Chapter 34 #2
By April, dozens and dozens more miners had arrived, and Juneau seemed as if it were heaving with restless humanity.
Maggie tried not to go out as much, for the streets felt far less safe—so many men swaggering about, many of them mean with drink, angry at having to wait to pan for the gold they fretted other men had already discovered.
Still Brendan did not return.
One afternoon in early May, when spring felt like a promise in the air, the snow melting into rivers of mud in the streets and the days thankfully stretching out into golden sunsets past seven o’clock, Maggie ventured out with Sheetka to replenish some of their supplies at Hamilton’s Dry Goods.
She passed O’Donaghue’s, its doors shuttered, as they had been since Brendan had left, although he’d told her he’d hired a man, half-Tlingit, to watch over the place.
“What the hell’s a lady doin’ with a half-breed kid?”
The snarling voice stopped Maggie in her tracks, her hand gripping Sheetka’s tightly.
A drunken prospector stood in front of her, a flask of spirits held slackly in one hand, his mean eyes squinting at her in a narrow-eyed glare.
He was blocking the whole sidewalk, and Maggie didn’t want to step down into the freely flowing mud of the street.
“Kindly let me pass,” she commanded in the crispest voice she could manage.
The man looked between her and Sheetka. “That kid’s an Indian,” he said in the same snarling voice. “And I don’t hold with white woman consortin’ with Indians. Not at all.”
He assumed Sheetka was her daughter, Maggie realized, and she was, if not like that. She had no desire to explain any of it to the man, and she didn’t think it would make much difference anyway.
“Let me pass,” she commanded again, and the man’s lip curled. He folded his arms, splashing spirits on himself in the process.
“I don’t think so.” He lowered his chin as he gestured to Sheetka. “You can go, but the half-breed kid stays.”
As if she’d abandon Sheetka right on the street, to a man such as him!
Maggie stared at him in silent fury. They’d gathered a small crowd of spectators around them, and no one, she saw, seemed inclined to help.
Maybe some of the people of Juneau felt she’d had this coming to her?
No one, not even the nuns, Maggie knew, had approved of her taking Sheetka for her own.
She thought she’d gained their acceptance, but maybe she hadn’t.
Either way, Maggie knew she was going to have to handle this on her own… and so she would.
“Then I will have to use other means to make you move out of the way,” she told the man in a steely voice, and withdrew her pistol from the pocket of her coat.
She’d taken to carrying it with her every time she went out, and she’d spent a whole box of the ammunition Brendan had given her on target practice.
When she raised the pistol, her arm was completely steady.
The man’s eyes widened and, for a second, he looked surprised, but then he gave her a cursory, dismissive up and down and his lip curled once more. “As if you know how to shoot that thing.”
“I assure you, I do,” Maggie replied. She was thankful her voice was as steady as her arm, because, beneath her skirts, her knees were shaking.
“And I have no compunction in using it against a man who is threatening me,” she added, although she knew that wasn’t precisely true.
She didn’t want to kill or even injure a man…
but she would if she had to, and after all her practice, she trusted her aim.
A murmur went through the crowd, of interest more than alarm. This was, Maggie thought ruefully, becoming quite a spectacle, and everyone enjoyed a show, especially after a long, dark winter. All she wanted was to get past the man.
“All right, little lady,” the man sneered, rocking back on his heels. “Try me.”
Maggie stared hard at him—taking in the unshaven cheeks, his beard patchy, his skin raw-looking and speckled with acne.
Broken veins spread across his nose, and his eyes were small and bloodshot.
He was drunk, very drunk, and he’d probably been hanging around Juneau for too long already. He wanted a fight.
And so he’d get one.
Maggie trained her gaze on the front sight just as Brendan had told her and then hesitated. She really didn’t want to hurt a man.
“See,” the man jeered. “You can’t do it.”
“Oh, she can,” a man said from behind her. “Trust me, I’ve seen it myself.”
Brendan. Maggie nearly whirled around, but forced herself to stay focused on the man in front of her. Was she dreaming? Was he really finally here?
“And who the hell are you?” the man demanded, curling one hand into a fist as he started toward Maggie.
With her arm still steady and straight, she pulled the trigger.
The man let out a yelp of shock and pain; as Maggie lowered the pistol, she saw she’d shot him right where she’d meant to—in the fleshy top of his arm, putting a bullet hole through his coat but not hitting bone. Blood was already soaking his sleeve.
“You shot me!” he gasped in surprise.
“You asked for it,” someone from the crowd called to him with a chuckle. A few people clapped.