Chapter 13
Despite wanting to find Jane, Temperance waited with Owen for Elmer’s return.
She shouldn’t be so surprised that Owen couldn’t read or write. Her desire to become a teacher had been motivated by her awareness of how many children, especially girls, were not afforded basic education, let alone the higher learning she took for granted.
It was obviously a touchy subject for him so she didn’t question him further about it. Rather, she felt honored that he was willing to entrust her with watching his finances. Given that duty, she refused to allow Elmer to pull the wool over Owen’s eyes with the registration. She didn’t trust that man to tell her the weather when she was standing in it.
Elmer proved what a snake he was when he found them in the wagon house and pretended to be surprised at the household items packed into the undertaker’s wagon. Owen was standing in the bed of the wagon, having pulled back the canvas that covered it.
“Ah. You’ve found the housewares.” Elmer rolled open the door then pulled it shut to block the wind. “I packed everything out here because people usually like to furnish their home in their own way.” He cleared his throat, looking very culpable.
“I was hoping there’d be a velvet divan for my drawing room,” Owen said facetiously. “But I can make do with what’s here. Is Katherine after you to build a house for her and the baby? I’m sure she’ll have strong ideas of her own, and not want the undertaker’s cast-offs.”
“I keep telling her we’d be better off staying with my parents.” Elmer gave the back of his head an anxious scratch, dislodging his bowler hat and quickly replacing it. “We’re comfortable there. Mother could help with the baby.”
Temperance had to wonder if Katherine Greenly described her situation as “comfortable.” And, given Ivy Greenly’s protectiveness of her dalmatian, Temperance thought she already had a baby, but that was for Elmer to work out between his wife and his mother.
“Is that a hip bath?” Temperance asked as she spotted the large tin object that looked like a cross between a chair and an overturned hat. “Do you think he washed the bodies in it?”
“Have you ever tried to bend a corpse?” Owen asked. “No, I imagine it was his. Now you’re here, you can help me put all this back in the house,” Owen said to Elmer. “I did buy the wagon house and its contents with the rest, didn’t I?”
“Yes.” Elmer’s voice wobbled into capitulation, but he rallied up a smile. “Here you are, free and clear, as promised.” He offered Owen a sheet of fine linen paper with a pair of skeleton keys tied together with twine. “You’ll take care of that other matter today?”
Owen looked over the certificate as if he were reading every word.
“You know, Mr. Greenly,” Temperance said. “I have assisted my father with all sorts of business through the years, but never once with a land purchase. Would you walk me through what’s involved? I imagine it’s very complicated.”
“For a woman, perhaps, but I’ve been at it for some time. It’s very straightforward for me.”
She wanted to gag, pretending awe at his superior knowledge while he explained the procedure in patronizing tones. She took the certificate from Owen and questioned each line, expressing suitable amazement at his adequate penmanship and his ability to fill in the blanks. Good heavens, what a genius.
“It’s a fascinating occupation. Congratulations on your new purchase, Owen.” She offered him back his certificate. “It sounds as though you need to keep this in a safe place.”
“It can go into the gold vault at Quail’s Creek. I’ll need to run out and fetch enough to square up on all of this.” Owen sent Elmer a look that was vaguely disdainful, then leapt down from the wagon, landing on his feet before her. He met her gaze with one of dry amusement that thanked her for pandering to Elmer’s ego long enough to reassure him he wasn’t being fleeced.
All she really took in was that he had mentioned leaving. An instant sense of abandonment engulfed her.
“I should find Jane.” All that she’d agreed to in the last hour was beginning to sink in. She was staying here in Denver for the winter. With him. As his saloon girl. She needed time to put that straight in her head. “Would you excuse me, gentlemen?”
“Of course. Nice to see you again, Miss Goodrich.”
“Mr. Greenly.” She nodded, unable to lie and say it was nice to see him.
“Temperance,” Owen called with mock annoyance as she turned away. “What kind of saloon girl can’t even serve a man a shot of whiskey when he’s just bought himself a saloon?”
“It’s right there in my name, isn’t it?” She looked back at him from the door. “You knew who you were hiring. There’s no use complaining now.”
“I’ll buy you a drink at Dudley’s,” Elmer offered.
Owen gave Elmer a distracted nod, but he was still looking at her. His mouth was pushed sideways as he tried to suppress a grin. “Find me at the mercantile in an hour or so.”
“I will.” She rolled open the door. The wind immediately had her tucking her elbows into her ribs in a flinch.
