Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [166]
But even more astounding was the picture painted on the side wall opposite the bar. It was of the Chilkoot Pass, complete with the endless winding ribbon of climbers against the snow.
‘Who did that?’ she asked.
‘Enrico, that little bloke from San Francisco I helped with his boat at Lake Bennett.’
Beth nodded. She remembered the small, dark-haired man who she had thought was a Mexican. ‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘It really sets the whole place off. But the bar is marvellous too, Jack, you are so clever.’
It was first-class timber, planed and varnished to a gleaming finish. She ran her hand along it admiringly.
‘I’ve got to put another coat of varnish on the floor tonight, then we can get the furniture in tomorrow morning,’ Jack said. ‘It’s all piled up out the back.’
Beth looked at the big mirror behind the bar and noticed it was covered in fingerprints and smears. ‘I’d better polish that,’ she said.
Jack and Theo grinned at each other. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.
‘We left it like that purposely. We thought it would stir you into action,’ Jack said.
Beth smiled. ‘You’d better show me upstairs, I expect some action will be required there too.’
Jack hadn’t had time to do anything much upstairs. Just three rooms with bare, rough timber walls and floors, but after living in a tent it would be luxury to all of them. As for the bathroom, she could hardly believe that Jack had been clever enough to run pipes from the boiler downstairs to fill the tub with hot water.
‘I had a lot of help from an engineer,’ he said modestly.
‘But there was no possibility of putting in a lavatory as there are no sewers in the town yet. So we’re stuck with an outside privy until there are.’
Front Street was the main artery of Dawson City. It pulsated with people all round the clock. By day it was like a gigantic market where you could buy anything from medicine to a horse or dog and every kind of foodstuff and luxury item brought in by traders. By night it was a rip-roaring hedonistic paradise, where you could drink, gamble, see a show or just parade up and down watching others if you were broke.
Even on Sundays when the law stated that nothing should open, and this was rigorously enforced by the Mounted Police, people still thronged up and down. All the most popular saloons, dance halls and theatres were in Front Street and they vied with one another to be the best. They wanted the prettiest dance-hall girls, the highest stakes in a poker game or the best singers and entertainers.
Although Beth, Theo and Jack had only been in Dawson a short while, they had an advantage over other new arrivals setting up in business because they had already attracted enough attention in town to be given nicknames. People liked nicknames here; Lime-juice Lil, Two-step Louie, Billy the Horse and Deep-hole Johnson were just some they’d heard. Theo’s English gentleman image and his reputation as a good poker player landed him with ‘The Gent’. Jack was affectionately called ‘Cockney Jack’ and widely regarded as the man to talk to if you wanted to build anything. Beth was still called ‘Gypsy’, for the name had come with her on the trail, and at the Monte Carlo she’d been billed as ‘The Klondike Gypsy Queen’.
Yet when they opened the saloon doors for the first time at six in the evening, they were still very anxious. Most of the other places on Front Street were owned by Eldorado Kings, men with claims that had netted them fortunes, and they could afford to splash out on chandeliers, velvet carpets, a five-piece band and a host of girls to lure big spenders in. But Theo’s money had run out, and he owed a couple of thousand dollars for drink, timber and the tables and chairs.
He had hung a sign outside proclaiming half-price drinks, and they had to hope that that, and Beth playing, would be enough. Theo was wearing a white tuxedo he’d accepted in settlement of a gambling debt back at Lake Bennett. With a frilled shirt and bow tie and his dark hair shiny with oil, he looked the image of a successful saloon