Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [131]
Her first night was an outstanding success, with over fifty dollars going into the hat, of which she handed ten to the barman to keep him sweet. As Theo hadn’t turned up to walk her back to their tent, when the Clancy brothers, two dark-haired, thick-set men with fierce-looking moustaches, asked her to stay and have a drink with them at the end of the evening, she accepted.
Frank Clancy introduced her to a tall, smartly dressed man with a thick dark beard and black stetson hat. ‘This is Mr Jefferson Smith, but you’ll find he’s more commonly known as “Soapy“,’ he said.
‘I’m also known as Beth Bolton,’ she responded, unable to resist fluttering her eyelashes at him because he was a very handsome man with deep-set dark grey eyes. ‘But why Soapy? Is that because you never wash, or do so to excess?’
‘Which would you prefer, mam?’ he asked, taking her hand and kissing it.
Beth giggled because he had a Deep South accent which was as attractive as he was.
‘Somewhere around the middle,’ she said. ‘But Skagway has so few facilities I suspect I will have to get used to people who are strangers to soap.’
She was despairing of being able to tolerate Skagway until February. The sea of mud, the constant noise of barking dogs and fights, the thieves and con men out to fleece anyone they could, and the lack of even the most basic of comforts made it an inhospitable place to be.
‘Ah, but I have plans,’ Smith said with a little smile at her joke. ‘For proper streets, a hotel, shops, lighting, a bath-house and even a church.’
‘Have you now?’ she said. ‘So are you to be mayor of Skagway?’
‘Something like that,’ he said, and his self-assurance confirmed to her that he did intend to control the town.
They chatted for some time, mainly about her recent arrival. Smith himself had only been there for a week and he was in partnership with the Clancy brothers.
‘Is Earl Cadogan your husband?’ he asked.
The title threw Beth off balance. She had pretended to be married to Theo ever since she arrived in Montreal with him, but now she’d found he’d given himself a title, she didn’t know whether that would make her Lady Cadogan, or a Countess. Unable to lie on such a grand scale, she replied that he was just a good friend and that she was with her brother and another old friend, Jack Child.
‘The Londoner?’ Smith asked. ‘I met him this afternoon; he seems a real capable man. You will have plenty of protection then?’
‘Do you think I need it, sir?’ she asked teasingly.
‘All ladies need protection, but someone as pretty and charming in this godforsaken town will need it by day and night.’
Sam and Jack arrived then and whisked her off back to the tent. They had been with Captain Moore who owned the sawmill here, and had arranged to get some timber from him to build a cabin.
‘Did you know Theo has told people he’s an earl?’ Beth asked them as they picked their way through the thick mud back to their tent.
‘He called himself that back in Montreal too,’ Sam admitted. ‘It’s nothing, sis, it just greases a few wheels. Americans are impressed by it.’
‘Well, he’s just lost himself a wife,’ she said tartly. ‘But then, I don’t suppose he’ll care much about that.’
There were times in the weeks that followed when Beth was tempted to catch the next boat back to Vancouver, even if she had to go alone. She woke in the mornings stiff with cold, and the prospect of yet another day tramping through mud, cooking over an open fire and never having any privacy or peace, seemed too much to bear.
Every day new ships arrived, disgorging hundreds more people, horses, dogs and other animals. The rows of tents spread further and further, more and more trees were chopped down, and still more mud and filth were created.
Ridiculously high prices for every basic commodity made Beth fear that all the money she earned