Within weeks of the arrival of the miners and townsfolk from Twenty-Mile, the Destiny Bank and Trust had failed, and most of the merchants had sold out and departed, together with the doctor, the preacher, the lawyer, and the town's public girls; and what kind of a town is it where you can't get healed, saved, sued, or laid? Not long after, the undertaker left and the last bar nailed up its doors. And hey! If you can't even get drunk or buried…!
But this collapse was totally unthinkable when Frenchy and her girls first emerged, randomly shod, from the harrowing back trail into a town echoing with the miners' holiday zeal. While the girls were recuperating from their trek in the Destiny Regal Hotel's tin bathtubs, Frenchy made arrangements with the biggest saloon, and C. R. Harriman tells us that within two days her "ladies of the evening" were lightening the hours of miners and townsmen alike. I shall quote from this reference to give you a sample of Harriman's sumptuous, if occasionally tangle-footed, frontier journalese: "The trio of rough-hewn odalisques was managed by one 'Frenchy,' an enterprising woman of decidedly Nubian inclinations.* This 'Frenchy' did not offer herself for sale-or, more precisely, for rent-and considering a rather off-putting façade resulting from the application of a broken bottle to her left cheek, it is not likely that she would have found many customers among the refined townsfolk, although rough-and-ready miners would doubtless overlook such superficial cosmetic nuances, But her troika of girls provided a variety calculated to tempt every appetite (save for the fastidious). There was 'Queeny,' a fullblown, full-blooded, full-voiced woman no longer burdened by the coy inhibitions of youth (or indeed those of middle age); and there was 'Chinky,' a shy, retiring visitor from the Celestial Kingdom; and finally there was the clear favorite, 'Goldy,' a brawny Viking girl of more-than-averagely plain features, but crowned with the luxuriant golden locks that inspired her sobriquet."
* The reader is reminded that Mr. Harriman wrote long before political correctness became more important than Freedom of Speech.
In an appendix to his book, Harriman recounts how he crossed the trail of one of Twenty-Mile's denizens through what he called "one of those 'wondrous' coincidences so common in our Nation of Drifters that the real wonder is that we continue to be amazed by them." A couple of years after he had left Destiny and found a post with a San Francisco daily, he was assigned to do a "color piece" on a community of outcasts living in a makeshift village across the bay, in the hills behind Oakland. There he found Reverend Hibbard, who had become the spiritual leader of a small band of fanatics who were convinced that the apocalyptic Second Coming would coincide with the arrival of the Twentieth Century. When that ominous date came and went without cataclysmic incident, Hibbard reexamined the texts of John and Daniel, and lo! he discovered an error of twenty-one years in their calculations-twenty-one being exactly the Trinity times the Seven Seals. So it now became obvious that the apocalypse would come on New Year's Eve, 1921, when Hibbard's followers would be wafted up to heaven, while the fornicators, the scoffers, the meat-eaters, the Darwinians, the blasphemers, and all the rest of us rubbish would be hurled, twisting and screaming, into eternal fires. While awaiting this gratifying spectacle, Reverend Hibbard commanded his followers to live in prayer, poverty, chastity, and grateful obedience to their leader. By the time a diminished handful of sect members stood in white gowns on their hilltop in the drenching rain, only to see the first dawn of 1922 appear with no greater catastrophe than half a dozen head-colds (and much ridicule and nose-thumbing from local flappers and cake-eaters), Reverend Hibbard had already preceded them to their reward, leaving behind a child he had begot upon the body of the thirteen-year-old daughter of a devoted follower. But Hibbard was not the first sin-merchant to cash in on America's penchant for wrathful, anti-intellectual fundamentalism and the addiction of its Lost and its Damaged for the narcotic of cultism, nor, sadly, would he be the last.
We learn little about Matthew, Ruth Lillian, and B. J. Stone from the Destiny Tribune beyond a mention of them as the last arrivals from Twenty-Mile, and two passing references to the shoot-out between Matthew and the prison escapees. I suppose it is only natural that the closure of the mine should occupy most of the newspaper's attention, considering the devastating effect it had on the town's prosperity. Records from the Destiny Bank and Trust show that Gerald (Doc) Kerry drew his savings out of the bank as soon as he got down to Destiny. He had always doubted the willingness of the Boston owners to provide additional investment, should something happen to the mine (as he told Matthew that night while they gobbled peaches and syrup on baking-powder biscuits). It can be inferred that Doc told B. J. Stone of his doubts, for the very next day B. J., Ruth Lillian, and all of Frenchy's girls withdrew their savings, and not a minute too soon, because two days later a rush on the bank forced it to shut down, never to open its doors again.
I confess to feeling wickedly pleased when I discovered from the records that among the many savings wiped out by the bank's collapse was a small account in the name of Professor Michael Francis Murphy and a very considerable one in the name of Mrs. Sven Bjorkvist.
Ruth Lillian must have been surprised to discover that her father had kept all his savings in her name, and that they amounted to a very tidy sum. From records of bank transactions, we discover that during Destiny's financial panic she (or rather, B. J. Stone operating as her agent) purchased the entire stock of two clothing shops, a hardware store, a notions shop, and a harness maker's, all at dirt cheap panic prices; and from railroad shipping invoices, we learn that this stock came with them when they left for Seattle.
Evidently Frenchy read the writing on the wall too, for two days later she and her girls also bought tickets for Seattle, pursuing a clientele that was attracted to the Klondike Gold Rush, and my researches in Seattle turned up Frenchy's name (Marie-ThГ©rГЁse Courbin) on a lease for a "resort-hotel" on Skid Road (soon to be corrupted to "skid row" and applied to any area of down-and-outs).
Because I've grown fond of them, it would be pleasant to confect happy futures for those four women. I can picture Frenchy returning rich to New Orleans and establishing herself in a fine old house from which she dominates local society through her generous support of the First American United Tabernacle of the Glorious Message of the Risen Christ, where none of the congregation even dares to comment on the succession of handsome, well-muscled young "nephews" she keeps in splendid clothes and expensive cigars. And Kersti? Well, I can envision Kersti using her professional nest egg to buy a fertile half-section where, with some full-blooded young man, she raises a clan of tow-headed rascals. Queeny? I can see Queeny winning the heart of some grizzled Klondike miner who, having struck it rich, opens a theater that features her performing her Famous Dance of the Seven Veils. Then, when finally her time comes, she dies of a sudden and painless heart attack while taking a seventh curtain call before a wildly appreciative audience. And Chinky? Poor Chinky, one of nature's victims, condemned to be used and discarded by a long parade of faceless, mean-hearted strangers. I'm afraid the best life I could reasonably project for Chinky would be a short one.