Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [186]
‘He never told me why.’ Beth shrugged. ‘But then we didn’t talk much about anything now I come to think of it. He said I was a whore this morning. Isn’t that awful, Jack? But I guess I brought it on myself.’
Jack came over to her chair and knelt in front of her, his eyes full of understanding. ‘I’d like to go into Dawson tomorrow and beat him to a pulp, but that would only create more gossip. He’s to be pitied if he doesn’t see the difference between a woman who gives herself willingly and one who demands payment.
‘Don’t torture yourself, Beth, just put it down to experience. You are still the prettiest girl I know, my best pal and the greatest fiddle player. So the way I see it, you haven’t lost anything but a bit of pride.’
‘I shouldn’t have taken up with a married man,’ she said sadly. ‘It was wrong.’
‘Now, don’t you come all holy on me.’ Jack laughed and got to his feet, pulling her out of her chair. ‘Let me show you what I’ve been doing before it gets dark, and tonight we’ll get blinding drunk to celebrate you finally making it to Bonanza.’
Jack led her up some fifty yards behind his cabin. He warned her to take care to walk carefully around any indentations in the snow as they were holes he’d dug. He explained what he was doing.
‘The ground is frozen two feet or so down, even in summer,’ he said. ‘So I dig down as far as I can, then light a fire in the hole. That melts the ice, and the next day I shovel out all the slushy dirt, which is what those piles are.’ He indicated huge snow-covered mounds and a fresh one that he’d been digging out when she arrived. ‘They are called dumps.’
He swept the snow off a long trough with crossbars running all along the bottom. ‘This is a sluice, and when the thaw comes, I’ll shovel the dump into the sluice, then wash it with water. All the gravel and dirt gets washed away, and if I’m lucky I’ll find some gold stuck at the bottom of the sluice.’
‘And you give it to Oz?’ she asked.
‘Not if I find it here. I’ve taken a “lay“on this bit of his claim. I didn’t pay him any money for it. Our arrangement is that I work for him down there for part of the day, and anything we find there belongs to him. In return I get this.’
Beth nodded. ‘So have you found any gold?’
‘Not yet, that will only be revealed when I start sluicing. Maybe I won’t ever find any. But Oz has found a lot in the last two years. He could, if he wanted, sell this claim for a fortune.’
Beth smiled. Ever since she arrived in Dawson she’d heard so many fantastic stories about claims along Bonanza and Eldorado changing hands for staggering amounts. Many of the men who originally staked the claim now owned the hotels and saloons in Dawson, or had gone back to the Outside very rich men.
Yet there were still many old Sourdoughs like Oz who would never sell up. They continued to live in their primitive cabins, going into town once in a while to blow a great chunk of their gold, then back they’d go to the cabin and start again.
‘Oz can’t dig much now,’ Jack explained. ‘He’s getting old, tired and achy. He don’t really need any more gold, but he don’t want to give up either. So with me here he’s got what he wants — help, company and the excitement that comes with finding more gold.’
They walked on then right up the hill to where it turned to woodland.
‘I come up here and shoot,’ Jack said. ‘I got a moose a couple of weeks ago and we’ve got enough meat to last till the thaw. It was so pretty last autumn, so many different berries growing and the leaves changing colour, not like down there,’ he said, thumbing in the direction of the view down towards the creek.
Beth turned to look at the snow-covered scene. ‘It’s pretty now,’ she replied. ‘But I suppose that’s because all the scars of holes, dumps and mining equipment are disguised by the snow. I bet it will look like a junkyard set in a slick of mud come the thaw.’
‘Worse. There’s huge ditches cut from the streams to wash out the sluices. It looks hideous.’
Jack had to light more fires in his holes, so Beth went back into the cabin as it was so cold.
She