A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  I walk all the way down Broadway, checking frequently over my shoulder. I can’t see any of Soapy’s sidekicks behind me, but that doesn’t mean I’m not being followed. At Sikorsky’s Outfitters, I purchase a few supplies, paying for them in gold dust: a pick, a short-handled shovel, a bucket, several oilcloth bags, a couple of canteens, and some cartridges for our hunting rifle. The oilcloth, canteens, and ammunition fit into a satchel slung beneath my parka. There’s no subtle way to carry a shovel or a pick, but that suits my purpose. I walk tall as I stride homeward along the busy streets.

  I pin a notice on the saloon door saying CLOSED UNTIL 8. Now that I’m alone, I have a sudden attack of nausea. It’s one thing to cut a deal with Soapy, another thing entirely to go through with our plan. Still, what choice do we have? If we’re going to lose the saloon and leave Skaguay, at least we’ll do it our way.

  I walk behind the bar. There, carefully hidden by casks of booze and crates of empty bottles, is a trapdoor wide enough to admit a man. I raise the lid and haul out the shoe box that holds our life savings. I know precisely how much cash is in that box. But for now, I’m interested in the empty hole.

  Digging frozen soil is almost impossible. But here in town, stoves and fireplaces burn constantly. The buildings are all huddled together, and they keep one another — and the ground — warm, like a pack of sled dogs bedding down for the night. Having said that, it is still 100 percent thankless and exhausting work. I’m about three feet down and coated in muck when Clara finally comes home.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she says, stamping ice from her boots. She must have done a good clip: she’s sweating despite the knife-like winds outside. “John’s on the trail, so I hiked up to his clan house to leave a message.”

  “Any idea where he’s heading?” As a trader, John is often away for weeks at a time.

  “They’re not sure. Probably not Dawson.”

  Dawson City is more than four hundred miles from here. If John is traveling to Dawson, we really are doomed. “You think he’ll help us?”

  “Of course he will. We’ve been friends forever.”

  My mouth twists. “About six months, actually.”

  “That’s a lifetime in frontier land,” she argues. “It’s as long as the town of Skaguay’s existed. We three have a history.”

  It’s true. When John first trekked into town with a heavy pack on his back, everybody wanted his goods but nobody wanted to deal with an Indian. That changed when Clara and I bought his best furs to make winter parkas. Our friendship grew from there: he taught us how to paddle a canoe and showed us the best places to gather salmonberries. We told him stories from the Outside — wild tales of growing up in saloons all along the Pacific Coast — and helped him learn to read English. We even know his Tlingit name. We’re the only white people who do. Still, I’m worried. “He’d better come back to town in time to help us.”

  Clara comes around to inspect my work. “What did Soapy say?”

  “Two weeks. I had to shake his hand.”

  “Ugh. Poor you.” She reaches out to haul me up. “Here, let me have a turn.”

  The next five days, we only stop digging to open for business between eight p.m. and two a.m. At all other times, one of us is deep in that blasted hole, which is slowly becoming a tunnel. The other person cooks meals, keeps the saloon looking decent, and dumps hundreds of bucketfuls of soil out back, beside the privy. The sun sets around three in the afternoon, but, as we hope, plenty of folks have a chance to notice Alaska’s newest mountain. A lot of regulars tease us about it and we smile mysteriously. They complain about our shorter hours and we smile mysteriously. They ask if we’re going to work for Soapy and we smile mysteriously.

  All of Skaguay gossips about Soapy’s latest grab game. Rumors multiply like wild hare on the tundra. Still, we can’t sleep at night. Clara looks more ethereal than ever. I am plain haggard.

  John finally stops by the saloon almost a week after Soapy’s first visit. He is travel weary and unshaven, and I have never been happier to see anybody in my whole life. He pulls up a stool at the bar and says, “I got Clara’s message.”

  I pour him a double brandy — no melted snow — and wave away his money. “Are you able to help us?”

  He turns and looks slowly, deliberately, around the room. “I’ve never seen it this busy.” He’s right. Despite the shorter hours, our takings are better than ever. The rumor mill helps with that: the men worry that Clara might leave soon.

