Fire in Their Hearts

Chapter 5

One

Victoria Ann McNichol arrived in Vancouver the day before the fire, June 12, 1886.

Victoria, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty, had a mission. Her father, the Canadian Pacific Railroad boss, Hiram McNichol, was the man who decided which frontier towns died and which survived the westward expansion of Canada’s national dream. The railroad would ensure that Canada spread from sea to sea. Someone was trying to kill this dream. Victoria intended to find out who and why.

Prior to leaving Toronto, her father had stressed that something was wrong with the information he was getting about the expansion and the possible terminus of the railroad. There was a lot at stake, and he had to make the correct decision, but he felt he couldn’t trust the information. Victoria was here to provide her father with the information he needed, and to find out who was betraying him.

The politicians in Ottawa funded the railroad, which was being constructed by Chinese workers imported to this sparsely populated new world to build a railroad to unite a nation. At the moment, the railroad stopped at New Westminster—the self-titled Royal City—to the east of the newly incorporated city of Vancouver. Both cities wanted the railroad and, most importantly, the prestige and power that came with it. Both cities had water access, New Westminster had the Fraser River and Vancouver had access on both sides to the Georgia Straight.

To be able to supply her father with the information he needed, Victoria needed to find an updated map of the city and a list of the major real estate owners in Vancouver. She had a list of the owners for Port Moody and New Westminster, the other two cities in competition with Vancouver as the western terminus of the railroad.

Victoria’s assumed identity was as a poker player who’d made a personal fortune in the card rooms of Montreal, Toronto, and Boston. She was indeed here to play some of the finest card players the West had to offer. The draw was the first Poker Gathering in Vancouver, organized by the city’s founding fathers.

Victoria’s education in poker had paid her many benefits in the upscale gambling clubs favored by the elite of polite society in which her mastery of the game was honed. Her father disapproved of her recreational pursuits, but, for now, allowed this indulgence.

Victoria moved onto the wooden boardwalk as the two men who operated the coach service between New Westminster’s rail station and Vancouver wrestled her luggage down from the storage box. They grunted as they lifted her large steamer trunk, one at either end, each grasping one of its brass handles. The men carried the trunk, along with her two smaller leather suitcases stacked on top, through the front door of the hotel.

She’d check in to the Tremont House Hotel for two nights until Philip and Constance Walker returned from Toronto. Philip was Canadian Pacific Railroad’s man in Vancouver, and had been charged by Hiram with keeping watch over his daughter while she was in the city.

Victoria prepared to step from the coach as the door opened.

“Please allow me,” said a smooth, deep voice outside of the coach.

“Thank you,” Victoria said as she stepped down onto the boardwalk.

The man standing before her had smiling, warm, dark brown eyes, dark curls that peeked out from beneath a black hat tipped slightly back on his head, and a smile that made her heart flutter. There was a small dimple in his right cheek.

He wore a snow white shirt—Victoria was certain it was silk—with the top button undone, and a gold embroidered vest. A black jacket with matching pants, and polished, black leather boots, completed his dapper outfit. He looked every bit the riverboat gambler.

Victoria’s heart skipped a beat as she nodded to him. She took a deep breath, calming herself as she looked at the dry, dusty dirt street outside the Tremont House Hotel and surveyed the scene around her. She looked around as she surreptitiously watched her riverboat gambler walk down the street. Heavily-laden wagons rolled slowly up and down Carrall Street with bales of cloth, bags of flour, crates marked “china,” and other goods. The wooden boardwalk kept the foot traffic above the street, a welcome benefit, especially when rain filled it with oozing, stinking mud, which Victoria had heard frequently happened. The boardwalk bustled with women in their floor-length skirts, some with bundles of shopping, others with small children in tow. Although here, she noticed, none wore the high fashion elaborate hats and ringlets common in most eastern communities. In the wilderness of British Columbia, she discovered a world unknown to her.

These were simple, hard-working people—family people—and their simple hats and clothing reflected this.

Victoria looked to the north and saw the harbor filled with ships carrying cargo from the Orient, local fishing boats, and other smaller vessels sailing, chugging, even being rowed or paddled across the wide inlet between her and the northern shore. Sawmills and fish-drying shacks dotted the rocky shoreline.

Prominent against the azure sky stood a range of green and blue mountains that seemed to cover the horizon. Mighty coastal peaks stood close, as if guarding this sheltered harbor from all potential enemies.

