“It’s a nice evening, but there’s a touch of chill in the air. Let me get my shawl, and we can go for a walk.” Margaret carried her plates into the depths of her shoddy home.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Did Margaret Collins regret how far she’d fallen in the world—their shack was so badly lit that even with the sun still lighting the western sky, I could scarcely see a foot inside—or was she happy with her choice? To have turned her back on her rich, but unloving family, and marry Sam, whom to all appearances she still adored?
A pack of screeching children, every one of them dressed in hand-me-downs, their clothes and hair so tangled and filthy, it was hard to distinguish boy from girl, ran up the road in hysterical pursuit of a drooling dog. A stern-faced man with the best muttonchop whiskers I’d seen outside of a Regimental Mess grabbed the children’s leader in one meaty fist. The others pulled to a sudden stop, and the dog disappeared into the warren of shacks and tents.
Margaret came out of the house, a tattered shawl tossed over her shoulders. Her eyes were dark in her pale face. “Let’s walk this way. I’d like to pick some fresh flowers. Those ones will be dead soon.”
We walked up the street, towards the foot of the mountain they call Midnight Dome. Margaret talked about inconsequentials, flowers mostly, gardens her mother had tended back in her childhood, cacti she’d seen in the southern deserts. I let her prattle on, sensing she would shortly run out of chatter and tell me all I needed (but did not particularly want) to know.
“Don’t you find the wildflowers here to be incredible, Mrs. MacGillivray? I suppose because the growing season’s so short, nature must do all she has to accomplish in one wild burst of colour.”
“They are lovely,” I said.
The cluster of tents and wooden shacks thinned and soon fell behind us. The roadway ended, but a rough track climbed into the foothills. There were no trees left, only bare stumps, thin bushes—no good for building—and naked soil. The hillsides higher up were ablaze with wildflowers in all possible shades of yellow, purple and blue, dotted with the purest white to be found outside of fresh Yukon snow.
“I would love to have seen this country as it was two years ago,” Margaret said, puffing with the exertion of the climb. “Imagine what this wood must have been like as planted by God.”
“Perfectly wonderful, I’m sure. Margaret, we’ve gone far enough. I can scarcely hear the people below. My shoes are not suited to this path.”
“Just around this bend there’s a delightful patch of larkspur. I haven’t told a soul about it, so as not to have all sorts of people climbing up here with their ill-trained dogs and snotty-nosed children to trample all over my flowers.”
The path, rough as it was, came to an abrupt end at a large boulder. Margaret gathered her skirts in one hand and climbed over the rock.
Why I followed her, to this day I don’t know. Perhaps because I believed that a woman chatting about wildflowers and the harmful effects of dogs and children upon them could do me no harm? Perhaps because my comfortable life here in Dawson, where I was earning a legal, if only vaguely respectable, living had softened my instincts?
I clambered over the boulder, my delicate calfskin boots protesting. When I got to the other side, I couldn’t see Margaret. I held onto my hat, jumped carefully off the rock and stumbled to regain my footing.
A cold piece of steel pressed against my throat.
“You are as much a fool as all the rest of them, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Her breath was hot in my ear. “Although I doubt you’re legally entitled to that title.”
“Mrs.? That’s no badge of honour to me, but it serves its purpose, on occasion. Isn’t this a touch melodramatic, Margaret?”
She moved the knife a few inches away from my throat and stepped to one side so I could see her. Her bushy grey eyebrows were drawn together in determination. With every hair on her head scraped back, forced into a severe bun, and the front of her calico dress ironed flat, devoid of a single wrinkle, Margaret reminded me of my childhood governess, who had tolerated me at best and hated me at worst. But at least she’d never drawn a knife on me.
“Sit down, over here.” Margaret gestured to a small, but sturdy, bush, hiding under a rocky overhang. “And don’t believe I won’t slit your aristocratic throat if I have to.”
“I believe you, Margaret. But this is all a bit theatrical, wouldn’t you agree? I’m assuming you killed Jack Ireland. So? I most certainly don’t care. I should thank you for seeing the bastard dispatched to his reward.”
“Shut up and sit down.” I kept talking. At times it is what I do best. “Margaret, I don’t see why you’ve involved me in this sordid mess.” I started to walk backwards, one tiny inch at a time. The boulder lay behind me. The crowded safety of town beyond that. I might be able to scale the rock in one magnificent leap. But then again, Her Majesty Queen Victoria might swoop down from the heavens and carry me to safety.
“If you put that silly knife away,” I said, “we can both go home.”
It was, sadly, not a silly knife, but a good kitchen knife, sharpened to a fine point; no doubt used to slice up sides of raw meat.
As well as the late, unmourned, Mr. Jack Ireland.
“Don’t you ever listen to yourself, you arrogant woman? You as much as told me that you wouldn’t let it rest as long as your precious dance hall is threatened. I made a mistake; I’ll admit it. Please stop moving.” She grabbed the front of my dress and almost jerked me off my feet. The knife touched the bottom of my chin, gentle as a lover. And as dangerous as some lovers I have known. “I intended to drag his body out into the back alley, but it was too heavy. I should’ve thought of that earlier.”
“Never mind all that. We can come to some sort of arrangement, I’m sure.” I stepped backwards. The knife sliced down my chest, through the bodice of my best day dress. Thick red blood, glistening in the light of the setting sun, blossomed from the wound like one of Margaret’s beautiful mountain wildflowers.
The white blouse fell open and pain shot through my chest.
“Sit down, Mrs. MacGillivray. I do not want to kill you, but don’t doubt that I will if I have to.” The sight of the ripped blouse spilling lace and my life’s blood in a gentle trickle, shocked me as much, if not more, than the pain.
While I stared stupidly at my chest, Margaret whipped out one foot, wrapped it around my ankle and twisted. I collapsed.
Like me, Margaret spoke well. But she had some history behind her. Also like me.
A rock jabbed into my side, delivering a lightning bolt of pain. I ignored it, curled forward, and tensed to launch myself back upright.
Margaret’s foot caught me under the chin with enough force to snap my head back. Before I could recover my senses, she reached out with the knife and sliced it across my cheek.
“The next cut will be to your throat. Move back. There.” She gestured, and I wiggled backwards until my back touched the single tree still clinging to this patch of hillside. It wasn’t a tree, really, more of a sapling. Strange that it had been overlooked in the mad lust for lumber. I touched my face; the spot burned like fire. I looked at my fingers—wet, red and sticky. Blood from the cut in my chest soaked the front of my dress.
Another dress ruined. My hat, the one that I worried made me look old, lay in the mud, the once jaunty feather squashed flat.
“Hold your hands out.” Margaret pulled a length of rope from the depths of her dress. She truly had played me for a fool. While I had stood outside her front door, admiring the summer evening and watching a pack of children tormenting a dog, she had gathered everything she needed. How had I become so soft?
I eyed the knife and the cold eyes behind it and held out my hands, my fingers streaked with my own blood. She looped