by Vicki Delany
“When can I start? Tomorrow?”
Sterling laughed. “Let me talk to Lancaster first. We’ll work something out, and I’ll let you know.”
They walked down Front Street. It was almost eight o’clock, but the northern sun was warm on their faces. Outside the Savoy, Helen Saunderson was standing on the boardwalk, her eyes red from weeping, holding a welllaundered and heavily mended handkerchief to her nose. Jack Ireland, the American newspaperman, stood beside her, writing in a small notebook.
“Evening, Mrs. Saunderson,” Sterling said. “Everything all right here?”
“Fine, thank you, Constable. Evenin’ Angus.” Air whistled through the woman’s missing teeth. She blew her nose, the sound like a Prairie tornado. “I’m only telling Mr. Ireland here ’bout what happened to my man, Jim.”
Ireland patted Mrs. Saunderson’s shoulder. “There, there, my dear. You cry all you want. Such a tragic story.”
She burst into another round of sobs and buried her face in her handkerchief. Her shoulders shook. Passersby tossed her curious stares and gave them a wide berth.
“Are you sure you want to be talking to a reporter, Helen?” Sterling said.
“I don’t see that it’s any of your business, Constable. Not unless the telling of a tragic story is against the law up here,” Ireland said.
“I was asking the lady.”
“I want folks to know what he done to me. My own brother. Took everything I had in the world and left the little uns to starve.”
Angus’s mother had told him the story: Helen’s husband Jim and her brother had a claim out on Bonanza Creek. At first they were among the lucky ones, striking gold their first month on the river. But luck soon abandoned them, as she so often does, when loose gravel on a cliff face crumbled beneath Jim, and he fell to his death on the rocks below. It wasn’t much of a tumble either, as the story went, only a few feet, but the back of his head met with the pointed edge of a sharp rock. His partner, Helen’s own brother, John, took their gold and headed out of the territory before Helen had time to make her way to the base of the cliff and recover the body. She arrived in town with her husband’s remains, his mining equipment, and four children under the age of twelve.
The Savoy’s housekeeper had quit just a few days before, walked out in the middle of her shift having accepted a proposal of marriage on the spot from a man she’d never before laid eyes on. Not incidentally, he’d found gold and was celebrating his good fortune. So Helen was offered the job, and with just enough hesitation to assuage her pride, she accepted.
A couple of miners, their hair and clothes still thick with the dust of the dig, stopped at the foot of the step. They looked at the weeping woman, the well-dressed older man taking notes, the boy, the police officer, and hurried down the street in search of a more hospitable drinking place.
“Some privacy, please, Constable.” Ireland patted Mrs. Saunderson with one hand and dug in his pockets in search of a cigar with the other.
Mrs. Saunderson gulped, wiped her eyes, and took a deep breath, almost visibly gathering her courage. “If it weren’t for Mrs. MacGillivray, I can tell you, sir, there’s no telling what woulda become of my youngins. This ain’t no town for a woman without a man, and four children. No, sir. You tell your newspaper people that Mrs. Fiona MacGillivray is a fine woman. None better.”
“I’ll do that,” Ireland said, his eyes roaming the street in search of the next story.
“Mrs. MacGillivray once owned a grand hotel in London, England.” Helen’s eyes widened at the thought of how fine a grand London hotel would be. Deep lines scored her face, and the delicate skin under her eyes, as dark as a grate full of coal, drooped towards her sunken cheeks. The effects of cold, hard work, grief and the scurvy that had stalked the town over the winter past combined to make her look twenty years older than she probably was.
“What the heck’s going on out here?” Ray Walker stood in the doorway. “Sorry Angus, Helen. Didn’t see you there. What’re you doing standing about on the stoop? Ye’r blocking the doorway. Customers can’t get themselves through.”
Sterling looked at Ireland. “Is it necessary to stand in the entrance?”
Ireland straightened his perfectly aligned tie. “Mrs. Saunderson wanted to tell me her sad story. I’m a newspaper reporter. Hearing people’s stories is my job; it’s why I’ve come to the Yukon Territory. Certainly for no other reason.” He laughed. No one joined in.
