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  THE SINGING OF THE DEAD

  Kate Shugak 11

  DANA STABENOW

  Paperbacks

  iii NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware

  that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and

  destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher

  has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  The SINGING OF THE DEAD

  Copyright 2001 by Dana Stabenow.

  Excerpt from A Fine and Bitter Snow copyright 2002 by Dana Stabenow.

  Cover photo of sky and mountain Steven Nourse / Accent Alaska Cover

  photo of wolf Sharon Walleen / Accent Alaska

  Map by James Sinclair

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

  any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of

  brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For

  information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

  10010.

  ISBN: 0312982887

  Printed in the United States of America

  St. Martin's Press hardcover edition / May 2001 St. Martin's Paperbacks

  edition / May 2002

  Si. Martin's Paperbacks arc published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth

  Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  iv This one is for

  Carl Marrs-

  high-school heartthrob,

  long-time friend,

  and the man who makes things happen.

  v

  vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Angela Fiori of the Alaska State Archives Office in Juneau,

  who disentombed the documents concerning the inquest into the death of

  Mrs. William C. Harp, also known as Alice Astor and born Eugenie

  Antionette Felicie Roussey, a real-life good-time girl who served as the

  model for my own protagonist, and whose 1915 murder remains unsolved to

  this day;

  and to Lael Morgan, whose marvelous book, Good Time Girls of the

  Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush, first brought Alice and all of Alaska's early

  working girls to my attention;

  and to Pierre Berton, for writing what remains the best account ever of

  the Klondike gold rush, The Klondike Fever.

  vii

  viii The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with

  a dead girl or a live boy.

  - Edwin Toms, governor of Louisiana

  ix

  x Birth Announcement

  Melun, France

  from the Melun Journal, 13 Juin 1875

  nee a Leon Marc Louis Beauchamp et femme,

  une jeune fille, Leonie Angelique Josephine Beauchamp

  xi The

  Dawson Darling's Alaska,

  1897-1915

  xii

  THE SINGING OF THE DEAD

  xiii

  1

  She walked out on stage wrapped in fifty yards of sheer white chiffon, a

  pair of high-heeled shoes with jeweled buckles, and nothing else.

  There was a second of stunned silence in the packed, smoky saloon,

  before deafening and prolonged approval threatened to raise the roof.

  She waited, a faint smile on her face, for the first roar to moderate

  and pitched her voice to be heard. "Good evening, gentlemen, and welcome

  to the Double Eagle's Christmas Eve auction." Her voice was husky, with

  the slight hint of an accent she tried to control. She let her smile

  broaden, giving it her special up-from-under and through-the-lashes

  look, part Madonna, part whore, all woman, and added, "I'm the best

  present you'll ever find under any Christmas tree you ever saw."

  This time the stage literally trembled beneath her feet, and she gave a

  fleeting thought to all the gold dust spilled on the floor this night,

  now being shaken through the cracks in the floorboards. It wouldn't go

  to waste. Japanese Jack and Big Ben Bentson would crawl beneath the

  building the next morning to sweep it up and add it to the night's till.

  Likely she wouldn't see her percentage, but at the moment she couldn't

  allow herself to be distracted by that realization.

  Big Ben was the owner and Japanese Jack the bartender of the Double

  Eagle Saloon, doors open around the clock at the corner of Front and

  York Streets in downtown, boom

  2

  town, gold town Dawson City. The Double Eagle was the biggest building

  in Dawson, the first to add on a second story. It had a long mahogany

  bar that matched the mahogany wainscoting, eight mahogany gaming tables,

  a polished brass footrail that matched the brass spittoons, large,

  elaborate paintings of reclining nudes lit by tiered crystal

  chandeliers, windows made of stained and beveled glass, and a dozen

  rooms upstairs with thick carpets, many more mirrors, and furnished with

  suites in the very latest style. A cleaning staff of a dozen kept the

  place spotless, although they kept leaving to stake claims in the search

  for their very own Eldorado.

