby as she knew she should be. He had helped dig his own grave. He had refused to let her use the beauty of which he was so proud to make new friends, to attract new customers to the shop. She could have done it, if only he had let her!
“Apparently,” he sneered, “I got much more than I bargained for.”
“You got more than you deserved!” flared Roxanne. And then, because she knew that was unfair, “I’m sorry,” she said shortly. “You’re driving me to say things I don’t mean. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
He turned away from her with an oath, and she could hear his quick ragged breathing.
“Denby,” she sighed. “If only—”
Snarling, he sprang at her and she gave a little cry at the violence of his attack. He took her entirely without respect, as he might take a reluctant harlot—and with punishing force. She felt hurt and ashamed.
But by morning, when Denby went downstairs to mind the shop looking haggard by the pale morning light, her guilt returned.
My fault, she thought dully. Denby could have made his way in Baltimore, sheltered by his family. Perhaps he could have made his way in a neutral city. But she had led him deep into her home ground to the stronghold of her enemies, and he might well die of it. Take that incident with the gentleman who had smiled at her on the way to church. Denby had caned him and, though the man had contented himself with knocking Denby down, others might not be so charitable. There were those who would thrash Denby or even kill him for such incivility.
She began to feel afraid for him. She did not love him, but she felt responsible for him, for his predicament, for this unfortunate change in his boyish personality.
Her sapphire eyes were dark with foreboding these days. By early July she knew things were approaching a crisis. Denby, once so neat, now seldom shaved. He had turned into a human powder keg of raw emotions. It would all have to be resolved—and soon.
It was resolved in a way so bizarre that in her wildest dreams she could not have foreseen it.
On a hot July day Denby rushed upstairs during business hours. He was livid with excitement. “Roxanne,” he cried joyously, “I’ve sold the shop!”
Roxanne was so startled she dropped a plate she was washing and stared at the broken pieces in consternation. They had very few plates; she could not afford to break any.
“Pack up, we’re leaving!” Looking young and carefree again, Denby threw his arms about her and gave her a resounding kiss.
Roxanne disengaged herself and stared at him, stunned.
“Back—to Baltimore?” she asked faintly.
Denby laughed and shook his head. He thrust a newspaper into her hands. The headlines leaped out at her. “GOLD! GOLD!” they shrieked. “BIG STRIKE IN THE KLONDIKE! MINERS ARRIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO WEIGHTED DOWN WITH NUGGETS!”
“It’s our chance, Roxanne,” Denby cried eagerly. “Hurry and pack. We’re off to the Klondike!”
Clutching the paper, Roxanne read. The SS Excelsior had pulled into San Francisco yesterday, and wire services had flashed her arrival around the country. For the Excelsior had carried a load of ragged, roistering, happy miners—and millions in gold, pure gold, placer gold, wrenched from the subarctic’s rugged northern wastes.
Roxanne looked up when she had finished reading. Denby was watching her with sparkling hazel eyes. Not since Baltimore had she seen him look so animated.
“You’re not a miner,” she proteste
d. “It’s wild country up there, Denby. You know nothing about—”
Grandly, he waved her protests aside. “They’re scooping gold out everywhere up there, Roxanne. All we have to do is get there and pick it up—that’s all we have to do!”
Without realizing it, he echoed the sentiments of many who believed the Klondike’s gold lay ready for easy taking—and who would break their hearts and lose their fortunes seeking it.
“But the cost—how much did you get for the shop, Denby?”
He frowned. “Five hundred dollars—cash. And I threw in our furniture. So there’s little to pack. I’m going downstairs now to dismiss the staff.”
Roxanne gasped. So little! Why, the inventory of gloves alone was worth much more! But there was a madness in Denby now, and she sensed that he would brook no argument.
“Don’t you understand?” he cried impatiently as she hesitated. “We’ve got to get there before all the gold is gone!”
