Chapter Three
Amelia didn’t even bother to sigh as she began clearing the long table of the remains of breakfast. She hadn’t expected miners to be a picture of civility and manners, but she’d had no idea that they’d leave a table looking like a pack of wild dogs had descended on it, either.
Crumbs, spilled drinks, gravy, and jam stains all speckled the tablecloth, to say nothing of the dishes.
At least they’re enthusiastic, I suppose? she thought to herself as she began stacking tin plates and cups.
“I swear they multiply when they’re eating,” Mary Jane, the other girl who worked in the boarding house, said, her hands on her waist as she observed the carnage.
“Perish the thought,” Amelia replied. “I’ve got enough smelly socks to wash as it is.”
Mary Jane wrinkled her pert little nose. “Oh, eww,” she said, making a wordless sound of disgust. “Honestly, looking after this lot is enough to make one despair of the whole lot of them.”
“Do you mean men or miners?” Amelia asked, lifting the still-hot coffee carafe and balancing it on top of a stack of plates.
“Is there a difference in this town?” Mary Jane asked as they ferried the dirty dishes into the kitchen.
Amelia gave a one-shouldered shrug of agreement as she began to work the pump to bring water into the wash basin.
She’d come to rest for the past couple of months in a small town in Arizona that couldn’t decide on a name.
It had been Johnson’s Creek for a while, and was Copper Landing for a bit after that.
She didn’t entirely see the point in deciding on a name in any case; it was little more than a glorified tent city, the kind that sprang up around silver mines.
There were exactly four more permanent structures: the church, the saloon, an assayer’s that doubled as the mine office, and the boarding house in which Amelia found employment.
There were about a half dozen rooms, in which as many as four miners would cram themselves to sleep.
They’d sleep jammed head to foot, rise before dawn for breakfast, and then descend deep into the earth.
In the evening, they’d straggle back in at sunset, faces and hands covered in dirt and backs bowed from their work.
Amelia, along with Mary Jane, was tasked by the proprietress with keeping them fed and the house tidy.
This was no mean feat, given that a couple of dozen pairs of dirty boots were stomping around multiple times a day.
It was hard, exhausting work looking after them, but there was a benefit to this: Amelia was usually too exhausted by the end of the day to think about much of anything.
In fact, she was so exhausted when her head hit the pillow at night that she didn’t have more than a moment or two to consider a lonely grave at the edge of a churchyard in Wyoming.
It had been a beautiful day, the day of the funeral, which had seemed particularly cruel.
The churchyard was new, with only a couple of other graves, marked with little wooden crosses.
Amelia waited for the customary squeeze of guilt that came with this particular memory, the guilt of leaving her sister in such a place and not having had the money to buy her a proper stone marker.
She'd had nothing to leave at the grave and nothing to bring away from it—nothing but the thin necklace at her throat, the one she'd taken from around Kate's neck and never once thought to sell, not even when they were down to their last coins.
“Amelia?” Mary Jane asked, a bit insistently.
Amelia shook herself and blinked twice. Mary Jane was looking at her expectantly. “I’m sorry,” Amelia said. “I must’ve been miles away.”
“Was it someplace nice? Take me with you sometime,” Mary Jane said lightly.
“Pass me the soap and the grater, if you please.” There was only the sound of Mary Jane rasping soap flakes into the water and the squeak of the pump as they worked for a moment.
“So,” Mary Jane said, setting aside the soap. “Was it someplace nice?”
“Why would you think that?” Amelia asked.
The basin full, she released the pump lever and turned her attention to the oven.
They had to bake a never-ending supply of bread and hand pies, and they couldn’t afford to let one burn.
She took a cloth in her hands, folded it several times, opened the oven door, and pulled out a couple of loaf tins.
Mary Jane began scrubbing at the dishes with energetic motions. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Mrs. Langstrom says you’ve been all over.”
Amelia gritted her teeth but didn’t say anything.
Nosy old biddy, she thought without any real malice.
The proprietress wasn’t a bad woman, but she did have a well-earned reputation for bustling around the town and ordering things as she saw fit.
Amelia couldn’t really blame her—women had to be hard out here, and a landlady in particular.
It wasn’t easy to keep a batch of rowdy miners in line.
Of course, she had the benefit of having the only boarding house in town and given that the majority of the workers were still sleeping in tents, she could give anyone who gave her the least bit of trouble the boot.
Amelia pulled the lid off the loaf pans, a new design that ensured the bread came out uniformly and cooked faster. With practiced movements, she turned the loaves out onto a cooling rack and set the tins to air for a moment while she pulled out the dough for the next batch.
