I watched the morning sun crossing the southern sky from east to west. I’d spent the night alternately dozing and shaking bugs away with my hair. Painful cramps shot up my arms. At least my legs were free, so I could wiggle them to keep the circulation going.
It was early afternoon of the second day when I realized I’d lost contact with my hands. I tried to move my fingers, but there didn’t seem to be anything happening beyond my wrists. I was thirsty. Hungry to be sure, but thirst dominated everything. Any moisture that might be in my throat was instantly soaked up by this damned handkerchief.
Pictures swam behind my eyelids. For a while I believed that I was back in London, dangling from a rope tossed out of the second-story bedroom of a Belgravia townhouse on a rainy February night. As usual, I was dressed in men’s clothes, all in black. I had a pocket full of rings and necklaces and a sack containing the family’s good silver tossed across my back, and I was trying not to breathe too loudly while a constable, tardy on his rounds for one cursed night, stood below, sneaking a quick smoke. My arms ached under the strain and, momentarily trapped between memory and reality, I opened my eyes.
If I fell asleep, would I wake up in my mother’s arms? I decided to give up, to let the wondrous sleep at the end of it all claim me.
Then I remembered Angus, who needed me more than I needed my mother.
Whatever would become of the Savoy with Ray left to manage it on his own?
I struggled back to consciousness. Margaret may not have planned to kill me, here on the mountainside, but she was a poor judge of the amount of restraint required to hold one woman. If someone didn’t find me soon, she might just as well have stuck her knife into my heart.
It was Monday afternoon. Ray would have noticed by now that I wasn’t in my office, but I came and left the Savoy as I pleased, so he wouldn’t question my absence at least until the dance hall opened at eight. Angus would leave for work, not wanting to wake me. Sunday evening, he would have gone off with his friends as soon as supper was finished—hunting for frogs and spying on girls and whatever sort of boy-foolishness they got up to. When Mrs. Mann came in to clean my room in the morning, she’d see that my bed hadn’t been slept in. She would assume I was with a gentleman friend, and not breathe a word to Angus or to her husband.
So it would be seven o’clock, eight at the latest, before anyone began to wonder where I might be. By the time they thought to do something about it…it might be days before they found me—or whatever remained of my decaying corpse.
I wiggled and jerked and tugged at my bonds. Nothing moved. I kicked my legs in a wild tattoo on the ground and screamed as loudly as I could. Only the mosquito settling on my cheek heard.
But all that effort had some effect: the handkerchief in my mouth shifted. I used my tongue to attempt to ease it out, one fraction of an inch at a time. Fresh air slipped in through the corner of my lips, and I allowed myself to feel a touch of hope.
All hope faded as a great white wolf leapt over the rocks. Its teeth were filed to sharp points; its claws dug deep into the hard earth. It looked directly into my eyes for a slice of time, threw back its massive head and howled in triumph to the northern sky.
“Take care of Angus,” I whispered as I closed my eyes and waited to feel teeth dig into my unresisting neck.
“Ma. Ma. Oh, thank God. You’re safe.”
I opened my eyes to see half the population of Dawson crawling through the bush. There was Constable Sterling, and Inspector McKnight. Ray Walker and Not-Murray and Jake. Several of the dancers from the Savoy, including Ruby and Ellie, and even a percentage girl or two. One of the Vanderhaege sisters. Sergeant Lancaster and Mr. Mann, who appeared to be weeping—that was surely an illusion. Graham Donohue, who tried to shove everyone aside to reach me but was discouraged by Angus’s sharp elbow in his stomach. Mouse O’Brien was there and Belinda Mulroney. The Indian Fighter and regular Rupert Malloy. Joe Hamilton, who copied reporter’s dispatches before they left for the Outside. A pack of dockworkers and some of the regular barflies, including Barney, who dropped to his knees and seemed to be offering prayers to the sky.
And a gigantic, slobbering, hairy white dog who, if someone didn’t get it off me, was as likely to kill me by licks and kisses as by eating me.
Angus pushed the overly-affectionate animal away, crouched down, and looked into my face. “You’ll be free in a minute, Mother.”
For the first and, I hope, the last time in my life, I fainted.