“Then why not leave me here? You could travel faster alone and—” ,
“And leave you to the men who’ve been ogling you ever since we came to Augusta?” His voice became a sarcastic whiplash. “I’ll not leave you alone and unprotected, Roxanne!”
Roxanne sighed. By now she knew the full sweep of Denby’s jealousy.
There was no stopping him. To the Klondike they would go.
She didn’t realize then that they were going to be part of a great migration. All over America—indeed all over the world—men had resigned from their jobs in banks, in livery stables, in soda shops, in mills; clerks had jumped over counters and left their wages behind; housewives and farmers, watchmakers and confidence men, cowboys and confectioners, gamblers and preachers—all were united in one endeavor, a grim determination to reach the Klondike before all the gold was gone.
Even as Roxanne packed, others were taking trains, ships, bicycles—or galloping away on fast horses—all with only one thing in mind:
Gold. Yellow gold.
Part Two:
The Race for the Gold
Seattle to the Yukon
1897-1898
Chapter 22
The same afternoon that he sold the shop, Denby, wild with excitement, called Baltimore on Mr. Bell’s wonderful new invention, the telephone. Hurriedly explaining about the gold strike, Denby told his bewildered brother to send the rest of his share for the Baltimore shop to Seattle. By evening, her clothes and her treasured spoons hastily packed, Roxanne had bade the staff good-bye (Denby had generously given everyone a month’s severance pay) and departed for the railroad station with her husband.
Once again she found herself on a train, headed this time for the far Northwest. At almost every stop someone bound for the gold fields got on. Husky young men, in the main, with a daredevil look in their eyes. By the time they reached Chicago there was even a ‘“Klondike Car,” decorated with miners’ picks and jars of nuggets, and filled with talk of the Klondike, that Thron-diuck of the Indians which meant “hammer water.” About her swirled animated discussions of “diamond hitches” and freakish mining equipment.
To Roxanne all this talk of gold was unreal, but she found the midsummer trip north glorious, a riot of shimmering green trees and tall corn swaying in the breeze and scented meadows filled with flowers. When the train reached Chicago, she promptly fell in love with the windy city on the lake. Denby gave her no time to enjoy it. A feverish restlessness possessed him. They must get on. At each stop, he leaped off to buy a newspaper, scanning it for the latest news of strikes and riches.
Roxanne watched him in amazement. Denby was a changed man. Overnight he had reverted to the carefree young dandy she had married. Of course, before, his conversation had been full of the glover’s trade; now it was studded with glaciers and pack ice, placers and moose and the midnight sun—and always gold.
By night he forgot his race for the gold and was again an ardent, if incompetent, lover. He held her in his arms with the old enthusiasm, and Roxanne, clasped in those arms, heard his heart beating fast, as if it were paced to the click-click of the rails. She felt his heavy breath on her cheek and heard him utter words of love she had not thought to hear from him again after her bruising experiences in Augusta. Absently she stroked his head, as if he were a child. But when his lovemaking was over and he slept soundly beside her, she stared wide-eyed into the dark, wondering what would become of them.
In Chicago the Klondike car had picked up a newcomer: a tall man, pale and whipcord lean, somberly dressed in black. A dark-haired man with a bleak face and wintry gray eyes that flashed silver in the sun.
When those silver eyes found Roxanne and rested on her lazily, Roxanne met his gaze and stared back, fascinated. She thought she had never seen a face so hard or so reckless. There were bitter lines about his thin, straight mouth. His name, she learned, was Case—whether first or last she did not know; he seemed to have no other. Before the train reached Minnepolis, some of the passengers were calling him “the Hard Case” under their breaths, but no man called him that to his face. There was something hellish in the gray eyes that forbade it. Roxanne soon discovered why Case’s lean face was so pale. After Case got on the train, the poker games—held for light stakes up to now—became a serious business and the stakes rose even higher. Denby had begun to play cards to pass the time on the train. Sometimes he won; sometimes he lost. It worried Roxanne.