“Then take yourselves down the street. Mr. Walker has a business to run.”
“I’ve all the information I need for now. Thank you,” Ireland said. Mrs. Saunderson buried her life-worn face in the rag of the handkerchief. Ireland touched the brim of his fine hat, which was not marked by even the slightest touch of dust, and stepped into the street.
“You’ll remember my brother’s name, John O’Reilly, won’t you?” Helen called. “If it weren’t for Mrs. Mac…”
Ireland walked away, his step jaunty. He’d only gone a couple of feet when a pack of half-wild dogs rounded the corner. Angus couldn’t see what they were chasing, but they were hot after something. Ireland leapt backwards and would have fallen into the mud had he not stumbled into a huge sourdough.
“Watch where you’re goin’, damned fool.” At first, Ireland looked as if he were about to give the man an argument. Then he glanced at the bulk looming over him and at the man’s biceps—each the size of a side of ham—and thought better of it.
Helen leaned her hefty frame up against the wall and sobbed into her handkerchief.
“Mrs. Saunderson should sit down,” Angus said. “And she’d probably like a cup of tea.”
She gave Angus a small but grateful smile.
“Get off the stoop, will ye?” Ray said. “Not a customer’s come through the doorway since you been standing there. Keep this up, and we’ll be outta business. Helen, man’s been sick in the gambling hall. You don’t clean it up quick, it’ll be tracked all over the place, and Fee’ll have yer hide.”
Helen wiped her eyes and tucked her handkerchief into the sleeve of her dress.
They followed Ray into the gloom of the Savoy. The place had a fine name, and a nice sign hanging outside. But inside it was exactly the same as every other saloon in Dawson: looking as if it had been thrown up in a day—which it had. The floorboards had been slapped together out of green wood; the ceiling was spotted with damp. But the customers stood four or five deep at the bar, and men were pushing their way into the gambling hall, all before the theatre and dance hall opened for the start of the real action.
“It was right good to have someone to talk to,” Mrs. Saunderson said. “Someone what might write about what John did to us. Maybe he’ll read about it and feel bad and come back with my Jim’s gold.”
She made her way through the crowd to the small, dark room behind the bar where she kept her rags and pail.
Chapter Six
My office was on the second floor, directly above the bar, overlooking Front Street to the mud-flats, the boatcongested Yukon River, and the tent-dotted hills beyond. If I were the type of woman to pray, I would spend a good bit of every day praying that the floor held. It emitted long, ominous creaks under my steps, and in a few places the wooden planks sagged beneath my weight.
It would do nothing for my dignity, nor my reputation, if one day I fell through the floor of the office, to descend legs first into the saloon, skirt caught on a scrap of rotting wood.
It was morning, and I was doing the accounts. We’d had another good night. Summertime, and the days were long and the nights too bright for southern eyes. All those men who’d struggled up the Golden Staircase to the Chilkoot Pass and rafted down from Lake Bennett or spent the winter in a town on the verge of mass starvation simply had to spend their money.
Jake, our head croupier, told Ray and me that some fool had dropped a thousand dollars in the eight hours he’d spent at the roulette wheel. I’ve known gamblers in London, Toronto and now Dawson, and it never f
ails to amaze me how some people just can’t give up the game. In London, I’d even seen women standing in the shadows at the side of the clubs, handing money to men to take in and bet for them.
I’ve gambled myself, and it’s a thrill to be winning. But then I’ve never gambled with my own money; my escorts always allowed me to keep my winnings and kept paying out if I lost. I’ve worked too hard to get what I have to risk it on a spin of the wheel or toss of the dice. But perhaps I think that way because I know how much I’m taking in as the owner of the gambling hall. And I don’t make money when the punters are winning.
Graham Donohue’s head popped around the door, interrupting my thoughts. “Is it safe to come in?”
I put down my pen and rubbed my forehead. “I should say no, but I won’t. What on earth got into you yesterday, Graham?”
He tossed himself into the spare chair. A floorboard creaked and I winced. “When did that bastard Ireland get here?” he asked.
