“Strange town, this,” Sam said.
I stretched my arms wide and turned my face to the sun. “Can you think of anywhere you’d rather be?” And for sure, I couldn’t: this was the most thrilling, intoxicating place I had ever been. The very air breathed adventure and excitement, gold, and the chance to win—or lose—a fortune by nothing but the strength and courage of one’s own wits. Along with a goodly portion of luck.
“Yes.” His eyes were dark and serious, although I’d meant the question rhetorically. Sam always seemed so serious, but even more than usual in the last day or so.
I opened my mouth to ask him if everything was all right. Perhaps his wife was ill or begging to leave the Yukon. Things were hard for everyone here, but for people of their age?
I never said the words.
The building a couple of doors down, with the walls sagging inwards and the wooden slats on the roof already lifting off, called itself a bakery. Which was pushing the definition of the word, as they sold nothing but waffles at twenty-five cents each, along with coffee. As Sam and I stood in the pleasant evening sun, talking about nothing of consequence, the front door of the bakery blew out in a wall of flame.
Chapter Eight
A screaming woman ran out of the bakery and into the street. Greedy flames fed off the air blowing though the loose fabric of her skirts.
No one moved. Everyone of us stood rooted to the spot with shock. The woman’s arms windmilled around and around, as if she were trying to swim through the air. Her mouth formed a dark “O”, and her eyes were wide with terror. Flames licked up the back of her dress and, as I watched, ignited her long hair, come loose from its pins in the initial blast.
A blur of movement crossed the corner of my vision, and the burning woman was knocked off her feet. She fell face first into the wet, sticky mud. Richard Sterling struggled to his knees; he’d lost his hat and mud caked his face and uniform.
“Roll, roll!” he yelled. “Roll, roll!” the crowd screamed. And she did, twisting and turning in the mud like a monster dragged out of a bedtime story to scare a mischievous child into instant obedience. So wet was the street, the fire was soon extinguished.
The crowd moved forward, all ready to cheer, offer a helping hand, have a drink in celebration. A fire was nothing unusual in Dawson, what with wooden buildings hastily constructed and lit by candles and cheap lamps.
Half of the bakery roof collapsed, and flames spat from the single front window. The woman, her face streaked with mud, her hair and dress half burned away, her eyes white and wild, her face as red as my best dress, shrieked and pointed. “My sister! She’s inside! Anna Marie!”
As one, we turned towards the bakery. People were running in all directions, some coming to help or watch the excitement, others running away. Horses screamed with panic, and one pathetically scrawny wretch made a run for it, his owner hanging half out of the cart, sawing at the reins. A shouting Mountie tried to organize men to ferry buckets of water from the river.
I stepped off the duckboard.
Sam Collins knocked me to one side. I kept myself from falling face first into the mud only by reaching out with my left wrist before my knees hit the ground. Pain shot up my arm, my legs buckled, and I screamed. From all sides, men rushed to offer me assistance. Cursing and swearing, I pushed them out of the way and struggled to my feet. Mud clung to my dress, trying to pull me back down.
I couldn’t see Sam.
“Richard!” I stumbled through the mud and the press of onlookers to reach Sterling’s side. He held the bakery woman around the waist as she fought against him. Her eyes were fixed on her store, collapsing in front of her, and she screamed her sister’s name, over and over: Anna Marie, Anna Marie. Sterling told her that the doctor was on his way.
I grabbed at his sleeve, my muddy fingers slipping on the filth caking his uniform. “Richard, you have to do something. Sam’s gone in there.”
He stared into my face. “Gone where? What are you talking about, Fiona?” The woman took advantage of his distraction and pulled one arm free.
I nodded towards the bakery, now nothing but a wall of flame.
Sterling gripped the struggling woman harder, his face a mask of indecision and so easy to read: If he let go of her and went to help Sam, this desperate woman would run into the flames to save her sister.
It took us a moment to realize that the crowd was cheering. Loud, raucous, happy cheers. I rubbed mud and smoke out of my eyes, using my right hand. My left didn’t seem to want to do much of anything.
Flames lit up the building in an extravaganza of red and yellow outlining Sam as he emerged from the waffle and coffee shop, staggering under the weight of the woman in his arms. Sweat ran down his face, carving deep rivers into the soot and dust filling the crevices of his skin. His thick, bushy eyebrows and the edges of his long grey hair were singed. He stumbled onto the street and looked blindly around, eyes weeping from the smoke. The woman’s clothing was intact, and her lashes flickered across her sootstained cheeks. Her lips formed the words “thank you”. Men moved forward to take the burden from Sam’s arms. Someone slapped him on the back, and he yelped in pain.
At least that’s what I later read in the Nugget, as written by the only newspaperman on the scene, Jack Ireland. I was too busy concentrating on the pain in my hand and trying to keep my footing as Richard Sterling shoved the burned woman at me and went to help the men fighting the fire.
The doctor pushed his way through the crowd, panting with the effort of running all of a hundred yards. He spent more time seeing to my sprained wrist than even I thought seemly while his young assistant attended to the burn victim, the smoke-stricken sister and the heroic rescuer.
I was dimly aware of men passing buckets of water back and forth. Fortunately, the bakery was one of the few buildings in this row that stood on its own, meaning there were a few inches of space between itself and its neighbours. One wall of the shack to the left, which advertised cigars and liquors, caught fire, but by the time I freed myself from the doctor’s attentions, pried Sam Collins away from his crowd of admirers, and we staggered back towards the Savoy, the fire had been brought under control.
I was momentarily blinded by a flash of light in front of my face. I blinked to see the large black box of a camera.
A photographer: how lovely. For the second time that day, Sam Collins pushed me to one side. He ripped the equipment out of the photographer’s hands. I grabbed Sam’s arm and stopped him from throwing the camera to the ground.
“Let go, Sam.”
Sheepishly he handed the black box back to its owner.
“Wonderful rescue. They’ll be eating out of your hands in the U. S. of A., old boy.” Jack Ireland barred the way into the Savoy, notebook and pencil in hand. “If you’ll say a few words for our readers. What went through your mind as you rushed into that inferno of a building?”
The photographer arranged his equipment in preparation for another shot, and I twisted my head away. There is not much I love in this world more than having my photograph taken, but not when I resemble a camp follower.
Sam looked up; his face was covered with soot, but his eyes blazed with all the strength of the inferno that had so recently devoured the bakery. “You bastard,” he mumbled at Ireland, so softly that no one but the San Francisco reporter and I heard him.
Ireland stepped back, at a loss for words. His mouth flapped, the camera belched light and smoke, and Sam went into the Savoy.
I followed. Despite all the excitement out on the street, several men remained at the bar, glasses in hand, and I could hear the roulette wheel spin and the croupier call out, “No more bets.” The whole town might burn down around them, but there were men who’d keep drinking and gambling until the whisky bottles exploded and the tables dissolved