“Rose!” Owen called out before she could shut it.
“What?” she asked with exasperation, anxious to be on her way.
“Clarence wants to go with you.”
The dog was looking up at her with hopeful eyes.
“All right, then.” She gave her skirt a pat, inviting him outside with her before she rolled the door shut again.
Clarence trottedalong beside her as she hurried to the bridge. She met Jane coming across toward her.
“Oh! That’s good luck. I was coming to look for you,” Temperance said.
“I’ve been so worried about you!” Jane wore thin gloves and clutched a shawl around her head and shoulders. “Where did you sleep?”
“I’m not sure I want to say.” Temperance sent a self-conscious glance to either end of the bridge.
A wagon was rattling up behind her so she took Jane’s elbow. They hurried onto the Auraria side of the bridge where they stepped into the lee of a building that looked as though it would become a merchant of dry goods once it was completed. For now, it awaited glass in the open spaces for the windows and had nothing but hardpacked dirt outside its door.
“You’ll guess when I tell you where I’ll be sleeping from now on, though,” Temperance confided.
“Mr. Stames?” Jane asked in a whisper between concern and scandal. “He left the saloon shortly after you did last night. He didn’t come back.”
“Nothing happened, I swear.” Temperance immediately blushed with guilt. “I mean, he kissed me.” They had kissed each other. She blushed harder. “It didn’t mean anything.” It still bothered her that he had said that. Had she really agreed to work for him? “I’ve made it clear that nothing like that can happen again.” She wanted something like that to happen again.
What was wrong with her?
“Do you think I’m awful?” she asked with apprehension.
“I would think him awful if you had no choice in the matter.” Jane held Temperance’s gaze, waiting for her to respond to her unasked question.
“I had a choice,” she assured her, even though she had felt at the time as though the urge to kiss him had been beyond her own control. “You’ll never believe what else he has asked me to do. Don’t look at me like that.” She pointed at Jane’s alarmed expression. “He’s purchased the undertaking parlor and plans to turn it into a saloon.”
“No!”
“Yes. He wants me to work for him.”
“You have employment. That’s good. Where will you stay?” Jane bent to scratch behind Clarence’s ear as he trotted up from sniffing along the edge of the creek.
“At the funeral parlor.”
“Isn’t it full of ghosts?” Jane asked with a grimace.
“I guess we’ll have chaperones.”
“Pah!” Jane sputtered a laugh. “I don’t suppose I could get with a man if there was a ghoul looking over his shoulder at me.”
They enjoyed a hearty chuckle over that. Temperance was deeply grateful for the laugh. Anyone else, like Ivy Greenly or Adelaide, would find the mere topic too unseemly to mention and be incapable of seeing the humor in Temperance’s agreement to live with a man, unmarried, all winter.
“Owen said he’ll build me a room of my own upstairs, once the snow melts and the roof can be lifted. I told him I plan to save up and go back to Chicago by then, but?—”
But as much as she missed her siblings, she didn’t have much of a future there. Adelaide wouldn’t welcome her and neither would the seminary. Even if she found a way to finish her teaching qualifications, what school would hire her after she’d been a saloon girl?
“He said we could ask you to come work there, too, once it’s open,” Temperance added, trying to look on the bright side. “I expect you’ll be making good tips at the Bijou unless Mr. Fritz hires another girl, but will you consider it?”
“Actually, that’s why I’m out so early. Mr. Fritz came knocking on the door first thing.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He asked Mavis to come speak to him in the saloon, so she left Freddie with me. I thought he wanted her to make his breakfast, but she came back a little later and said Mr. Fritz has asked her to marry him.”
“And stay here? With Freddie? Will she?” They were staring at each other with mirrored expressions of astonishment.
“I don’t know. That’s all she told me. Now I think on it, though, he did seem sweet on her from the beginning. When I told him she’d had a baby, he was most upset that she hadn’t told him she was expecting. He’s been fussing since the baby arrived, getting in extra milk and telling me to give it to her when she needs it.”
This would explain why Mr. Fritz had been so quick to blame Temperance for Mavis leaving. He had thought he was losing a woman he cared about.
“Good heavens, that wind,” Jane said with a fresh shiver.
“I’m sorry I worried you into coming out.” She gave Jane a squeeze of affection. “Shall we warm up in the mercantile? Owen asked me to meet him there.”
“Oh, yes. I need a few things.”
They hurried down the street, Clarence close on their heels.