Victoria enjoyed playing poker. Her father allowed her to gamble provided she didn’t also take up strong drink. It seemed that for many of her friends and acquaintances, the two, gambling and drinking, went together—it had led them to drunken ruin and turned them into the subject of gossip in the local newspapers.

Victoria agreed with her father on this topic. She had, in fact, come to loathe alcohol in all its forms, but mostly detested her fiancé’s use of it. Herbert Littlefield, of the Boston Littlefields, whom she’d met while playing an all-night poker match in Boston, indulged himself all too frequently, in her opinion. Nonetheless, her father insisted she marry Herbert to unite their wealthy, powerful families. The Littlefields owned the largest slaughterhouses in the Chicago stockyards, while the McNichol’s had control of the railroad. It would be a marriage of industry, not of hearts.

Victoria smiled as she glanced up and down the street, as if she were a princess surveying her domain, then she followed the coachmen and entered the Tremont Hotel. The coachmen dropped the heavy trunk with a thud on the red, blue, and gold Oriental carpet. She thought she could hear their spines crunch and pop, locking into place again as they stood up straight. They wore plain wool pants with jackets and their boots were well worn. They were lean men, hardened by life in this rugged part of the world.

She opened her cloth handbag, extracted two one dollar bills, a very generous tip, and gave them to the leader. At least he’d been the one who’d done all the talking during the five-hour ride over the rough country roads, so she assumed he was the one in charge.

“Thank you, miss,” the man said, with a nod of his bald, sweaty head. He glanced at his partner, who shrugged. She knew they worked hard and reached into her handbag again, took out two additional one dollar bills, and handed them to the partner.

“Thank you. Thank you very much, ma’am, ah, miss.” He bobbed his head up and down as he gave her a toothy grin. She smiled back at him as he quickly pocketed the money.

Victoria turned toward the large, polished oak desk at the far end of the lobby. A gray-haired woman with wire-rimmed spectacles and a puffy, gray, long-sleeved blouse stood behind the front desk, eyeing her with suspicion, her sharp eyes never leaving Victoria’s face as she moved to stand in front of the desk. With a light touch of her hand Victoria felt her elaborate hat to make sure it was in place, gave a little tug to the red-ribbon-threaded black lace falling around its brim, and patted her long blonde ringlets. She smiled briefly, politely, while her cool, dark blue eyes locked on the other woman’s as if daring her to make some comment. When she did not, Victoria said, “Hello, I have a reservation. Victoria Kelly. I believe you were expecting me today.”

Victoria waited. The only sound came from a large wooden clock hung on the wall behind the desk. The clock’s ornate black hands pointed to the twelve and the four, while the sweeping second hand marched forward to the sound of loud ticks that echoed in the quiet room.

After a moment, the woman smiled, pushing forward a quill standing in an inkwell on one side of the large, leather-bound guest register, which she turned to face Victoria. “Pleased ta meet ya, Miss Kelly. My name is Mrs. Morris. All guests must sign the register upon arrival. Them’s the rules.” She pointed to the next empty line. “Write your name here.” Her tone was surprisingly soft and musical.

Victoria looked down at the empty space in the book. There were five names preceding hers and they were all male. She shrugged—best not to annoy the natives within minutes of my arrival. That can wait until later.

She reached for the offered pen and carefully wrote her nom du plume, Victoria Kelly, in the empty space. She used the name whenever she went to the card rooms to hide her true identity. Her father’s good name must be protected at all costs, should Victoria become either famous—or infamous—in the poker-playing crowd.

Especially on this trip, the city politicians must not know who she was or who her father was. The only ones who knew Victoria’s true identity were Philip Walker and his wife.

Even her fiancé, Herbert Littlefield, had not discovered her true identity until it became necessary to form the family alliance. Victoria, of course, swore him to secrecy. Herbert expected her to give up the gaming tables once they married— no decent married woman played cards. Besides, following the wedding, her picture would be all over the society pages of the major eastern dailies. No, after her marriage, Victoria Kelly, card player of renown, would simply disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. At least she still had some time to enjoy her anonymity. Engagements need not be rushed. Besides, her mission for her father took precedence, at least for the time being.

Victoria regretted her fiancé’s attitude about her life as a poker player, but then all good things must end. She sighed inwardly at the thought. She’d miss the excitement of the win. The challenge poker offered was far more than she would have as a wife and mother.

Victoria replaced the quill pen in the inkwell. “Please have someone bring my belongings to my room,” she said, accepting the key the woman handed her.

“Where is the nearest card room?” Victoria asked. “I need to warm up my game for the gathering, and where is Water Street?”

