Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [157]
Later, they were to discover that the town had been flooded when the ice melted a couple of weeks earlier, and the people who had built cabins right down on the shoreline saw them swept away. But it seemed such things were just a minor setback in Dawson City, for as soon as boats began arriving with provisions, especially longed-for luxuries like eggs, whisky and newspapers, the muddy streets were a mere inconvenience.
They managed to find a spot along the boat-crowded shoreline to moor the raft, and hauled their kit right up to the back of the town, the only place they could find free to pitch their tent. They heard that to rent one room cost a hundred dollars a month, and every commodity changed hands for extortionate prices.
‘Good job I brought those nails,’ Jack said, spotting a sign advertising them for eight dollars a pound. ‘Not that I want to sell them — we’ll need them to build a place of our own.’
‘Maybe I’ll get a good price for that silk and satin I brought along,’ Beth said thoughtfully. The boys had argued with her back in Skagway and said she should take something more useful, but she had stuck to her guns, insisting that she knew there would be women desperate for dress material once they got to Dawson. Judging by the stained and dreary clothes most of the women here were wearing, she was right.
After they’d pitched their tent, they went back down to Front Street to take a look around. This street overlooking the river was clearly where everything happened and where everyone gathered. It was lined with saloons, hotels, restaurants and dance halls, though all of them had clearly been thrown up in a hurry. Every minute or so another boat moored and the owners hauled their belongings on to the shore, adding to the utter chaos. Thousands of new arrivals were wandering around aimlessly, while the veterans, who had by all accounts suffered all winter from a scarcity of almost everything, harassed the newcomers for everything from brooms to books.
As at Lake Bennett, there were huge piles of lumber everywhere, and the buzz of saws and the hammering of nails made it difficult to hear what anyone was saying. Building work was going on everywhere — shops, saloons, banks and even a church — yet disconcertingly there appeared to be no overall plan.
Down by the shoreline people had set up stalls selling everything from boots to boxes of tomatoes, all at sky-high prices. Many of these goods had been brought in by a steamer just a few days earlier, but they saw an elderly woman they’d met in Lake Bennett, who’d managed to get her chickens up the Chilkoot Trail, selling them for twenty-five dollars each.
There were countless signs proclaiming ‘Gold Dust Bought and Sold’. Outside some of these cabins, grizzled-looking men with shaggy beards, and small leather bags hanging from their belts, stood in line smoking their pipes. A man in a loud checked suit and a black stetson hat informed Beth and the boys that these were Sourdoughs, who’d struck it rich on their claims at Forty Mile and Eldorado Creek. He said he thought the gold they were selling today was worth a king’s ransom, yet they looked like tramps, without a cent to their names.
However strange everything was, it was colourful and vibrant. Men in smart suits and homburg hats mingled with others in ragged, mud-splattered trail clothes. They saw a pretty blonde in a pink satin dress being carried over the mud by a bare-chested man who looked like a prize fighter. There were dogs everywhere, mostly malamutes and other sledge dogs, but there were also women carrying toy dogs under their arms, and greyhounds and spaniels picked their way daintily through the mud.
‘It don’t feel right seeing this without Sam,’ Jack sighed.
It was a pivotal moment, for Beth had thought the same and she guessed Theo had too. She felt