Elmer’s offerof a drink at the Dudley Saloon was a pretense to get Owen to the brothel where Elmer witnessed for himself that Owen took over the debt he’d incurred for Mavis’s baby.
Not that either breathed a word about that as Madame Beauville made an adjustment in her ledger for the small fee of five dollars. Owen paid it as a goodwill gesture, since he was now asking her to wait until he’d had a chance to visit Quail’s Creek before he settled up.
Elmer eagerly took Owen to Dudley’s after that. It was the middle of the day, so it held only a handful of patrons turning cards and nursing flat beer. Owen tipped his hat at the men while Elmer, the loudmouth, made a pronouncement that was heard by all.
“Two shots of your best bourbon, Cecil. Three, actually. One for you. You’ll want some comfort once I tell you why we’re celebrating. You’re about to have competition.”
“Oh?” Cecil turned from reaching down the bottle from his top shelf. “Who? Where?”
“This one right here.” Elmer thumbed toward Owen. “He’s bought himself the undertaking parlor. He’s going to turn it into a saloon.”
“Is that true, Owen?” one of the men asked from a table. “Does that mean your claim has dried up?”
“Not at all, Frenchie.” Owen turned to face the man who had been working at Quail’s Creek when Sureshot had turned up there. Owen set his elbows on the bar behind him. “But I can’t pick gold out of frozen ground, can I? I’ll head back in spring and hope to see you there. For now, I’ll focus on this liquid gold right here.”
He picked up the glass Cecil poured him and nodded his thanks, then tipped back his shot.
“Where do you get this?” Owen asked after hissing out his breath.
“Never mind,” Cecil said belligerently. “I let you have that one on account of our good relationship, but that’s the last drink I’ll serve you.” Cecil firmly inserted the bottle’s stopper and gave it an extra bop with his palm. “If you’d opened your saloon in the spring, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but winter is hard times. The men have all left town and the ones who stay are too busted to leave. There are already too many saloons in town. You don’t see me running out there to open up my own gold mining operation, do you?”
“I’m not stopping you.” Owen was amused by Cecil’s outrage, but surprised too. He’d always had a good relationship with the saloonkeepers in town. “And before you take up arms against me, maybe ask yourself where men got the money to buy your whiskey all summer.” Owen answered by tapping his own chest to indicate Quail’s Creek.
“That may be,” Cecil ran his dirty cloth along the bar top, doing nothing to improve its stained appearance.. “but I still say stick to your own business and stay out of mine.”
“And here I was hoping you’d teach me how to make whiskey,” Owen drawled.
“Over my dead body.” Cecil straightened to glare at him.
“Have you tried that gut-rot of yours?” He nodded at the glasses other men held. “It’s likely to happen sooner than you think.”
“You’re sure as hell not welcome in here if you’re going to insult me.” Cecil was red-faced now, and maybe Owen was shooting himself in the foot, but this spring, one of the men had brought a bottle of Dudley’s moonshine back to camp. They’d watched their labor force drop like flies, every one losing their stomach for days until they figured out what was causing it. Virgil had come straight here to chat with Cecil about it.
“That’s why I stick to beer when I’m here,” Frenchie said to his table.
“I don’t need your business so bad I need to listen to your lip,” Cecil blustered at Frenchie.
“Give it a week, Frenchie. Then my place will be open. You’ll always be welcome.” Owen resettled his hat and gave both Elmer and Cecil a polite nod. “I’d best get to minding my own business. That’s good advice, Cecil. Thanks for the drink.”
Owen caughtup to Temperance at the mercantile. She was already taking her job very seriously, dickering over prices with Mick, the shopkeeper.
“And if we were to buy three dozen in one go, would there be a drop in price?” she asked.
“I could shave a half-penny off each, but I don’t cover breakage when I order in things like glassware. You’re better off buying those directly from the gaffer here in town. He’s more expensive, but you’ll get them sooner and you’ll get whole glasses. Oh, hey, Owen. I’m hearing you’re opening a saloon?”
“I am, Mick, so I’ll need whiskey. Good whiskey.”
“That’s always the trick, isn’t it? I have a shipment coming next week. I can set aside two casks for you. Let me write that down in my book.” He started to leaf through the pages of the ledger on his counter. “Will you be opening a new account for the saloon?”
“That’s wise,” Temperance advised. “Otherwise, your partners at the mine will have a devil of a time working out what’s-what.”