I gave him a well-practised look of feminine indignation. “Watch your language, Graham, or I’ll toss you out myself.”
He didn’t even apologize. “You don’t want that man hanging around, Fiona.”
“His money seems as good as anyone else’s. And he didn’t pick a fight, far as I know.”
“Jack Ireland and I go back a few years. I could tell you some stories.”
“I don’t want to hear them. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” I flashed my pen as evidence.
“Another time then. But here’s something you’d better hear, my dear.” He pulled a scrap of paper out of his waistcoat pocket.
“Graham, I don’t have time to listen to your copy. I haven’t yet been to the bank.”
He held up one hand. “This isn’t my copy, Fiona. Someone else sent it. Listen for a moment while I read you a few select sentences.”
I sighed and settled back into my chair. Easier to let him talk and get it over with, then I could get back to work. He was a good man, Graham Donohue, with a kind heart. For a newspaper reporter. And an American. He made no secret of the fact that he wanted, very much, to be more than my friend. But it was best to let things remain as they were. For now.
“Helen Saunderson. House of Ill Repute. Infamous Madam. Fee—spelt F-e-e—MacIntosh. White slavery. Seven starving children.”
“Let me see that.” I got to my feet, leaned across the desk, and snatched the paper out of his hands. The handwriting was indecipherable. I shoved it back at him and resumed my seat. “Gibberish. Nothing but gibberish.”
“Fiona, listen to me.” H leaned forward and placed his elbows on my desk. “Jack Ireland sent this story to San Francisco on the first steamboat out this morning. I’ll read it to you in its entirety if you want, but the gist is that Helen Saunderson, he mentions her by name, has been forced into prostitution by a whorehouse madam by the name of F-i-e MacIntosh. Who, in the only bit of truth in his whole story, he describes as a black-haired beauty with a voice and complexion fresh off an English country estate.”
I was so annoyed I didn’t even take time to savour the phrases “black-haired-beauty” and “fresh complexion”. “How the hell did you get this? Don’t tell me Ireland tossed his rough copy into the gutter, and you happened upon it?”
“Language, Fiona. My delicate ears.”
I almost said something stronger, but Graham held up one hand. “I’m telling you this in the strictest of confidence, of course.” When Graham flirted with me, his hazel eyes sparkled as if with traces of gold dust; now they were so dark and serious that I settled back into my chair.
“Go ahead.”
“I pay some of the men who hang around the docks a generous sum to let me know if they hear of anyone sending newspaper copy out, and still more if they open the envelope and copy the meat of the article.”
The regular mail leaves Dawson once every two weeks, most recently only the day before yesterday. Obviously, ambitious newspapermen aren’t prepared to wait two weeks to see their stories heading for print. Although if they want secrecy, perhaps they should.
“As I’m sure they’re paid to copy your notes, Graham. But I can’t see what harm this rubbish can do me. He didn’t even get my name right, although the description is good.” I picked up my pen once again. If the story spread further than San Francisco, so what? Everyone in Dawson knew that I wasn’t a madam, and if anyone from England was still looking for me, Fee MacIntosh isn’t even my name.
Graham’s expression was indecipherable. “He got Helen’s name correct, Fiona. It’s quite the slur on her reputation, don’t you think?”
I rolled my shoulders back to give them a welcome stretch. Graham must have been concerned indeed: he didn’t even glance as the fabric of my day-dress tightened across my bosom. “Really, Graham, I agree that it’s nasty of Mr. Ireland to be making up stories about us. And no doubt unethical. His facts are wrong, but this story paints Helen in a sympathetic light. Destitute widow struggling to support her starving children. That’s the sort of sentimental rubbish that sells newspapers.”
“I don’t think she’ll see it that way.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” Outside my window, a horse screamed in terror. Men began shouting, and the wanderers gathered round, hoping for a show. “She’ll never hear about it. By the time this letter gets to San Francisco and the paper is printed, provided they accept Ireland’s rubbish, and a copy makes its way back here, which is also an unlikely prospect, half the town will have moved on, and no one will even know who he’s talking about.”
