Gypsy (55 page)

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. If you could have read my thoughts sometimes, you would’ve blushed.’

‘You’re teasing me?’

‘I’m not,’ he said, unbuttoning her coat. ‘Thoughts of you have kept me warm on many a cold night.’

He dropped her coat on the floor, drew her into his arms and kissed her again. As his tongue flickered against hers, Beth felt the tugging of desire inside her and she knew she was lost and couldn’t back away.

Still kissing her, he managed to remove all her clothes down to her chemise, then took her over to the bed and knelt beside it to peel off her stockings. ‘I always used to wonder what your legs were like,’ he said, running his hand up them while looking into her eyes. ‘I saw them as far as your knees once when we were on the raft, and I nearly fell in I was so excited.’

‘Oh, Jack,’ she said reprovingly.

‘You don’t like to think I was lusting after you all that time?’ he asked, his eyes glinting with mischief as his hands slid further up her thighs, stopping just an inch away from her sex.

Delicious waves of desire had rendered her speechless. All she could do was reach out for him.

He was out of his clothes in a couple of seconds, just long enough for her to pull the blankets back and get under them as the cabin was growing cold. But the moment he was in beside her, his arms around her, she forgot her anxiety, modesty and cold, for his warm, silky skin against hers felt so right.

She had thought Theo, Jefferson and John Fallon all to be good lovers, but they were only mediocre compared with Jack. He used his fingers with such sensitivity, stroking, probing and kissing in such an unhurried way that every nerve in her body came alive. Again and again she reached out to fondle his penis but he always stopped her. It was only when she felt something erupting inside her, and all sense of where she was and even who she was had left her, that he finally entered her, driving forcefully into her as tremendous shock waves engulfed her.

She heard herself cry out, felt tears course down her face, and she knew then that he had taken her to a place that none of her previous lovers had.

Jack propped himself up on one elbow and watched Beth as she lay sleeping next to him, his heart swelling with love for her. It was close to midnight, but there was enough light from the stove and the lantern hanging above it to see her clearly. It was midday when they came into the cabin, and since then he’d made love to her three times, along with making food, washing each other, drinking half a bottle of whisky between them and talking about anything and everything. He thought he ought to be exhausted, but he was too excited to sleep. She had been his first love, his only true love, and now she was finally his.

There had been many other girls during the six years since they first met on the ship. Straitlaced ones, wanton ones, kind girls, cruel girls, happy and sad ones. Some he’d tried to tell himself he loved, others he just made love to and hoped the pleasure he gave them made up for his lack of commitment. But inevitably he was always left with a sense of disappointment.

Beth had always been his lode star, even when he knew she had eyes for no one but Theo. But for her he would still be in New York; he’d never have gone to Montreal, travelled across Canada or come here. He had become her self-appointed guardian just to be near her. He would have done anything for her, even if she never saw him as anything more than a friend.

Now she was here, her slender body curled into his, deep in sleep, her face as soft as a child’s. He remembered how she’d looked when they rescued her from the cellar, frozen to the bone and her face haunted by the horror of her imprisonment. Her indignation when she discovered Pearl’s place in Philadelphia was a brothel. The night at the hospital in Montreal was etched on his mind too, when she’d cried out for Theo but had to settle for comfort from him.

Her courage on the Chilkoot Pass and her powers of endurance throughout that trail had astounded him. Then, in Dawson, having so recently lost Sam, she lost Molly too. Yet she gritted her teeth and played her heart out night after night in the Nugget. Many stampeders who had no money for drinks had told him they stood outside the saloon to listen to her play. They said she made them feel less hungry and thirsty, and that her music gave them hope they’d find a way to make their fortune.

Jack could understand how they felt, for he had fallen under the spell of her music the very first time he heard it on the ship.

Slipping out of bed, he put a little more wood on the stove to keep it going till morning, and blew out the lantern. In another couple of weeks the river ice would break up, and once again thousands of people would arrive in search of gold.

He smiled, for here in his little cabin he knew he had something far more precious than gold.

A loud whoop of excitement from Oz wafted up the hill to Jack and Beth who were busy at the sluice washing through stones and gravel.

