Steiner lies on a bare tick mattress in his jail cell, a battered man. He has seldom been so cold in his entire life, even counting the treacherous climb up Chilkoot Pass. He actually sweated going up the icy staircase. But here he is too sore to move even one muscle, and he trembles in the dank cell. With the scant dollars left in his pocket, he had aimed to have his share of fun with the cunning demimonde Cilla and drink the nights away before heading south to Seattle at the end of the week. There he might be lucky enough to get his old job back as a barkeep in Pioneer Square. He certainly would not return to Orcas; he’d left his uncle in a tight spot when he pilfered all the money in his uncle’s till the day he stiffed his fiancée.
And Jane’s father would surely kill me if he ever laid eyes on me again. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough, once I knew she was in the family way. Maybe I’ll go to San Francisco again, or try my luck further south. Maybe in the City of Angels, or maybe all the way to Mexico. Get myself one of those Spanish vixens. Live out my days in the sun.
He shakes in his thin coat and swears under his breath.
It is blame cold in this hellhole on Earth. And I’ve been cheated. If there was any gold to be had in these environs, it certainly eluded me.
To keep his mind off his discomfort, he dwells on Cilla.
All that lovely hair. And waif-like, almost like a child.
Steiner grows hard thinking about her. Of all the prostitutes he’d lain with, Cilla possessed skills he never before experienced.
“Shhhh . . . no words,” Cilla had said, as she slowly undressed Steiner in her dark blue bedroom. The cold air prickled his skin and Cilla’s light touch added to the chill. She had led him to her enormous bed and straddled him, using her hands to arouse him. Cilla held Steiner captive for an entire hour, and spread her waist-long hair over his body as he trembled violently. She had then gathered her voluminous hair in her lovely bird-like hands and moved the damp tresses over her own body, spreading his fullness in a wavy pattern on her paper white skin. Steiner thought she had looked like a butterfly. Steiner wondered where Cilla learned this technique, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to do it again.
Early on New Year’s Eve morning, Peterson rustles Steiner.
“Time for the likes of you scumbag shit to be out of here. Boat leaves at nine o’clock sharp. Quite a crowd outside already waiting to see you. I’d watch for flying bottles if I was you.”
Steiner turns his bloodied head toward Peterson.
“Go to hell.”
Peterson shrugs.
“Suit yourself. Better be ready in ten minutes, or I’ll have some of the others help drag you out.”
Steiner rubs his head. When he tries to get up from the cot, his bruised ribs ache. It would be a long trip in the brig to Seattle, and then who knows what. Steiner couldn’t think that far ahead. He could barely make it to his feet.
From outside the cell, he hears a gathering crowd, a murmur that grows louder as he approaches the small cell window. In the muddied street, men and women talk and shift.
He recognizes the tall red-haired man who pulled him from the fight standing high above the crowd and feels the blow to his ribs again. But the blow is nothing compared to the blow he feels when he looks past the man. He squints through the narrow slats and focuses on the face.
Pearly!
Of this he is absolutely sure. She hadn’t aged, and Steiner’s mind raced to wonder how Pearly landed in Skagway.
Just like I did, he thinks. She must have followed the lowest common denominator. Some things never change.
But much has changed, and he shakes his head in disbelief. Here he stands, a bruised and battered prisoner. Pearly, however, stands free, dressed in a fashionable fur coat and an enormous hat, decorated with the head of a red fox, its eyes squinting back at him. Steiner watches Pearly; her mannerisms erase thirty years. He vividly remembers her lying in the claw-foot tub and inviting him in. A lifetime ago.
“Get your sorry ass away from that window,” Peterson says. “Time to face the masses.”