  “Only for a day or two longer,” I say. “A week at the outside.”

  “And then?”

  “We need your help skipping town. We have to use a route known only to your people.”

  He pauses midsip. “You’re leaving? Just like that?”

  “Would you stay, if you were us?”

  His mouth twists. “Of course not. But I will miss you.”

  “Everyone says that,” I snarl, “but they’re still just twiddling their thumbs while Soapy runs us out of town.”

  He holds my gaze. “I won’t. How can I help?”

  “We need to paddle down the coast, maybe as far as Juneau. We’ll have very little with us.”

  He nods. “I’ll wait for you at the clan house.”

  “Thank you.” I glance around the bar. All eyes are on Clara, holding court in the middle of the room, so I press a small, heavy bag into John’s palm. “A deposit,” I say. “For supplies.”

  He frowns. “That is unnecessary. We are friends.”

  “Desperate, high-risk friends.”

  His lips curve very slightly, not quite enough to call it a smile. “And what will I do with your gold dust? We Tlingit don’t value it.”

  “A trader like you?” It feels good to joke, however badly. “I can’t imagine.”

  Exactly one week after we shook hands, Soapy Smith storms Garrett’s Saloon. He doesn’t kick the door in; his henchman does that for him. Both their guns are drawn. And while Clara and I are braced for something just like this, we still scream in genuine terror. After all, if he knew what we were planning, he’d shoot us on the spot.

  “Miss Lily and Miss Clara,” he says in that smoky-soft drawl. “How delightful to see you again. I’ve been meaning to drop in for a drink, all this past week, but you’ve been keeping different hours.” He pauses and looks around the saloon. “I can’t help but wonder why.”

  Clara, who’s been on digging duty, drops her tools into the hole. We stand together, shoulder to shoulder, in a pathetic attempt to hide the mouth of the tunnel. “We have your sh-share of the money,” I say, stuttering in earnest. “Our nightly p-profits have actually gone up. I think it’s because of the new hours.”

  Soapy isn’t listening. “What are you doing hiding behind the bar? Walk out slowly, both of you.”

  I obey, keeping my hands in plain sight. Clara follows, but not until she’s kicked the trapdoor cover into place.

  “What was that sound?” yells the hoodlum. I recognize him from the hotel: short, squint-eyed, none too bright. Maybe it’s borderline hysteria, but despite the pistols aimed our way, I begin to feel mildly optimistic. If Soapy has brought only one thug, one from the farm team at that, he doesn’t consider us much of a threat.

  Soapy strolls behind the bar and looks down. “I suspected as much,” he says. “Miss Clara, didn’t you know that all the gold is buried in the creek beds, not the town?”

  He’s still chuckling at his own joke when Clara sticks out her chin and says, “Shows what you know.”

  “Shut up!” I hiss, elbowing her.

  Soapy’s gaze sharpens. “Cover them, Red.” He kneels, and the trapdoor creaks open. He whistles long and low. “My, you girls have been busy. This is practically a mine shaft. Red, you got a candle on you?”

  “No, boss.”

  Soapy sighs. “Fine. Get over here.” He keeps his gun loosely trained on us, but his attention is on Red.

  “Can’t see nothing, boss.”

  “Then climb in, you id
iot.”

  “’S awful dark in there, boss.”

  “Guess you should’ve brought a candle.” Soapy turns to us and says with a simper, “Good help is so hard to find.”

  Red gives a muffled grunt. “It’s real deep, boss. Height of a man, at least. And that’s not the end of it.”

  Soapy strides behind the bar to look for himself. Then he turns to us, hands on hips. “Seeing as this is now my bar, why don’t you girls tell me what’s going on? Why the hell would you spend your last week in Skaguay digging a tunnel to China?”

  “Our deal was for two weeks!” I object. “We shook on it!”

  “New day, new deal: tell me where this tunnel goes and what you were planning to do with it, and you get a pair of one-way tickets on the next steamer out of town.” He pauses. When he next speaks, his voice is viper-like. “Refuse, or lie, or try to double-cross me, and you dear, sweet girls will wish you were never born.”

  Clara blanches to the lips. “We understand,” she whispers.