Owen nodded curtly, seeing the sense in it, but prickling with discomfort. He’d have Virgil double check it when he came to town, to be sure it was in order.
“Have you been waiting long for me?” Owen asked Temperance.
“Not really. Jane was here until a few minutes ago. You’ll never guess what she told me!” She clasped onto his arm as though her next words were likely to knock him over. “Mr. Fritz has proposed to Mavis.”
“Proposed marriage? Well now. She’s staying in town then?” That was liable to put a hornet down Elmer’s drawers, wasn’t it?
“Jane wasn’t sure if she’ll accept.”
“Is Mavis the lady who had the baby the other day?” Mick asked, looking up from his book and removing his spectacles.
“I shouldn’t be gossiping.” Temperance pressed contrite knuckles to her lips.
“Hell, yes, you should,” Owen assured her. “Saloons don’t just serve drinks. If all a man wants is to get himself drunk, he can do that fireside, all by himself.”
“That may be, but I won’t gossip about my friends.” Temperance tapped her pencil against the scrap of paper she held. “I think we should take Mr. Mick’s advice and ask the glassblower for a quote.”
“We’ll do that on our way to fetch our things from the corral. Let’s get what we need to settle in, then we’ll decide what we need for the saloon.” Owen bought coffee, oats, beans and cheese, keeping it to what they could carry.
They left everything at the mercantile while they walked up to the trading post, though, since the wind had died down and the sun was trying to penetrate the thin layer of clouds.
The trading post was a dead tree marking a spot where the Utes and Arapaho had been coming to trade with trappers for decades. Probably longer. Once gold-seekers had started coming into Pike’s Peak, trail pickers had begun turning up here, too, bringing whatever useful items they salvaged from the immigrants who’d died on their way to Utah and Oregon.
“I was hoping to find you a pretty gown,” Owen said as he looked at the dull cotton one that a trader showed them. “Take that with the apron and shawl if you’ll get any use from it, but you’ll need something nicer for serving in the saloon.”
“When you say ‘nicer’...” she began.
“I mean something cheerful. That thing is nothing but a reminder of chores.” It didn’t even have flowers on it.
“It would be good for chores,” she noted, nodding at the trader that she’d take it.
“Hey, look at that.” Owen nodded at the rolled wool mattress standing up in the back of the wagon. It was still in its shipping sack. “Did anyone die on that?”
“No, sir,” the trader said. “I found it down a bank under an overturned delivery wagon where it stayed nice and dry. I had a helluva—excuse me, ma’am.” He tipped his cap. “I mean a devil of a time getting it up into my wagon, but it’s big enough for a family if you and the missus are starting one?”
“We are not,” Temperance assured him with an offended hand against her narrow middle.
“Sold,” Owen stated firmly. “How much?”
“Owen,” Temperance hissed. “We agreed on bunkbeds.”
“Do you know when I last slept in a proper bed? Never in my life. The undertaker’s bed was a church pew. I didn’t even bother carrying it into the house, thinking we’d be just as comfortable on the floor. But this? I’ll build the frame and string the ropes myself.” He was so elated, he barely argued the price, only insisting the trader throw in the ugly gown and deliver before dark.
“I suppose I can cut it into two,” Temperance mused as they made their way back to the mercantile.
“You will not. That thing’s big enough, you won’t even notice I’m beside you.” She could sleep on the floor if she was that concerned about it, but he was enjoying his own bed.
The rest of the day was spent settling his horse in the wagon house and chopping some of the wood that had been stored in the other stall.
Temperance swept out the living area before wiping everything down and putting things in order. A stew of beans and dried venison started to smell mighty good by the time the mattress arrived.
Talk about a corpse. The mattress was as heavy as three dead men, but between them, they managed to get it into the nook where the bed would stand.
Owen cut the three ropes that held the mattress in its roll, half expecting a family of squirrels to scamper out of it. Aside from one dried up spider that he brushed away, it was pristine.
He settled up with the trader and saw him off, then sat down to eat.
“Do you know how happy I am right now?” He couldn’t help gazing on his purchase. “You can’t sleep on gold, but you can use it to buy comfort.” It felt almost too good to be true.
Clarence walked over to sniff at the mattress, then stepped straight into the middle, circled twice, and lowered himself into a ball of fur.
“Dog, you have bigger balls than any man I’ve ever met. You can sleep on that bed when you contribute to this household. Until then, git onto your mat.” He pointed into the corner.
Clarence only tapped his tail while looking at him pleadingly.