Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [182]
‘So, like Lot and his wife, you are going to flee,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Mind you don’t look back while you’re fleeing or you might turn to a pillar of salt.’
‘You would do well to consider your sins too,’ he said reproachfully. ‘You seduce men with your Devil’s music.’
Beth did laugh then. She wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a statement like that back in England, but it was ludicrous here in a Frontier town coming from the lips of a man who just a week ago couldn’t have his way with her often enough.
‘So why, if you were a religious man, did you come here and buy a saloon?’
‘I guess the Devil tempted me away from the Lord.’
‘Then you’d better get back in his good books by selling this place and giving the money to the deserving poor or the Church,’ Beth snapped. ‘But pardon me if I don’tdothe same. Your precious Lord tookmy parents, my brother and my little sister from me. I’ve learned to trust in no one but myself.’
That night Beth sat up in her room. Downstairs the saloon was packed because there were so few places left for people to drink in, and their booming voices and laughter wafted up to her. John had said he didn’t want her to play tonight, and it was clear, even though he hadn’t actually said so, that he wanted her out of his saloon.
She could see the funny side of it, for none of the dancers in his theatre or his saloon girls were pure as the driven snow. Gambling, drinking — it was all ungodly, so why single her out as the source of evil? She wished Jack was here, for he had always enjoyed a good joke.
She could of course go to any one of the remaining saloons in Dawson and they’d welcome her playing for them with open arms. But the fire, and now John’s strange reaction, had put her off Dawson City.
But it would be another month before the ice broke and she could get a steamer.
She groped under her bed for her valise so she could count her savings. As she opened it, the first thing she saw was the photograph the four of them had had taken in Skagway, soon after they arrived. It was less than two years ago, but it seemed far longer. They all looked so young and fresh-faced, and the backdrop of mountains behind, painted on canvas, which at the time they’d thought marvellous, now looked so unrealistic. The boys had borrowed the rifles they carried on their shoulders — for Sam and Jack, the first guns they’d ever held. Beth was wearing a straw boater and a high-necked blue dress with a little bustle. At the time she’d been foolish enough to think that attire, with just a coat over it, would be suitable for the trail.
She smiled and ran one finger over Sam’s stern, unsmiling face in the picture. He’d grown a beard soon after it was taken to make him look tougher, but it didn’t work; he’d still looked young and starry-eyed. Theo, in an embroidered waistcoat and well-tailored jacket, looked what he was: an aristocratic gambling man.
Jack was the only one smiling, almost as if he knew even then what the mountains had in store for them. He had learned to shoot, just as he’d gone out of his way to learn everything about the trail, and to build cabins and a raft. How odd it was that he’d never had the lust for gold, yet he was the only one who finally got to the goldfields.
Just looking at the picture made a thousand little memories pop up in her head. The terrible night squashed up in the hotel in Sheep Camp, and the ones where they nearly froze to death at the top of the Chilkoot Pass. So many people in Dawson had shared that hideous ordeal, yet they all took pride in having suffered it, like a badge of honour.
Beth preferred to savour the good memories — speeding downhill on the sledge to Happy Camp, and the great evenings they’d had at Lake Lindemann and Lake Bennett. Sam was