Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [180]
John rushed off to wake everyone in the Monte Carlo while Beth pulled on her warmest clothes, for it was some 40 degrees below freezing outside.
With a hammering heart, Beth ran beside John towards the fire. By now most of the residents and owners of property in Front Street were outside, men hastily organizing themselves to break the ice on the river to get water. Everyone was asking where the fire engine, bought only the previous year, was. But it seemed that the newly trained fire fighters had been in dispute about their wages and the boilers in the engines had not been kept alight.
Beth looked on in horror as men built fires on the river ice to melt it and reach the water, but that was taking far too long, and the fire was jumping from building to building, devouring everything in its path.
At last the fire fighters arrived with hoses and the pumps were started. Beth saw the hoses slowly begin to swell as they sucked up water, and like everyone else, thought the fire would soon be under control. But then a ripping sound burst out, and to the assembled crowd’s horror, the hoses split open, for the water within had frozen and expanded.
Beth saw Tim Chisholm, owner of the Aurora, covering his face with his hands as the flames began to spread to his saloon. ‘What’s to be done?’ he cried.
‘Blow up the buildings in front of the fire,’ Captain Starnes of the Mounted Police commanded, and quickly ordered a dog team to race to get some explosive.
Thousands of people turned out to try to help. Every cart or sledge was commandeered to carry away articles from the condemned buildings in the path of the fire. Men even rushed into places already ablaze to try to rescue as much as they could.
‘I’ll give a thousand dollars to save my bank,’ Beth heard David Doig, the manager of the Bank of British North America, pledge. But his plea was in vain, for it was soon gobbled up, along with scores of saloons and dance halls.
The whole town shuddered under the force of the dynamite explosions, and Beth saw men she knew to be as hard as nails weep openly as their buildings crackled and burned.
John was helping soak blankets in river water to try to save the Fairview, Dawson’s best hotel at the north end of the town, and she turned her attentions to the whores of Paradise Alley, as the flames approached their rickety shacks. Many of the girls came running out almost naked, screaming with fear, but then stupidly trying to rush back in to rescue their clothes and possessions.
With some help from a few men, many of whom took off their coats to cover the girls, Beth managed to lead them all well away to safety.
The night was so cold that many people watching the fire couldn’t feel the heat from the flames until their coats became singed. Hogsheads of whisky exploded in the flames and the contents ran out on to the snow, freezing instantly. And the gold in the bank safe, along with all the jewellery and other treasures put there for safe keeping, melted in the fierce heat.
Finally, there was nothing more anyone could do but stand and watch the inferno, hoping that the fire breaks made by blowing up buildings would be enough to contain it.
John came back to find Beth and they stood as close as they dared to the Monte Carlo, which so far had only been scorched. With their faces red-hot from the blaze, backs freezing and lungs full of smoke, they couldn’t even speak of the disaster. Most of Front Street, including the Golden Nugget, with all its memories, was gone. Beth had fleetingly seen One Eye lurching around holding his head and sobbing out that he was ruined, and she even found it in her heart to feel sorry for him.
When daylight eventually filtered through the fog of smoke they saw that the entire heart of the business part of Dawson had been destroyed. The Fairview Hotel was saved at the north end of town, and the scorched Monte Carlo at the north end. Between them, where once there had been gaiety, light and warmth, was a huge black gap. The odd burnt timber still stood erect in a thick bed of grey ash, and it was