  They were all men, the cleaning staff. Women could do so much better,

  selling dances for a dollar, a pint of champagne for eighteen dollars,

  an hour in one of the rooms upstairs for considerably more. Big Ben got

  fifty cents on the dance dollar, three-quarters of the price of the pint

  of champagne, and she never told anyone what the split was on the third.

  She had been headlining there for the past year, specializing on stage

  in the Flame Dance that kept two hundred yards of chiffon in the air at

  one time, and specializing in what one reporter called "the long, juicy

  waltz" in the clubrooms upstairs. At the end of fourteen months, she had

  twenty-seven thousand dollars in the bank. She was twenty- two years

  old, although she admitted to nineteen, and it was her great good

  fortune that she looked even younger than that. Most laboring men

  Outside, of any age, were lucky to earn a dollar a day.

  She could have kept working for years, especially here, where men

  outnumbered women six and seven to one, but she had plans, big ones. One

  more winter, one last contribution to her savings, and she would be

  ready to move on.

  She looked around the room, at the sea of faces upturned to her, and

  felt that thrill of power she always felt at being the center of so much

  concentrated male attention. The

  3

  chiffon began in a spiral of fabric at her ankles and finished up in a

  graceful swath around her shoulders, the loose end draped over her bare

  arm. So closely bound together were her feet that she could take only

  tiny, mincing steps, which was just as well given the height of the

  heels on her shoes, big Ben had wanted her to go barefoot, but she knew

  what the heels did to the line of her legs, displaying their graceful

  and well-turned length to best advantage, making a man imagine them

  wrapped around his waist.

  One miner had fought his way forward to the edge of the stage. He was

/>   ragged, bearded, and smelled as if he hadn't bathed since the river

  froze over. He looked hungry, and so very hopeless. She gave him a

  special smile all his own, inviting everything, promising nothing. She

  was a whore, but she was an honest whore. She gave value for money

  received, so long as the money was received. That didn't mean she

  couldn't be kind.

  "It's going to be a long, cold, lonely winter, boys," she said, and

  there was a shout of agreement. She walked down to center stage and out

  onto the catwalk thrusting into the room, the little mincing steps

  causing her breasts to shimmy. The tuft of hair at the vee of her legs

  was a shadowy patch beneath the chiffon; she put a little extra into the

  roll of her hips to underline just what was on the auction block that

  evening.

  "For me, too," she added, pouting, and they howled like wolves on the scent.

  Again she felt the thrill, a flush of power that began somewhere low in

  her belly and spread up her torso and down her limbs. A faint shine of

  perspiration broke out over her skin, and a commensurate low, prowling

  growl rose from the crowd. She performed a three-quarter turn and paused

  to cast a roguish glance over her right shoulder. "We have a saying here

  in the north country, boys. I know you've heard it. The odds are good,

  but the goods are odd." She winked a violet eye at one man standing in

  the. back.

  4

  watching her over a glass of Big Ben's watered-down whiskey. He was a

  regular of hers, a banker who was as conservative with his own money as

  he was acquisitive of others'. He hadn't liked the idea of his favorite

  dance partner taking herself out of circulation for the entire winter,

  but then he wouldn't be bidding this evening, either. She had no doubt

  that he was ready to take her evening's earnings in deposit, however,

  just as soon as it had been paid over and Big Ben's commission deducted.

  She let one hand skim suggestively down her cocked hip, reminding him of

  what he'd be missing. His eyes narrowed against the smoke of the cigar

  clenched in his teeth, and she laughed her husky laugh. "I'm sure you'll

  agree, these goods aren't the least bit odd."

  Big Ben and Japanese Jack had been priming the bidders for the last week

  with announcements of the auction, including tantalizing hints as to

  exactly what skills and services the highest bid would bring. The flyers

  were papered all over town and every claim from Log Cabin to Circle

  City. The always needy miners of the Klondike had been quivering for

  days at the prospect of the Dawson Darling dancing the slow, juicy waltz

  just for them for six exquisite months. No one would notice the dark or

  the cold with the Dawson Darling waiting in his bed.

