Savoy, men were lining up at the bar five deep. From the back room came the wonderful noise of cards being dealt and the roulette wheel spinning. The sound of money falling into my pocket went some way towards taking my mind off the triple troubles of Irene, Joey and Chloe.
There were two bartenders serving the customers. Murray, the newly promoted head bartender, and another fellow whose name always managed to escape me. “Mrs. MacGillivray.” Murray waved me over. “Thank goodness you’re here. Man’s thrown up under the roulette wheel, and Mrs. Saunderson ain’t around.”
I looked at him. “Have you shown the gentleman the door?”
“Shown him the mud of Front Street, more like.” “Has a beautiful fairy arrived to clean up the mess with her magic wand?” He looked at me, his shiny face blank. A lock of clean blond hair flopped across his forehead. “No, ma’am.”
“Then you’d best clean it up yourself, hadn’t you? Certainly before I see it.”
“Ma’am?”
“You are in charge here in Mr. Walker’s absence, are you not, Murray?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then please act it. Either clean up the mess or have someone do it, whether Mrs. Saunderson is here or not.” I tossed my head towards the bartender who was Not-Murray. Comprehension slowly dawned behind the eyes of our new head bartender. I’d have to ask Ray to re-think that appointment. “I’m going up to my office for about five minutes. Then I intend to tour the gambling hall. If I am not assailed by the invigorating scent of clean sawdust, and nothing else, someone will be seeking new employment.”
I walked away, smiling to my left and right and greeting customers graciously. I’ve had some experience in mingling with minor royalty, and I even moved in the Prince of Wales’s social circle for a brief time (but quite long enough, thank you very much), so I know how to put on airs. The men seem to like it. Makes them feel special, perhaps.
It was early afternoon, and although the place might appear to be full, it was only an illusion. Wait until the show ended at midnight, the dance hall doors opened and men spilled out of the back room. Then I’d scarcely be able to breathe as I made my way through the crowds. In some situations that might prove somewhat dangerous for a lady, but in Dawson the majority of the men were so homesick, so lonely—so sad, some of them—that most of them treated me like a hothouse flower. And for those that didn’t, there was the very long arm of the NWMP. As well as the hefty billy club Ray kept behind the bar.
I walked up the stairs, wondering if I should tell the Mounties that Joey LeBlanc had threatened me. But what could I say: Joey had asked Helen Saunderson if she liked working for me, and I took that comment to mean I should run for the law? Or that an ex-employee had changed her mind and headed north when she’d originally been going south? I’d be laughed out of the station. But not by everyone.
There was always Constable Sterling. I pushed that idea aside. I didn’t want to be beholden to Richard Sterling.
At that moment, as though summoned by my very thoughts, Sergeant Lancaster walked through the doors of the Savoy. As usual, he was all puffed up and walked like the emperor penguin in a photograph I’d seen of such an animal captured on an expedition to the Antarctic.
Also as usual, he made a beeline in my direction. Sergeant Lancaster had recently expressed his entirely honourable intentions towards me. It had been a most uncomfortable situation, and I considered myself fortunate to have escaped without causing any hard feelings. This afternoon he was wreathed in smiles across his battered old face all the way up to the cauliflower ears. He sucked in his stomach as he got close.
“Mrs. MacGillivray. May I say that you are looking particularly lovely this afternoon?”
Of course you may. “A touch of our northern sun does wonders for a lady’s complexion, I’ve always said.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. “I said to your son…” I took his arm. “I was hoping to have a word with you, Sergeant.” I led him away from the crowd, but no further than the back of the saloon. I was afraid if I took him up to the privacy of my office, Sergeant Lancaster would drop to one knee and burst out a proposal of marriage once again. We stood under a painting of a voluptuous, pale-skinned, redheaded nude lounging languorously on a red velvet settee. Some patriotic soul had driven a pair of Stars and Stripes into either side of the heavy gilt frame. Rather than offend our American customers, I had let the flags remain. I myself had attached a considerably larger set of Union Jacks to the picture beside it.
“Is there a problem, Mrs. MacGillivray?” Lancaster was getting himself ready to mount up and ride into battle on my behalf.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Sergeant,” I said. “I’ve recently taken a young woman under my protection. A woman of most unfortunate circumstances—I’m sure I don’t have to explain them to you?”
The big man turned a bright red. He tugged at the buttons on his tunic. “Of course not, Mrs. MacGillivray.”
“I am concerned that…certain people…might be anxious to return her to her…previous employment.”
“I assure you, Mrs. MacGillivray…”
I raised a hand and touched him lightly on the chest. “Or to take some…action…against me.”
“Mrs. MacGillivray!” Lancaster was truly shocked. His fellow officers held him in high regard; I thought him a bumbling idiot. But I was hoping that through him the Mounties would extend me protection without my having to humble myself by asking for it.
Foolish pride. Better I should have crawled on all fours and begged for their help.
Chapter Nine
After leaving Angus MacGillivray at his boxing lesson with Sergeant Lancaster, Sterling continued on his rounds. He walked through saloons and dance halls, checking for crooked tables, clumsily-poured drinks, gold scales out of alignment, underage drinkers, men spoiling for a fight, indecency, all of the detritus of a gold rush town where the innocent sometimes made it as hard to protect them as it was to prosecute the guilty. The drunken Indian played on his mind.
Eventually his heavy black boots led him down Church Street to St. Paul’s.
He took off his hat as he opened the church doors. It was a rough wooden structure, looking exactly like what it was— a building thrown up out of the wilderness in a few short weeks. But it was also a rarely-visited sanctuary offering an island of serenity in an ocean of turbulent humanity. The minister’s wife was polishing the arms of the pews, a thankless task. In Dawson, dust and sawdust continually fell in a fine rain on everything indoors and out.
She put down her rag and wiped her hands on her apron while walking towards him with a welcoming smile. “Constable. How nice to see you. Come to check on your Indian friend?”
“Yes, ma’am. Did you fetch him then?” “My husband has taken him down to Moosehide.”
Moosehide was a small island in the Yukon River, not far from town, where the Han Indians lived. Moosehide was also the name of the ancient rockslide that had long ago taken an enormous chunk out of the side of the hill looming over the town.
“Thank you.” Sterling tipped his hat. “I’ll be off then.”
“Have you time for a cup of tea, Constable?”
A lot of dust got into a man’s throat on a hot day walking rounds in Dawson, but he couldn’t accept the friendly offer. Sterling’s father had been a preacher, a stern, cold, hard man, who had slowly drained every bit of joy out of his timid wife, until she was almost as much of a shell as he. Richard Sterling had been raised in a cold, hard home. It was irrational, he knew, but he could never make himself comfortable in the presence of a man or woman of God.
“Another time perhaps, ma’am.” He walked back out into the sunshine and the dust.
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