Steiner steals one more look at Pearly and turns toward Peterson. Steiner dismisses the urge to deck Peterson, the action futile. He barely musters the strength to walk to the near side of the cell. Peterson cuffs Steiner’s hands and shackles his filthy boots. The stench emanating from Steiner’s grimy, greased trousers almost makes Peterson puke. He stifles the bile that rises up from his gut into his throat and spits on the cell floor. The spit hits the toes of Steiner’s boots. The pair exits the cell and shuffles out through the passageway toward the front door of the brig. Marshall Tanner stands at the door and levels a steely gaze at Steiner.
“This is it for you, pal,” Tanner says. “Get the likes of you out of Skagway.”
Tanner strides ahead of Steiner and Peterson, and stops short of the boardwalk. He motions with his hands to the gathered crowd to make way. Once outside, the crowd jeers at Steiner, many hurling insults his way. Steiner keeps his head low. He hadn’t planned to look at Pearly, but he can’t help himself. When he sees the hem of her long fur coat in the periphery of his view, he stops for a moment and raises his gaze. He takes in every detail of her costume, the small black buttoned boots that peek from beneath the hem, the voluminous swath of the fur coat, her delicate gloved hands, one resting inside a muff, the other attached to the large man who dwarfs her, the outline of her robust bustline, the mere hint of cleavage below the rounded collar, the beautiful, although somewhat aged, porcelain face. Steiner and Pearly lock eyes. To Steiner, the moment lasts an eternity, although in common time, the moment measures two or three seconds. The silent conversation speaks volumes.
“Get your eyes off the women, you sloth,” Peterson says.
“Sorry, Ma’am,” Tanner says, as he passes Pearly.
“No, thank you,” Pearly says. She looks past Tanner and stares at Steiner.
Steiner pulls his gaze away from Pearly. The woman next to Pearly seems familiar, and next to that woman stands Cilla.
Lovely Cilla.
Steiner aches for her. He wrenches his head around to study the face between Pearly and Cilla.
The eyes, the mouth, the hair. Could it be? No, he says to himself, no.
Peterson shoves Steiner on the back and sends him sprawling. As Steiner unfolds himself from the waist up, he looks one last time at the mystery woman. Now he places her.
It’s the woman from the bakery. I recognize the handsome face. But still, there is something else . . .
In a fleeting instant, he looks lastly at Cilla. Her eyes register nothing as she looks at him. She stares at him like a stranger.
The crowd lining the street parts as Peterson and the prisoner near the Rosalie. Shouts, jeers, and the occasional profanity offend Steiner. He keeps his head low.
At ten minutes to nine, Steiner is none too early to board the ship. He manages to walk up the gangway in small, measured steps; the shackles on his feet hinder his ascent. He shuffles, a slow, dull, bum-bum—pause—bum-bum, as his boots meet corrugated metal. Behind him, in the sea of faces, he peers over the rail once more toward Pearly and Cilla and the face between them. He lets out an audible grunt when he reaches the top of the gangway.
Mrs. Stamper!
He draws in a sharp breath and exhales despair.
How can that be? She looks so . . . good. How and why has Mrs. Stamper managed to make her way to Skagway? And how has she befriended Pearly and Cilla? Certainly she is not a prostitute? No, she owns a bakery. Why of course! Eliza Stamper who won blue ribbons each year at the Orcas Fair! Mrs. Stamper who I stiffed in favor of that younger, lovelier specimen . . .
Steiner lets out a cynical laugh. Pearly, Eliza, and Cilla, all together in Skagway, a trifecta of women he had cared for in his life. The thought wrenches his soul. In ten minutes’ time, he will leave the threesome behind, and probably forever. And now he faces a long torturous ride to Seattle.
His future unfolds behind his eyes, a domino effect that cannot be stopped. He has run from the law for thirty years: countless bar room fights, an unresolved murder and a stolen horse, a near-strangled prostitute. He knows with certainty that his past will finally catch up with him, and he will face the noose.
But seeing those three women at once just a few minutes earlier convicted him more than any legal sentence could ever condemn him. He laughs again, this time at his own expense. He knows beyond any shadow of doubt that he is, indeed, a doomed man.