[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
squirming like tentacles. The potbellied stove simmered in a thick sauce of perfume
and yeasty body smells. Giddy giggles from Maisie and flashing hematite eyes
devouring a reflection that wavered and dimmed, wavered and dimmed. Millie
danced with the black gown and waggled a red feathered fan over her head.
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file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
I had to get out. Half-doubled over, I bolted for the door, but Millie snagged my
wrist and cajoled in a babyish voice, "No, no, Cory, don't go. You have to have a new
dress, too, Vassy says. New number. Black for everybody. Black and red. Red and
black. Right, Madame? Tray oo la la, huh?"
New number my foot! I'd seen those marks on Sasha, on Giselle, and now on these
two. At the same time. Two at once. I was virtually in the clutches of a man who not
only had weird ideas about how to seduce women, but who had not even the
restraint to stick to one at a time. Worse, these girls seemed not to mind that he was
after them both. Well, I was not about to be added to the collection. For all practical
purposes, this trip had already made me a dance hall girl, a murderess, and a
suicide. Even if it had cost me my reputation, it was not going to cost me my honor.
Having kept it for over three decades, I'd grown used to it, and if I was going to lose
it, it would certainly be to someone more selective than Vasily Vladovitch Bledinoff.
Storming back to my cabin, my head cleared just enough that I realized I was even
more confused than I thought. The girls who bore the boss's love bites were not the
only ones to sport the marks of such bizarre canoodling. I had seen them on father,
on Wy Mi, on other victims of the Deadly Miasma. The necrophiliac implications of
that were so disgusting that I simply closed them out and determined to avail myself
of the better part of valor. Arraying myself once more in men's attire, this time new
and rather cleaner than I was, I returned to the warehouse at about three o'clock in
the afternoon, just in time to see the Bella appear around the bend below town and
battle the floating ice to the landing.
Lomax and a shakey but upright London stood talking together by the corner of the
warehouse. A man next to them said, "Well, I'll bet those boys who hightailed it
downriver are eatin' their hearts out now. What with the Weare comin' in day
before yesterday and now this, why, I don't see why we can't all get through the
winter."
"Depends," Lomax said.
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file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
I lost track of them then, as the ship tied up and the men pressed forward to help in
the unloading. The results were disappointing. When all the boxes and bundles were
unloaded, only seventy-five tons of freight sat on the dock.
CHAPTER XV
« ^ »
The duty constable, his carroty mustache bristling with frost, strode through the
crowd and tacked up a new notice. He was striding away again when a peacoat-clad
sailor intercepted him and dropped a bundle at his feet. "Mail. Got hung up in Fort
Yukon. Been there a month or so."
With that perfunctory message, the seagoing postman started to return to his ship.
But Lomax was standing near the landing, eyeing the steamer with the air of a
connoisseur.
"Why, if it isn't Cap'n Lomax!" the sailor said. "Ready to hire me on yet, sir?"
Lomax shook his head. "Not yet. Soon's it pans out, I'll send you word."
"You do that, sir. By the way, that mail? Was a mite scattered when we collected it.
Saw a parcel in there from London, England. Had your name on it."
"A book? Was it a book, lad?"
But the sailor was gone.
Lomax, less like Santa now than one of the jolly gent's recipients, accosted the
constable at once. I skirted around them and joined the cluster of men around the
note.
"What the devil does the damn thing say?" one of them asked.
"Can't you read, Blasingame?"
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html (173 of 272)8-12-2006 23:42:07
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
"Hell no. What does it say?"
"Damned if I know. I never did get the hang of that stuff."
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT ALL PERSONS WHO ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY
PROVIDED WITH FOOD FOR THE COMING WINTER WILL BE TAKEN OUT FREE OF
CHARGE ON THE STEAMER BELLA, WHICH WILL LEAVE TOMORROW (SIC) AT NOON.