  “You changed your mind once,” I say, not even trying to control the shaking of my voice. “How can we be sure that you won’t change it again after we’ve told you?”

  His smile is even more frightening than his voice. “You can’t.”

  There is a long silence. Then, as though against our wills, Clara and I step toward the bar. From my position at the side, I can see both the hole and Red’s head just inside it.

  I take several deep breaths. “It’s simple, really. Our neighbor Madame Robillard runs a boardinghouse. She has a safe where she keeps valuables for her lodgers: jewelry, gold nuggets, cash. And, well, we happen to know the combination.” Most of this is true.

  Soapy’s eyes gleam. “How did you learn the combination?”

  I fidget. “Her maid told me.”

  “So you girls were digging for gold after all.” Soapy sounds impressed.

  “If you had a light, you could see the direction of the tunnel,” Clara says helpfully. “Maybe if Red goes in deeper and sort of waves to you?”

  Soapy motions Red to obey. The henchman slides farther into the tunnel and lets out a howl of pain.

  “Oops,” says Clara. “Sounds like he spiked himself on the pick. I threw it down there when you first burst in. Sorry, Red!”

  As Red inches through the tunnel — it’s a tight squeeze for a man, especially a broad-shouldered one — Soapy dips his head and watches. His grip on the pistol slackens.

  “We’re making a beeline for Madame Robillard’s private parlor,” I explain. “See how the tunnel curves?”

  “It’s at the very back of her house,” adds Clara. “About twenty paces from this wall, we reckon.”

  Soapy kneels, pushing his face into the tunnel’s mouth. His gun lies just beside his right hand. “How far along did you get with the tunnel?”

  In one practiced motion, I slip our loaded rifle from its hook on the side of the bar and press the muzzle to the back of his head. Hard. “About this far.”

  Soapy freezes.

  My whole body is trembling, but that probably makes things scarier for him. “Now,” I say, “very slowly, slide your right hand away from your gun.”

  “What’s up, boss?” comes Red’s muffled voice.

  “Tell him nothing, it’s all right, keep going.”

  Soapy obeys, his voice stiff with outrage.

  “Now stand up very slowly. That’s right. Hands in the air.”

  Despite the chill of the room, streams of sweat trickle down Soapy’s face. Still, I admire his nerve. Two feet from the end of a loaded rifle, and he’s swearing at us using curses so inventive that even I, who grew up in a saloon, find them educational.

  “Hey, Red,” sings out Clara, “can you catch?” She clocks Soapy over the head with our cast-iron frying pan. His eyes cross, his knees buckle, and with a little shove from Clara he drops, like a sandbag, down into the tunnel.

  To the sound of Red’s much less creative swearing, Clara thumps the trapdoor into place and slaps a sheet of iron, salvaged from our woodstove, on top of it. Together, we roll a keg of beer on top of that, to weigh it down. We pause, panting and shaking from our exertions, and listen with satisfaction to Red’s muffled curses.

  “Hey, Red,” calls Clara. Her curls are damp with sweat, and she’s grinning like a fool. “Did you find the shovel I left you?”

  More swearing.

  “You’ll never get out this side,” she says. “Trapdoor’s lined with iron and weighted. I suggest you make your way to the other end of the tunnel and dig straight up.”

  We don’t linger to hear Red’s answer. Our supplies are already packed in satchels, our cash folded into oilcloth bags we’ve worn strapped under our skirts all week. We step out onto Broadway, and Clara catches the arm of Old Tom Hines, one of our faithfuls. “Tom,” she says in her perfect hostess’s voice, “the liquor cabinet’s wide open. Why don’t you go treat yourself and a hundred of your closest friends?”

  We make our way up the street, spreading the word: drink Garrett’s dry, keep the glasses, take the furniture. By the time we stop at Shaw’s lumber merchants, telling him to help himself to the wood planks the saloon is built of, we have to shout to be understood. We link arms and fight the human tide to the very top of the street, to survey the full extent of the chaos we’ve inspired.

  After a few minutes, Clara squeezes my arm. “Hey, why are you crying?”