“I’d do just about anything to get out of here,” Mary Jane continued. The stack of clean dishes at her elbow was slowly growing. “I’m going to find a wealthy husband and never wash another dish again,” she said, wrinkling up her little nose again.
Amelia threw her a bemused look. “And where are you going to find one of those around here?”
“I’ve already thought of that,” Mary Jane said, wiping her hands on her apron.
She disappeared for a moment to the pantry and returned holding a folded newspaper.
She passed it over to Amelia and pointed to an ad on the back page.
“See here? There’s men so desperate for wives that they put ads in for them. ”
Amelia took the newspaper and scanned it slowly. “Be careful, Mary Jane—some of these are madams looking to ensnare girls for their bawdy houses.”
“Spoilsport,” Mary Jane muttered and snatched the paper away, laying it on the worktable that dominated the kitchen.
“I’m just saying, I think you’d like to know the fellow a little before you hitch your wagon to him,” Amelia said placatingly. “Besides, we both know you’ll never be short of beaus.”
This pleased Mary Jane, who beamed at Amelia before turning back to the dishes. “Let’s just hope I find a husband before my hands are completely ruined,” she sighed as she plunged her hands back into the water.
Amelia felt her mouth tug up at one side and turned her attention back to the bread dough, punching it down.
She had spoken truthfully: Mary Jane would never lack suitors.
Everything about her was petite and round, from her cheeks to her figure.
She had straw-colored curls and bright blue eyes that were a little small in her face.
She wasn’t exactly a great beauty, but there was a perky cheerfulness to her that drew people in, Amelia included.
Her greatest asset, however, was her voice, which was clear and true as a bird’s.
Amelia knew that the miners would sometimes give her a penny for a song.
She won’t have any trouble finding a husband, Amelia thought absently.
She could see it now, Mary Jane with a string of little ones in tow, all of them with lovely voices like their mother.
Though she was penniless, she had much to offer.
I mean, honestly, what sort of woman picks a husband from a few lines of newsprint? she continued inwardly.
Amelia punched the dough a little harder than was necessary, sending up a puff of flour.
If she were being honest, she wasn’t entirely sure what her own assets were.
She knew she was too tall, too thin, too tan.
She wasn’t sure how much that mattered to the desperate men of the west, where they outnumbered the women more than ten-to-one or more.
Moreover, she wasn’t looking for a suitor, least of all a husband, so she wasn’t sure why it mattered.
“Mrs. Lansgstrom says there’s another wagon train coming through,” Mary Jane was saying. Her forehead wrinkled as she scrubbed hard at a stubborn spot on a plate. “Ugh, this lye soap,” she groused, holding her hands up, which were red from the harsh soap.
Immediately, Amelia’s ears perked up. “A wagon train?” she asked, trying not to sound overly interested. “Did she say when?”
“Probably sometime next week,” Mary Jane said. She sighed and tucked one of her curls that had worked loose behind her ear. “Just have to hope I don’t look a complete fright for the new arrivals.”
Amelia kept silent, unable to bring herself to even pretend to care about Mary Jane’s woes.
As always, the threat of new arrivals put Amelia on edge.
She’d spent so long running that she couldn’t remember what it was like to stay in one place for longer than a month or two.
There was no way for her to settle—Dean was as persistent as a bloodhound, always nipping at her heels.
“That’s it,” Mary Jane announced, “I’m going to see if I can get some lard from the trader. My hands can’t take any more.”
“Mm,” Amelia hummed in vague agreement, not really hearing her. An idea was forming in her head, an idea that was either genius or ludicrous.
She heard the kitchen door squeak open and close.
With one flour-covered hand, she lifted the folded newspaper, her eyes scanning the personal advertisements.
It was a paper from Tombstone, one of the only towns large enough to boast a newspaper in the territory.
They ran ads from some larger towns that were sent over the telegraph.
Her concern for Mary Jane had been sincere, but for Amelia, she couldn’t afford to be picky or overly cautious.
Her eyes landed on a small, simple advertisement: a widower with his own ranch was seeking a companion and housekeeper for himself and his two children in Colorado.
The distance was appealing, as was the opportunity for a new last name.
It might even mean that she could stay put, have even a semblance of security.
“You’re being foolish,” she muttered, laughing ruefully and shaking her head. She had no reason to believe a rancher would even want her. She laughed again and tossed the newspaper back down.
She tried to go back to work, but her eye kept sliding to the newspaper, reading the ad over and over again. Sighing, she lifted the newspaper up again.
What have I got to lose?