  "Here I am, gentlemen," she said. "It is generally held that my looks

  are pleasing and that my figure is good." She waited for the chorus of

  agreement and was not disappointed. "What are my terms?"

  She tossed the end of chiffon over her shoulder, where it trailed behind

  her like the train of a wedding dress as she walked Down stage again.

  She came to the end of the catwalk and met the fierce blue eyes of a

  tall blond man standing near the double doors. In a room full of men who

  wanted her without reservation, the biting intensity of his look gave

  her pause, but she rallied and held his gaze, a definite challenge in

  her own. "Terms? Well, I'm willing to

  5

  sell myself tonight to the highest bidder, to act as his wife in word- "

  she paused, delicately "-and in deed- " there was another roar "-for the

  next six months, from this night, December 25th, until June 25th."

  "Start the bidding!" yelled one man who had yet to look above her chin.

  "Yeah, stop talking and start bidding!"

  "But," she said, raising one white, well-tended hand without breaking

  away from the stare of the blue-eyed stranger, "I reserve the right to

  accept the next lowest bidder if I do not like the highest." Her eyes

  lingered on the Greek, who looked at her out of cold, acquisitive eyes

  that held no lust for her personally, only for the money she could make

  him when he put her to work in one of his cribs.

  "You'll like me all right!" someone yelled.

  "The man who buys me must provide a decent cabin and a good stock of

  food. I'll cook for him, and I'll clean for him, and I'll-" she paused

  "-dance for him," and again, she was forced to wait for the noise to

  subside.

  "But understand this," she said, smile vanishing, and there was

  something in her expression that caused all comment to pause. "The man

  who buys me, and lifts a hand to me ..."

  "I'd like to see him try!"

  "We'd fix him for you, Darling, never you worry!"

  She waited, and then repeated, "The man who buys me, and lifts a hand to

  me, will have attended his last auction on this earth. Am I understood?"

  She looked at the Greek, whose calculating expression didn't change. She

  waited long enough for her words to sink in, and smiled again to take

  the sting out of them. "You'll want to know, she said, dropping her

  voice, "I'm not exactly an iceberg." She turned, contriving so that the

  top fold of chiffon covering her breasts slipped down to be caught and

  held, barely, by her nipples.

  6

  No one looking at her doubted that she was telling anything but the

  absolute truth.

  Into the dead silence that had fallen, she said softly, "So here. I am,

  boys. Ready and willing." She smiled, making a slow, graceful pirouette,

  caressing the faces in the crowd with a warm, welcoming gaze. "What are

  you waiting for?"

  Big Ben had a hard time getting them quieted down after that. The

  bidding opened at one thousand. It was at five thousand thirty seconds

  later, offered by a squat, dark man with a matted bush of greasy hair

  and a mouthful of rotted teeth. She repressed a shudder and paraded down

  the catwalk again. "Now, boys," she said, laughing, "that last bid was

  only five thousand. Aren't you going any higher than that?" She paused

  at the edge of the catwalk and put up a hand to the thick auburn hair

  tucked into a graceful swirl. When the hand came down, it traced an

  invisible line from throat to breast to waist, to settle again on her hip.

  "Sure, girlie," called out an Irishman with a handlebar mustache and a

  white, wide-brimmed hat, "I was only waiting for the pikers to drop out.

  Ten thousand, and that's only two days' cleanup on my claim!"

  "Twelve!" the squat man growled.

  "Thirteen!" yelled a man in spectacles and bib overalls with a watch

  chain made from gold nuggets hanging from the front pocket.

  "Fifteen," the Greek said, his voice as flat as his eyes. There was

  neither lust nor longing in his tone, only a look that calculated how

  much she could earn for him when he turned her out. She repressed a

  shiver, and reminded herself that she had right of first refusal.

  "Sixteen," the banker snapped. She met his eyes, startled. He shrugged.

  She couldn't help it. She laughed. "Sixteen," he repeated, looking

  faintly irritated at the sound of the
word forced out of his own mouth.

  "Seventeen," a new voice boomed, and she looked up to lock eyes again

  with the tall blond man at the door.

  7