The entire business district of Dawson City lay in ruins. One hundred seventeen buildings had been destroyed. On Front Street, Belinda Mulrooney’s Fairview Hotel stood intact at the southern limit of the devastation, while the surviving landmark on the north end was the badly scorched Monte Carlo. The Palace Grand was nothing but cinders.
Miraculously, only one person died. In the ashes of the Bodega Saloon were discovered the badly charred remains of its co-owner, H. L. Watson, a known drinker. His demise went unmourned. The investigator for the Mounted Police named Watson as the lout who’d accidentally caused the disaster.
Only an hour before the blaze began, Watson was so drunk he had to be assisted upstairs to his apartment, one of several on the second floor. The bartender who’d undertaken this same assignment on a number of previous occasions dropped Watson, unconscious, in bed. As the bartender explained to the Mounties, he was able to manage inside Watson’s room by the light of the lamp in the hallway, and he did not light the candle at Watson’s bedside.
It was this candle, thoughtlessly mounted in a crude block of wood, that must have started the fire, the Mounties said. Watson had revived long enough to light the candle, then collapsed once more into his drunken stupor, never to wake again.
Before the ashes from the great fire had even cooled, the Golden City was rising once again like the phoenix. This time, the edifices of Front Street were going to be rebuilt on a grander scale. Some had been insured, like Donner’s Bodega Saloon and Arizona Charlie’s Palace Grand, but in many cases owners were left penniless. They had to sell their bare ground to rich men from the creeks eager to build commercial properties on prime Dawson real estate.
The boardwalk was going to be replaced by a concrete sidewalk, the street paved with macadam.
From the window of the hospital where Abe and I sat with Ethan, we could hear the orchestra of hammers and saws. We could see the freight wagons hauling the debris out and the fresh lumber in.
Ethan had a cast on his leg and was bandaged heavily on his back, arms, and face. Abe had burned both arms and scorched his eyebrows; I was burned some on my arms and the back of my left hand. The dog, in the corner, was worrying the bandage on his paw. “Stop that, Nuisance,” I told him. Just as quickly I said to my brothers, “After what he did, I can’t call him Nuisance anymore.”
“Suppose not,” Ethan said with grave cheerfulness. “Sounds like if you picked the wrong hallway, you wouldn’t have reached us in time. Give him a real name, Jason.”
I thought about it. “It should have to do with staying with you two and burning his paw.”
With three pairs of eyes on him, the dog yawned self-consciously. I was looking at his bandaged paw, the front right one. “What about Burnt Paw?”
“I like it,” Ethan said. “Tells a story and sounds downright dignified.”
Ethan proceeded to heave a huge sigh. “Brothers, I’ll never touch another drink or place a nickel on green felt as long as I live.”
“Amen to that,” Abe said.
“Abraham…Jason…I have a confession to make.”
“Out with it,” Abe said. “After what we’ve been through, only suspense can kill us.”
Ethan groaned like a man in hell. “I signed a document when I needed money…. I put up my third of the mill as collateral for a three-thousand-dollar personal loan from Cornelius Donner.”
Abe went pale. “You couldn’t have.”
“I did. Now Abraham, what’s done is done.”
Abe reached for his hat. “I’m going to find our lawyer, the one who drew up our ownership document with Ladue. This can’t be legal.”
Ethan heaved another huge sigh. “I hope to God you’re right.”
With a glance over my shoulder at Ethan, I hurried after Abe, who was halfway out the door of the hospital. His limp was worse than usual, yet I could barely keep up with him on the way to the lawyer’s office.
Our lawyer had already seen the document Ethan signed. Two lawyers Donner had sent earlier in the day had given him a copy of it. “In plain English, I’m afraid that all three of you are out,” George Templeton told us. “Cornelius Donner has taken possession.”
“Impossible!” Abe stormed.
I could scarcely breathe.
“It’s all in the fine print down at the bottom there, I’m afraid. Donner secured the loan not merely with Ethan’s third, but with yours and Jason’s as well. Ethan may have been drunk when he signed it, and the value of what he signed away is far greater than the three thousand dollars he borrowed, but neither of those points constitute a defense, and it was properly witnessed. Remember when we first drew up the ownership papers, with Jason being absent, you wanted it stipulated that one could sign for all three.”
Abe had to sit down. “I remember,” he said. “But Ethan wasn’t paying attention.”
We left the law office in a state of shock and went directly to the mill. As we arrived, a new sign was being nailed up where the one with our name had stood. The new one read DONNER ENTERPRISES. The men gathered around us and wondered if we were really out of ownership. “Such appears to be the case,” Abe admitted, still stunned.
The men said that they would have quit their jobs in sympathy if jobs weren’t so hard to come by. They told us that their wages had been reduced from fifteen dollars a day to a hundred dollars a month.
“That’s Dawson wages this spring,” growled a burly man we didn’t know.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“The new foreman of this mill. You were paying too high.”
Abe and I were allowed to gather our hand tools and Ethan’s, nothing more, not even a chair. Lock, stock, and barrel, the mill didn’t belong to us anymore.
Donner appeared from inside the mill office with silver cane, Prince Albert coat, and every hair in place. Henry Brackett appeared at his elbow protectively, his eyes still a bit puffy from the beating Ethan had given him.
“I thought you were Ethan’s friend,” I said to Donner. “How could you do this to him?”
Donner ignored me. To Abraham he said with that phony, soothing baritone of his, “The little log cabin on the hill is still yours. I do hope you’ve put some savings by.”
“We put everything back into the mill,” Abe said flatly.
Donner touched the brim of his bowler with his gloved hand. “A pity. I congratulate you on your heroism of yesterday. You’re the talk of the town—I’m sure you’ll find employment.”
Abe gave him a look that might have killed. For a moment it seemed Abe was thinking of the claw hammer in his hand as a weapon. Shoving the hammer instead through the loop in his nail apron, he said, “Let’s go, Jason, before we give Dawson City something else to talk about.”
I was burning up inside. As I turned on my heel, I made a vow to myself. We were going to get our mill back.