  I touch my face, and she’s right: I am. “It’s all over. All that hard work . . . gone.” I gesture to the saloon. It was more than just our business. It was our life. Our inheritance from Lu.

  “It is,” she concedes. “But I think we’ve gained more than we’ve lost.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t follow.”

  “Look at all those happy people: talking about us, drinking to our future, finishing our revenge for us. We’re forever part of Skaguay’s history now. You and me, Lil. We’re going down in legend. The infamous Garrett sisters.”

  I suppose it’s something. Eventually, I draw a shaky breath. “You were very specific about where they should start digging. Where do you have them coming up?”

  Her eyes sparkle. “Well, it’s hard to be precise when you’re that far underground.”

  “But?”

  “If they dig straight up?” Her lips twitch. “They should surface pretty much in our outhouse.”

  “The Legendary Garrett Girls” was first inspired (though I didn’t know it at the time) by a family vacation to Alaska, where I rode the White Pass railway and saw the grave of Soapy Smith. I even started my research, accidentally, when I bought William B. Haskell’s memoir, Two Years in the Klondike and Alaskan Gold Fields, 1896–1898, as a souvenir of the holiday. Many details of daily life in this story come straight from Haskell, including the use of gold dust as currency.

  One of the tricky things about researching Soapy Smith is the proliferation of legend and rumor around his rather murky life. It’s safe to discount the wildest legends (“He was the new Napoleon of crime!” “Moriarty had nothing on Jeff Smith!”), but there are clear factions in the interpretation of Smith’s life and times. For a writer of fiction, this is ridiculously liberating: I was free to cherry-pick the details that best suited my dramatic impulses.

  My research into Tlingit culture suggests that formal names are private and not to be used lightly. In homage to Kate Carmack, Jim Mason, and Dawson Charlie, members of the Tagish and Tlingit First Nations who discovered gold and triggered the Klondike gold rush, I’ve given my Tlingit trader, John, an English name of convenience.

  If you’re curious about Soapy and the Klondike gold rush, please visit my website, where I’ve posted a short bibliography. For readers and writers of historical fiction, it’s never too late to stake a claim!

  ANTONIA’S TIMING WAS PERFECT. The sun was just flaming over the horizon, making insects shimmer and lighting the green glass insulators in the new electric poles that marched up and down the empty streets. This far no
rth on the Kings Road, buildings stood at a distance from one another and looked like they’d been thrown together in a day. Everything felt unfinished and exciting, changing minute by minute — blink and you saw something new. Five years ago Tony’s father had brought her here to see horse races at the track — now the same racetrack served as an airfield and hosted flying shows.

  Today, Tony was here to see the flying.

  There were a few other people waiting across the street from Paxon Field, early risers like herself who’d been lucky enough to get a tip-off about the informal flying show that was going to happen this morning. Bessie Coleman, Queen Bess, Brave Bess — the only black woman in the world with a pilot’s license — was coming out here to do a test flight before tomorrow’s air display.

  Tony hesitated for a moment at the closed door of the airfield office. Traffic amounted to a milkman’s horse and one rattling old Tin Lizzie Ford, which didn’t even slow down as it passed, but someone had decided the test flight was important enough to warrant a young white uniformed policeman patrolling the front of the wooden office building. The policeman came out to stand in the middle of the street and waved the car on importantly. As Tony stood wondering whether she should go into the office and explain that she’d been invited, or if it would be better just to wait until Miss Coleman and her escort got here themselves, the policeman turned and saw her.

  He tried to shoo her away like a stray dog.

  “This show ain’t open to the public,” he told her. “The parachute jump is tomorrow, over at the racetrack. If you want to watch just now, you can stand on the other side of the road.”

  “Miss Coleman’s publicity manager invited me,” Tony explained. “He’s Mr. Betsch, from the Negro Welfare League. Yesterday she came and lectured at my school — I go to Edwin Stanton —”

  The policeman’s lips parted as though he were about to interrupt. Tony plunged on, speaking fast: “She’s got a moving picture of her aviation stunts in Europe, and yesterday while she was rewinding her film reels, Mr. Betsch told me I could come along today so I can interview her for my Physics Club —” She realized she was talking too quickly, sounding a little desperate.