She wondered if the woman would attempt to deflect her question with a claim of virtue, but she only glanced up from the register, a momentary flash of unmistakable anger in her eyes. These stuffy, artificial rules and double standards are enough to drive any intelligent woman mad. One set of rules for men and another for women—ridiculous.

After that brief look of disgust, the desk clerk settled back to her business-like coolness. “Down Carrall Street two blocks, turn right at the corner, and you’ll see the Oriental. That’s where the players will be meeting tomorrow, Miss. Kelly, and Water Street is just three blocks north, toward the mountains.”

Victoria nodded. That was relatively easy and painless. Rather nice for a change. Many women would’ve called her shameless, or worse, but this woman knew a paying customer when she saw one. Good for her.

She turned and started for the door, feeling the landlady’s eyes boring through her back like hot coals. Outside she took a deep breath of the early summer air, smelling faintly of salt and dry timbers. It would still be light for several hours, the summer solstice being a few days away. The longest day of the year meant that, at Vancouver’s northerly latitude, the skies would be light until almost ten in the evening.

With her long, loose stride, Victoria started down the boardwalk toward the corner of the street, as instructed by the older woman. She nodded to people she passed. Her cloth handbag, decorated with an intricate stitched design of a bird in flight, swung lightly from her left arm.

The men acknowledged her with a smile, a nod, and a tip of their hats. The women glared at her, keeping their hands folded tightly in front of them, they were proper women, but to Victoria it seemed as if it were to keep her, the oddly-dressed woman, from snatching their handbags.

She’d seen similar reactions many times, and each time she was more amused than the last. If they only knew her true identity they would be shocked, that she was Victoria McNichol of the respectable, prominent Toronto railroad McNichols, and not just a woman gambler named Victoria Kelly.

After the long trip, the warm sunshine and the smell of the dry dirt of the street, mingled with the pleasant scent of the wildflowers and grasses growing along the sides of the buildings, were welcome. Victoria was thankful for the walk. It allowed her time to clear her thoughts before she engaged in battle.

She reached the corner of Carrall and Hastings Streets and spotted the large wooden sign—painted bright red, with “Oriental Hotel” spelled out in ostentatious gold lettering—hanging over the entrance to the two-story, wood-framed building. A spacious wooden walkway ran down the street in front of the structure. Twin saloon-style doors moved constantly with the traffic of men moving in and out of the gambling parlor. Solid doors that could be closed in inclement weather stood open on either side of the swinging western doors, Victoria waited until two lumbering wagons piled high with large wooden kegs of ale passed by then she crossed to stand in front of the Oriental Hotel’s twin doors.

She was startled when she heard a man’s voice behind her. “This is no place for a lady.”

A quick surge of uncontrolled anger rose in her. She’d heard this particular phrase so often she thought she was over getting angry about it. This was a man’s world and men expected women to be subservient to their will. But Victoria was a new breed of woman and had other ideas. Things were going to change.

She whirled, ready for a fight, and came face-to-face with the owner of the voice. Her breath caught in her throat. Her riverboat gambler.

The man was beautiful. His eyes were a warm, chocolate brown with flecks of gold. When he tipped his hat, she noticed that his hair was dark, thick and wavy. Then he smiled at her, and the dimple in his cheek made an appearance. When she looked at him her heart constricted in her chest as her knees grew weak. For the first time in her life, Victoria McNichol was at a loss for words.

Victoria lift her chin and smiled at him as she collected her thoughts. She had to stay in character, but she also remembered she wasn’t here just to gamble. That didn’t prevent her from feeling a warmth growing in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, why don’t we see how the gathering goes? After all, if the men are gentlemen, they shouldn’t have any problem with a lady at the table, should they?”

“You are correct, miss, we will see.”

Victoria turned from the riverboat gambler as she looked up at the Oriental Hotel. She took a deep breath to calm herself as she entered the wide oak door that he held open for her. She nodded a thank you as she gracefully passed him on the way into the lobby. Her knees felt weak, but she maintained a steady walk and knew that her weakness didn’t show, at least she hoped it didn’t.

She stopped to look around the lobby. It was done in red and gold with large Oriental vases on either side of the main doors and two that flanked either side of the large dinning room and salon. The gambler nodded to two men who stood by the large oak staircase in the lobby and went to speak with them.

She went to the large carved double oak doors and looking into the salon. The walls were painted a light yellow, a nice contrast to the dark oak floor, and long, red floor length drapes ran along one side of the room. They had a variety of round wooden tables of different sizes, with simple wooden chairs that could be moved, but nothing could be hidden in or under. It was a nice large space with a high ceiling.