‘What’s got into him?’ Jack said, standing up and moving to a place where he could see what was going on below.

‘Most likely he’s found a full bottle of whisky he’d forgotten about,’ Beth joked.

It was the middle of June. Two weeks earlier the ice had broken up on the creek and Oz’s claim had become a slick of glutinous mud. But constant warm sunshine since then had dried the worst of it, grass and wild flowers had sprung up around the cabin and birdsong filled the air.

Beth had never known such happiness. From the moment she opened her eyes in the morning to see Jack beside her, till they fell back into bed late at night, she was filled with the joy of knowing she’d made the right decision to come out here.

They hadn’t spoken of love or even of the future, for it seemed unnecessary when it was so clear that they were meant to be together for all time. Beth worked alongside Jack and Oz, shovelling and sluicing the dump piles cheerfully. She didn’t mind that it was hard, dirty work, or that at times it seemed pointless. It was enough to be beside Jack, to laugh and chat and feel utterly secure.

Sometimes in the afternoons he would take her fishing on the creek in Oz’s little rowing boat, and she would lie back, basking in the sunshine, and greedily contemplate making love when they got back to the cabin. Other times they would tramp up to the woods at the top of the claim and she’d pick flowers while he chopped wood for the stove. Lust often overtook them up there, for there was something deliciously wicked and dangerous about making love in the open air, especially when a bear or even a human could come along and surprise them.

‘Let’s go down and see what he’s up to,’ Jack said. ‘It’s time for something to eat anyway. Maybe a bit of canoodling later would be in order?’

Hand in hand, they ran down the hill to find Oz in a tattered checked shirt with his trousers held up with string, bent over his sluice.

As they approached he looked up, his wide smile revealing his blackened teeth. ‘Lookee here at what I’ve found!’ He picked up an old baking soda tin and handed it to them.

It contained four small gold nuggets. Jack shook them out into his palm. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed. ‘You found them all together?’

‘Yup,’ Oz said. ‘I’ve sluiced through five dumps this morning and nothing, then on the sixth I was left with those.’

‘I’m so glad for you, Oz.’ Beth went over to him and gave him a hug. ‘How marvellous!’

‘Which hole did they come out of?’ Jack asked, looking around. All the ground to the side of his cabin was full of holes and dumps beside them.

‘That one there.’ Oz pointed to the one nearest his cabin. ‘That one was the last we did. Remember you was afeared I’d fall into it when I came out the cabin?’

Jack smiled and turned to Beth. ‘It was just before you came. When he asked me to dig it, I tried to put him off.’

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to move the cabin now to dig underneath it?’ Beth asked.

Oz grinned. ‘Maybe. But first I had it in mind to get myself spruced up and go into town and spread the word around that old Ostrich has struck it rich again. There’s been folks laughing at me for a long time. This’ll stop ’em.’

‘You’ll get some eager to buy the claim off you,’ Jack reminded him.

‘If they offers me enough I just might take it,’ he retorted.

Beth looked at Jack in alarm, wondering where that would leave him, but to her surprise he was smiling at Oz. ‘You go on into town,’ he said. ‘We’ll do some sluicing down here while you’re gone, see if we can find more for you. But look after what you’ve got there, won’t you? That might be all there is!’

An hour later, Jack and Beth waved goodbye to Oz as he went off in the boat to Dawson. His sprucing up consisted only of trimming his beard and changing his clothes into slightly less tattered ones. Beth had made him put the nuggets into a poke around his neck and tucked inside his shirt. Jack had advised him to deposit them at the bank before he began drinking or playing cards.

‘What if he does sell the claim?’ Beth asked when they’d waved the older man out of sight. He had left Flash and Silver with them and they remained sitting on the creek bank looking towards where their master had gone.

‘I hope he does,’ Jack replied. ‘He won’t last another winter here.’

‘But what about you? The new owner won’t want you here.’

Jack shrugged. ‘I don’t mind. If you hadn’t turned up I’d have been on my way somewhere else by now.’

‘You would?’

He laughed at her surprised look and stroked her cheek. ‘I didn’t come here for gold, only to get away from Dawson. Now you’re with me I could be happy anywhere.’