THEY SHOULD REPORT AT THE ALASKA COMMERCIAL COMPANY'S STORE
TOMORROW MORNING AT 8 O'CLOCK AND SIGN AN AGREEMENT AS TO THEIR
TRANSPORTATION. THEY ARE ADVISED TO TAKE SUFFICIENT FOOD WITH THEM TO
LAST THEM TO CIRCLE CITY, AS NO MEALS CAN BE SERVED ON THE STEAMER.
SUFFICIENT SUPPLIES CAN BE OBTAINED AT CIRCLE CITY TO LAST TO FORT YUKON.
THE CANADIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE ARRANGED WITH THE ALASKA COMMERCIAL
COMPANY TO FURNISH FREE TRANSPORTATION.
C. CONSTANTINE,
INSPECTOR NORTHWESTERN MOUNTED POLICE
DAWSON, SEPTEMBER 30, 1897
There were only two happy faces in the entire crowd. One was mine, although my
feelings were not unmixed, for I hated abandoning even a web of trouble so
seemingly insoluble as the one in which I had heretofore been ensnared. The other
was Lomax's. He stroked the leather bindings of a large black book and leafed
gleefully through its pages. When the other men gathered in groups discussing the
situation, I sought him out, but he was drifting down the road and was already
deeply into his book. Had I known what those pages contained, I would have
overtaken him and wrestled him for it, for between those covers lay many of the
answers that had eluded me for so long.
London drifted into the Vein, along with a knot of other men exclaiming over the
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html (174 of 272)8-12-2006 23:42:07
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
notice, how THEY never would be quitters and let a little thing like starvation worry
them, while others said that yessireebob, THEY knew enough to come in out of the
rain or out of forty below, as it were, at least long enough to get fresh provisions
and a trip back to American soil.
Naturally, each side listened attentively to the arguments of its opposite number,
with much resulting yelling and throwing about of fists. I slipped through the melee [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl akte20.pev.pl
squirming like tentacles. The potbellied stove simmered in a thick sauce of perfume
and yeasty body smells. Giddy giggles from Maisie and flashing hematite eyes
devouring a reflection that wavered and dimmed, wavered and dimmed. Millie
danced with the black gown and waggled a red feathered fan over her head.
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html (171 of 272)8-12-2006 23:42:07
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
I had to get out. Half-doubled over, I bolted for the door, but Millie snagged my
wrist and cajoled in a babyish voice, "No, no, Cory, don't go. You have to have a new
dress, too, Vassy says. New number. Black for everybody. Black and red. Red and
black. Right, Madame? Tray oo la la, huh?"
New number my foot! I'd seen those marks on Sasha, on Giselle, and now on these
two. At the same time. Two at once. I was virtually in the clutches of a man who not
only had weird ideas about how to seduce women, but who had not even the
restraint to stick to one at a time. Worse, these girls seemed not to mind that he was
after them both. Well, I was not about to be added to the collection. For all practical
purposes, this trip had already made me a dance hall girl, a murderess, and a
suicide. Even if it had cost me my reputation, it was not going to cost me my honor.
Having kept it for over three decades, I'd grown used to it, and if I was going to lose
it, it would certainly be to someone more selective than Vasily Vladovitch Bledinoff.
Storming back to my cabin, my head cleared just enough that I realized I was even
more confused than I thought. The girls who bore the boss's love bites were not the
only ones to sport the marks of such bizarre canoodling. I had seen them on father,
on Wy Mi, on other victims of the Deadly Miasma. The necrophiliac implications of
that were so disgusting that I simply closed them out and determined to avail myself
of the better part of valor. Arraying myself once more in men's attire, this time new
and rather cleaner than I was, I returned to the warehouse at about three o'clock in
the afternoon, just in time to see the Bella appear around the bend below town and
battle the floating ice to the landing.
Lomax and a shakey but upright London stood talking together by the corner of the
warehouse. A man next to them said, "Well, I'll bet those boys who hightailed it
downriver are eatin' their hearts out now. What with the Weare comin' in day
before yesterday and now this, why, I don't see why we can't all get through the
winter."