Good. She always liked to get the lay of the land and familiarize herself with a venue before she started to play.

As she left she made sure that she didn’t look at or for the gambler and made sure that she focused on what she needed to do next and that was to find Mr. H. B. Smith with the Vancouver Water Works. He had just finished a detailed map of Vancouver, registered at the Land Title Office, and she wanted to get a copy of it.

Victoria walked toward the mountains, making sure that she got her bearings so she could find her way back to the Tremont Hotel. She arrived and found herself in a tall room with a bright window in the front and rows and rows of shoulder-high wooden cabinets. She made her request for the surveyor’s map, pleased to find that she could purchase one.

It was a beautiful late afternoon, the sun was warm and there was a light breeze coming from the ocean. She enjoyed her walk back to the hotel and being able to stretch her legs, especially after being on the train and in a coach. She took her time and looked at the large windows, with goods on display and ornate store fronts.

Victoria went back to the Tremont Hotel and unpacked her luggage. It had been a long day of travel, and she was famished and tired. What she needed now was a good meal. Later she would write to Father and tell him she was in Vancouver and ready to conduct her investigation.

With her skirts swishing, her head held high, she strolled along the spacious hallways at the Tremont. The halls were painted a light rose, with framed paintings of old English hunting scenes and countrysides on the walls, which contrasted well against the dark doors. She took her time walking down the wide wooden staircase, enjoying the feel of its smooth, dark, wooden railing under her fingers. She admired the large, oval portraits on the walls in the front lobby as she walked to the front desk.

Looking around the lobby Victoria saw Mrs. Morris, the woman who’d helped her check in, arranging fresh flowers in a glass vase on a side table. Victoria interrupted. “Excuse me.”

Mrs. Morris straightened one last stem of bronze chrysanthemum and faced her.

“Yes? How kin I help ya?”

“I’m sorry for bothering you—those are lovely flowers—but could you recommend somewhere I might go for a meal?”

Mrs. Morris smiled at Victoria. “We have a right nice dinin’ room just down the hall to yor right. Serves the best roast beef in Vancouver, if I do say so myself.”

Victoria liked the woman’s enthusiasm. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”

***

He’d just left an all-night poker game with some of the more prominent city elders, especially Walter Diller, the principal sponsor of the poker game.

The deep breast pockets of his gambler’s jacket were barely able to contain the fresh bills the men had bestowed upon him with regularity through their lack of skills. He made his living gambling, especially poker. He’d tried other games—roulette, faro—but poker was his most profitable game.

It took nerves of steel, plenty of attitude, and as much skill as luck to be successful. The ability to read one’s opponent was the most important element in the game. After the first three hands, Tyler recognized all of his opponents’ ‘tells.’ It continually amazed him when people displayed bad habits at the card table. Pulling ears, twitching eyes, changes in breathing—all indicators of the cards each player held. He’d met only a few professional gamblers, like himself, in the card rooms of San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Vancouver was new ground—untouched, virgin territory, ripe for the picking.

So far Tyler hadn’t seen any known professional players in this town. If his luck held and they didn’t show up, he expected this would be a profitable trip.

English pounds were as good U.S. greenbacks any day. Tyler wasn’t so sure, however, about this Dominion of Canada currency the townspeople carried. The ‘shinplasters,’ as the locals called them, were small paper bills, each worth twenty-five cents. Tyler shook his head at the first player who placed one on the table as an ante, but soon became used to seeing them in the winners’ pots, many of which were his. He didn’t know if he could even convert the stuff to U.S. cash. But there was a high probability that the currency in his pockets was enough to get him to Canada’s eastern provinces, where he could kick the mud of this frontier town from his boots. He’d get to the real money in the gentleman’s gaming rooms in the east. But he would need both, travel and stake money, and the more the better.

He didn’t have a sufficient stake to access those kinds of places yet, but Vancouver would change his fortunes and his future.

It helped that some of the sailors who ventured into the game later in the evening were from U.S. cargo ships anchored in the harbor, and had the courtesy to leave behind some of their U.S. currency.

Tyler looked out his third floor window toward the south, and saw orange flames topped with grey billowing smoke engulf buildings on the edge of the city five or six blocks away.

He continued to watch as another building caught on fire. It seemed to be getting closer and heading toward his hotel. He gathered up his winnings and turned to the door. He had to alert everyone a raging fire was heading toward them.