Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [181]
There was no joy that the Monte Carlo had been saved, for the scale of the disaster was too devastating, with thousands now homeless and ruined. John and Beth took in hundreds of people, letting them bed down wherever they could find room and providing coffee and whatever food they could rustle up.
Down at the Fairview, hundreds more were camping out in the lobby. Later in the day it was said that one hundred and seventeen buildings were lost in the fire, their loss totalling more than a million dollars.
But Dawson people were robust in spirit as well as body. Less than twelve hours later Tom Chisholm had erected a large tent where his old saloon had been and was back in business as the Aurora Saloon again, even before the ash had completely settled. That was the signal for everyone else to buckle to. Within a day or two the all too familiar sound of sawing wood and nails being hammered began again, and dray horses were out hauling lumber from the sawmills.
Beth spent her time cooking up huge pans of soup and stew to feed the homeless and destitute. She dragged a sledge around the town begging for bread, meat and vegetables from those who had supplies, and organized a collection of donated clothes, boots and blankets too.
John had been very active in the first day or two after the fire, and she thought nothing of it when he didn’t come to her bed at night, because with the saloon packed with distressed people sleeping on the floor, it clearly wasn’t an appropriate thing to do.
But suddenly she became aware that he was acting strangely. She kept seeing him standing out on the singed boardwalk looking at the blackened gap in the town, and he wasn’t talking to anyone, least of all her.
She was too busy with the food and clothes collections to concern herself with him at first. But as the days ticked past, and everyone else was pulling together to plan and rebuild the town, and still he stood for hours out there alone, she became puzzled and irritated.
He hadn’t lost anything. Business was even brisker than before the fire, and now most of the refugees were gradually finding other places to stay and leaving the Monte Carlo, his staff needed direction.
She was coming back from the hospital one afternoon eight days after the fire when once again she saw him outside on the boardwalk. She noticed how dishevelled he was, unshaven, still wearing the same trousers, shirt and jacket he’d changed into after the fire.
As she got to the boardwalk he looked round at her but didn’t speak or even smile.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Are you sick?’
‘No, I’m not sick,’ he replied, but his eyes had no light in them.
‘Then come on inside with me, it’s very cold out here,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm.
He shrugged off her hand as if it had burned him.
‘Tell me what I’ve done to offend you,’ she said in bewilderment. ‘Is it because I’ve been out in the town helping people? Do you think I’m neglecting you and the saloon?’
‘Not that,’ he said, giving her a look cold enough to freeze. ‘The fire. It was the Lord’s way of showing me how I’ve sinned.’
‘But you were spared,’ she said in puzzlement.
‘Precisely. That’s the Lord’s way of saying, “Sin no more.“Don’t you see that?’
Beth suddenly saw what he was getting at. ‘You mean with me?’ she asked incredulously.
He nodded. ‘I knew it was adultery, but I could not resist the temptation.’
She wanted to laugh as all this Holy Joe stuff sounded like a joke; he had never told her he had any deep religious convictions. But she checked herself just in time as she remembered he’d begun praying out loud when the men were trying to light fires to melt the river ice. She had thought that odd then, but later almost everyone she’d spoken to said they’d been offering up frantic prayers, and she supposed she had done so silently too.
‘This town is just like Sodom and Gomorrah,’ he went on, his voice flat and dispirited. ‘Now the Lord has destroyed it to show us what wickedness dwelt here.’
Beth had heard enough. She had always found him