"Depends," Lomax said.
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html (172 of 272)8-12-2006 23:42:07
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
I lost track of them then, as the ship tied up and the men pressed forward to help in
the unloading. The results were disappointing. When all the boxes and bundles were
unloaded, only seventy-five tons of freight sat on the dock.
CHAPTER XV
« ^ »
The duty constable, his carroty mustache bristling with frost, strode through the
crowd and tacked up a new notice. He was striding away again when a peacoat-clad
sailor intercepted him and dropped a bundle at his feet. "Mail. Got hung up in Fort
Yukon. Been there a month or so."
With that perfunctory message, the seagoing postman started to return to his ship.
But Lomax was standing near the landing, eyeing the steamer with the air of a
connoisseur.
"Why, if it isn't Cap'n Lomax!" the sailor said. "Ready to hire me on yet, sir?"
Lomax shook his head. "Not yet. Soon's it pans out, I'll send you word."
"You do that, sir. By the way, that mail? Was a mite scattered when we collected it.
Saw a parcel in there from London, England. Had your name on it."
"A book? Was it a book, lad?"
But the sailor was gone.
Lomax, less like Santa now than one of the jolly gent's recipients, accosted the
constable at once. I skirted around them and joined the cluster of men around the
note.
"What the devil does the damn thing say?" one of them asked.
"Can't you read, Blasingame?"
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html (173 of 272)8-12-2006 23:42:07
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
"Hell no. What does it say?"
"Damned if I know. I never did get the hang of that stuff."
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT ALL PERSONS WHO ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY
PROVIDED WITH FOOD FOR THE COMING WINTER WILL BE TAKEN OUT FREE OF
CHARGE ON THE STEAMER BELLA, WHICH WILL LEAVE TOMORROW (SIC) AT NOON.
THEY SHOULD REPORT AT THE ALASKA COMMERCIAL COMPANY'S STORE
TOMORROW MORNING AT 8 O'CLOCK AND SIGN AN AGREEMENT AS TO THEIR
TRANSPORTATION. THEY ARE ADVISED TO TAKE SUFFICIENT FOOD WITH THEM TO
LAST THEM TO CIRCLE CITY, AS NO MEALS CAN BE SERVED ON THE STEAMER.
SUFFICIENT SUPPLIES CAN BE OBTAINED AT CIRCLE CITY TO LAST TO FORT YUKON.
THE CANADIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE ARRANGED WITH THE ALASKA COMMERCIAL
COMPANY TO FURNISH FREE TRANSPORTATION.
C. CONSTANTINE,
INSPECTOR NORTHWESTERN MOUNTED POLICE
DAWSON, SEPTEMBER 30, 1897
There were only two happy faces in the entire crowd. One was mine, although my
feelings were not unmixed, for I hated abandoning even a web of trouble so
seemingly insoluble as the one in which I had heretofore been ensnared. The other
was Lomax's. He stroked the leather bindings of a large black book and leafed
gleefully through its pages. When the other men gathered in groups discussing the
situation, I sought him out, but he was drifting down the road and was already
deeply into his book. Had I known what those pages contained, I would have
overtaken him and wrestled him for it, for between those covers lay many of the
answers that had eluded me for so long.
London drifted into the Vein, along with a knot of other men exclaiming over the
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html (174 of 272)8-12-2006 23:42:07
file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scarborough,%20Elizabeth%20-%20The%20Goldcamp%20Vampire%20v1.0.html
notice, how THEY never would be quitters and let a little thing like starvation worry
them, while others said that yessireebob, THEY knew enough to come in out of the
rain or out of forty below, as it were, at least long enough to get fresh provisions
and a trip back to American soil.
Naturally, each side listened attentively to the arguments of its opposite number,
with much resulting yelling and throwing about of fists. I slipped through the melee [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]