That was exactly how she felt too, but hearing Jack voice her feelings was wonderful.

‘What will
we
do then?’ she asked. ‘If we’re chucked off.’

‘Whatever you want,’ he said, taking her in his arms. ‘My dream has already come true.’

She cupped his face in her hands. ‘I love you, Jack Child,’ she said.

‘You do?’ He looked astonished.

‘Of course. A hundred per cent. But I expect you to make plans. If you don’t I’ll start pushing you around.’

‘There is no one I would rather be pushed by.’ He laughed.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ She playfully bit the end of his nose.

‘What?’

‘Well, I said I loved you. Aren’t you supposed to respond to that?’

‘How?’ he said.

She knew he was teasing and boxed his ear. ‘Say it,’ she ordered him.

He caught hold of her round the waist and spun her around. ‘I love you, Miss Bossy Bolton. I have for five long years,’ he said, still spinning her.

He let go and she wobbled with dizziness. ‘That’s hardly a romantic way to tell a girl,’ she said indignantly.

‘I’m more of a practical sort of bloke.’ He grinned at her. ‘So I’m going to be really romantic now and suggest we get on with sluicing down here for Oz, and see what else we can find for him.’

They found five more small nuggets that afternoon. Jack put them into Oz’s tin. ‘They must be worth a few hundred dollars,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘There was a time when I might have pocketed them, but meeting you changed that in me.’

‘It did?’

‘Yup.’ He nodded. ‘You were so sparkly clean and honest, I didn’t think I’d have any chance with you unless I became that way too. I’ve got a lot to thank you for.’

Beth was very touched. ‘I was a fool not to have realized straight off how right you were for me.’

‘Hell, Beth, if we’d settled down and become ordinary folks back in New York it probably would have fallen apart in no time. Look at the adventures we’ve had together!’

She knew that was his way of saying that he didn’t feel bitter about her choosing Theo back then, and that made her love him even more.

Oz didn’t come back within a few days as he’d promised. Jack and Beth carried on sluicing, finding no gold amongst Jack’s dumps but more small nuggets in Oz’s, and they scooped a quantity of gold dust from the bottom of his sluice.

It was glorious weather in the main, though the mosquitoes were irritating, but as the days grew into one week and then two and still Oz didn’t return, Jack became worried about him. He had never known him leave his dogs with anyone for that long and they spent all day waiting on the river bank looking out for their master. But Jack didn’t dare leave the claim to go and look for him.

News from Dawson City travelled quickly, even out to the farthest creeks, for everyone passing by had something to tell. They had heard that the town was almost completely rebuilt since the fire, with sewerage, electricity, steam heat and telephones being put in. Since the ice broke up, thousands more people had arrived, the rich by sea, and the poor over the trails, and it was said that vast numbers of them were flat broke, tramping around looking for work. Men like Jack who were mining for the claim owners were becoming jittery that their wages would drop with the surplus of workers, and even those who owned the claims were worried that desperate men might try claim-jumping, or come out here to rob.

On 4 July, they heard the bangs and fizz of fireworks from Dawson, a reminder to Beth that it was a year since she’d got the news of Molly’s death. But still Oz didn’t return.

One afternoon in mid-July, Flash and Silver began howling, and finally Jack spotted Oz rowing his boat back up the creek.

They were overjoyed to see him, but as Oz clambered unsteadily ashore, stinking to high heaven, it was clear he had been drinking solidly for the past few days and they thought the worst.

‘Have you lost it all?’ Jack asked as he helped the old man to his cabin.

‘Yeah, I reckon so,’ Oz said before collapsing on to his bed and immediately falling into a dead sleep.

Jack went down to Oz’s cabin twice during the evening to check he was all right, but he didn’t wake.

‘He’ll have gambled the claim away,’ Jack said sadly as he returned to Beth. ‘He’s brought nothing back with him but a couple of bottles of whisky. No provisions or anything. I guess we’ll have to brace ourselves for moving on quicker than we expected.’

‘That’s fine,’ Beth said. ‘Let’s get a boat back to Vancouver. I can play in the Globe again, you’ll get work easily enough. I’ve got the money I saved, that will see us through.’