Westward they sped. At Mandan, North Dakota, they crossed the muddy Missouri. Since Denby was too absorbed in his game to notice the crossing, Roxanne wandered out by herself to the observation car and stood on the little open-air platform at the rear to view the river.
Standing there alone, she felt eyes boring into her back and turned to see the tall gambler regarding her from the door. He must have excused himself from the card game, she realized. And followed her? The thought stained her cheeks with color.
He lounged in the doorway, his tall figure filling it for all his supple leanness, and watched her thoughtfully with eyes the color of tarnished silver. As tarnished as his reputation, she thought. His mocking bow spoke of better days, and the reckless bitter smile that flashed across his face told her he held his life none too dear. As the wind whipped his coat aside, she saw with a little thrill of alarm that he had a derringer stuck in his belt—and it did not look new. She had the feeling its small deadly muzzle had spoken, and would speak again. Here before her stood a sinister man of whipcord and steel, like none other she had ever met. A man with a shadowy past—and no future. Somewhere someone would dislike those hands that were too clever with the cards, and would shoot him down.
“Excuse me,” she said, and moved to brush by him.
He did not stand aside. “Stay awhile, Mrs. Barrington,” he said easily.
He was very close. The train jolted and, suddenly off balance, she was flung into his arms. As those arms closed around her, supple and hard as steel, she felt a sudden stab of electricity, and in her head a warning sounded.
He held her a moment too long and his hard face softened when he let her go. His smile was mocking. “I’ve wanted to ask you why you’re making this trip, Mrs. Barrington,” he said. “And I doubted I’d hear the truth unless we were alone.”
Still shaken from their exciting contact, Roxanne lifted her chin. “I’m seeking gold like everybody else.”
“Allow me to doubt it.” His eyes narrowed.
She shrugged. “Denby wants to go.”
“Ah, yes. Denby.”
Something in his voice irritated her. “And why should he not go?” she asked with asperity. “Is Chicago any better?”
“I am not from Chicago, Mrs. Barrington.”
“Where then?”
He shrugged. “Everywhere. Nowhere.”
She gave him a withering look, hating him for being so damnably attractive. “Even you must have been born somewhere.”
“Ah, yes, but so long ago I’ve forgotten it.”
“But you are going to the Klondike to dig for go
ld,” she pointed out. “Are you so much better prepared?”
“Oh, I’m going. But not to dig.”
No, she’d known all along he was going there to do what he did so well—to deal the cards on a green felt table and rake in nuggets instead of chips.
“You’re blocking my way,” she said crisply, giving him a cold look,
“I would never do that.” His tone was ironic, but he stepped aside with another mocking bow and let her pass.
Feeling almost as if she’d had her clothes torn off as he watched her leave, Roxanne hurried back to the Klondike car, her color unusually high. The lean gambler exerted a physical pull on her senses that frightened her. She gave Denby a guilty look, but apparently he had not noticed her absence. A few moments later, Case slipped back into his seat and resumed his play. He did not glance her way, but she was uncomfortably conscious of him all the evening.
A hundred miles later, as they roared into the Badlands, Roxanne wondered if even the Klondike could be more desolate than this. Around her rose naked walls of rocks and empty slopes—a scar upon the lovely countryside. She was cheered by seeing far up on a bluff the castle of the Marquis de Mores, a famous French adventurer. She turned to call Denby’s attention to it, but he had wandered away. Across from her she met Case’s hard gaze and turned away, her heart pounding uncomfortably. She kept expecting him to try to speak to her again, but he did not, although he continued to devour her with his eyes as they crossed Montana. She found him disturbingly attractive in a sinister way and her heartbeat quickened whenever she met that intense silver gaze. Determinedly, she kept her back to him, staring out the window at the awesome landscape, as the train climbed up beyond Helena and snaked through a mile-long tunnel. They rolled through Spokane, crossed the impressive Cascade Range and the Columbia River and, finally, chugged into Seattle. They had made the trip from Minneapolis in three nights and four days.
These Golden Pleasures Page 25