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.”
What Mrs. Mann thought of this arrangement, it was impossible to tell. I was thrusting a complete unknown— not to mention an Indian—at her. But she simply said, “Be here at seven.”
Mr. Mann stood up. He cleared his throat. I half expected him to throw Mary out on her ear, and me after her for suggesting that such a woman come and work for his wife. For him it would be enough that she was an Indian— without even knowing her (former) occupation. “I go with Angus,” he said. “Help carry.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you, Mr. Mann.”
He almost blushed and turned away.
My suggestion that Mary take employment in Mrs. Mann’s laundry and residence in the Savoy wasn’t entirely altruistic. I was rather delighted at the idea of having a confrontation with Joey LeBlanc, while knowing that the law was, for once, on my side.
I can be such an idiot sometimes.
Chapter Three
Constable Richard Sterling settled his broad-brimmed hat on his head, said goodbye to the corporal in charge of the Dawson town detachment and opened the door. A lanky blond boy, a tumble of too-long arms and legs, stood in front of him with his hand extended towards the latch.
Sterling grinned. “Angus, what brings you here? Looking for me?”
“Yes, sir. Well, we’re looking for a Mountie, that is.” “We?” Sterling said, before noticing two people watching the exchange from the bottom of the steps. He nodded to the man. “Mr. Mann.”
“My ma said we had to get a Mountie. Let’s go.”
“Hold up, Angus. Where are we going?” Sterling touched the brim of his hat.
“I don’t believe I’ve been introduced to this lady.” Which was factually true, although he knew well enough that she worked out of a crib on Paradise Alley and handed her earnings over to Joey LeBlanc.
Seeing the recognition in his face, the woman lowered her eyes.
“Oh, right,” Angus said. “This is Mary…uh…just Mary. My friend.”
“Sterling,” Mr. Mann said. “Weeze wasting time. Youze gos now.” He made a sort of shooing gesture with his hands towards the woman, and she set off down the street with long determined strides that belied her short legs. She was wearing a dress far too large for her and made of considerably better fabric than most of the cloth one saw in Paradise Alley.
“What are you and Mr. Mann doing in the company of that woman, Angus, and where are we going?” Sterling asked as they fell into