Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [139]
‘Because I like you and he’ll bring you down.’
‘He’s not that different from you,’ she said indignantly.
‘That’s why I know how it will end.’
Beth sighed, drank down her rum and picked up her fiddle case ready to leave. ‘Then I hope you’ll have someone who will take care of you if you get shot,’ she said crisply. ‘Goodnight, Jefferson. It was nice while it lasted.’
She thought he would come after her; after all, on their night together he had said he wanted her as his girl. But perhaps that was just part of his patter and all he’d really been looking for was another conquest.
‘I’ve been a blithering idiot,’ Theo said a few days later. He was up and about now, though he couldn’t do anything strenuous; even dressing himself had to be done carefully and slowly.
‘What brought you round to that startling conclusion?’ she asked.
‘Don’t be sarcastic,’ he said reproachfully. ‘I’m trying to make you see I do value you. I always did, but the thing that makes me saddest is the distance between us now, when we were once so close. I know it was me who caused it. But I don’t know how to get you back where you used to be.’
‘I don’t know either,’ she said sadly. ‘Sometimes I think it’s this town full of people with only gold on their minds. It’s affected us all. Even Jack, who spends all his spare time helping people, can’t wait to take off on the trail. It’s like a disease.’
‘Maybe the only cure for it is to take that trail then,’ Theo said.
‘You won’t be strong enough for that for some time.’
‘A month should do it. But the real question is whether you want me with you.’
‘Of course I do, Theo! Maybe I don’t adore you blindly the way I used to, but I still love you. If you would just be more honest!’
‘Honesty didn’t bother you with Soapy,’ he said. ‘He’s far more dishonest than me, he’s a liar, a thief, a swindler, and no doubt he’s had people killed too, though I doubt he dirtied his own hands with that.’
‘At least he was there when I needed someone,’ Beth snapped. ‘I didn’t see Dog-faced Dolly rushing to your aid.’
∗
‘That’s it then, sis,’ Sam said as he took the last sack of their supplies out of the cabin and loaded it on to the hired cart that would take it the three miles to Dyea and on to the start of the Chilkoot Trail. ‘Say goodbye to the cabin. I doubt we’ll come back this way.’
Theo was sitting up on the cart. His shoulder had healed well, but the weeks of inactivity and good food had made him gain weight, giving him a flabby look. Jack, in contrast, was very lean, for he’d been working six days a week building houses, shops and cabins. This was to ensure they had enough money to pay the Indian packers to carry their goods to the top of the Pass.
Along with the compulsory ton of provisions to be allowed into Canada, carpentry tools were needed to build a boat at Lake Bennett, a shovel, sledge, stove, tent, bedding and many other essential items. As most men could only carry fifty pounds on their backs up the trail, this meant that if they didn’t hire Indian packers they would have to make dozens of trips up and down, which could in effect take three months to complete.
The vast majority of their fellow gold seekers had no choice but to do that, for the packer’s price per load was exorbitant. But Theo wasn’t strong enough to carry more than a few pounds, and neither Sam nor Jack wanted Beth to take heavy loads. With their combined funds they had enough, and they reckoned that what they lost in money would be made up for in time, and being able to take some items that they could sell for a big profit in Dawson City.
‘I have to post this letter home before we leave,’ Beth said, waving an envelope. Just a couple of days earlier they had finally received a letter from England with a photograph of