“Fiona, for such an intelligent woman, you can be amazingly dense when you’re blinded by your own vanity and self-obsession.”
I blinked. Men never insult me. At least not the ones who want to impress me. The outbreak of trouble on the street below didn’t materialize. A man spoke to the horse in soothing tones, and the crowd drifted away, looking for excitement elsewhere.
“She’ll find out all about it any minute now. My acquaintance who copied the letter came over the pass with Helen and Jim. He won’t sit on this. He’ll tell her.”
“Oh, dear. Maybe he, your…whatever, will have told the messenger to lose the letter when he saw that it’s untruthful.”
“It’s not the messenger’s responsibility to check the mail for accuracy. If Ireland wrote that the Czar of Russia had arrived in Dawson to grow potatoes in a wicked plot to make enough vodka to inebriate the entire adult population of the United States, he’d still carry it. As long as Ireland paid. Anyway, it’s too late. Boat has sailed. With the letter.”
I stood up. “Honest people are sometimes more trouble than they’re worth. Helen should be downstairs. I’ll go and see to her.”
“Yes, Fiona. You’d better.”
If one was to judge by the look of the group gathered in the saloon, we might have walked into a funeral. Helen’s eyes were open as wide as her mouth, and she looked like a horse panicked by the sound of a gunshot too close to her head. Ray held her arm, his features dark and troubled. My son, Angus, sat at the bar, a piece of toast in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. He turned at the sound of my footsteps, and his sweet face was filled with a look of such despair, I almost rushed over to gather him into my arms. But I held back, knowing that if I tried to hug him in public, in front of others, he’d push me aside.
A man I didn’t know stood beside them. He was dressed in a filthy flannel working man’s shirt under a jacket with one pocket hanging by a thread. His trousers were torn at both knees and badly mended. I had smelled him as I came down the stairs. He stared at me for a few seconds before shifting his attention back to the tableau in the saloon, twisting his dusty hat, missing half the brim, in his hands. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have come. But I thought you’d want to know what this scoundrel says about you, Helen.”
My partner let out a stream of words.
Everyone in the saloon looked at him. Ray’s accent was so strong that something very bad must be happening.
I transla
ted. “Ray says that it’s better to hear foul news in the open from a friend than to have it whispered into your ears by your enemies. Or words to that effect. Let me see that.” I snatched the paper out of Angus’s hand. It was written in a strong, educated script.
How many copies of this blasted newspaper story were there? The man must have made yet another copy to show to Helen before handing the rough one over to Graham, perhaps thinking that she’d be more likely to believe him if she saw the words written down on paper.
I looked up. They were all watching me. I crumpled the paper in my hand. “Lies. All lies. Of no consequence. You, sir. Are you Mr. Donohue’s friend? Did you copy this from a letter being carried to the Outside?”
The man nodded and twisted his hat. It would be even more of a mess by the end of this. “Yes, ma’am. Mrs. MacGillivray, ma’am. Joe Hamilton is my name.”
“Mr. Hamilton. Where is this…missive…directed?”
“Ma’am?” He gaped at me.
“She means the letter, you fool,” Donohue said. “What was the address on the envelope?”
“San Francisco, Mrs. MacGillivray, ma’am. The San Francisco Standard. I believe that is a newspaper.” He stared at me, wide-eyed.
“I know what it is,” I snapped. The man’s face fell, causing him to look as if he’d missed a word in the final round of a spelling bee. Now I recognized him: he came in the occasional night and hung around the edges of the bar, dragging out a drink for as long as his few cents would stretch. Usually he spent most of his time watching me.
I threw him my best all-business smile. “Please forgive me, Mr. Hamilton. I shouldn’t have spoken to you in that manner, but I do find all of this so dreadfully distressing.”
Graham Donohue snorted. Ray poured a generous shot of whisky and handed it to Helen. “Here ye go, lass,” he said. “Drink this up. Do you a world o’ good.”
She lowered her nose to the edge of the glass, and her face crinkled at the smell.