Chapter 4
“One night paid in advance. No exceptions.”
The proprietress held out her hand, palm up, fingers curled.
She was a stout woman with steel-colored hair pinned beneath a cap and a mouth that looked like it had never formed a smile.
Her boardinghouse sat at the end of Redstone’s main street, a two-story clapboard building with peeling paint and windows clouded by years of dust.
Clara counted her remaining coins into the woman’s hand, each one narrowing the life she could afford. By the time the room was paid for, nearly everything she had left was gone.
The proprietress weighed the money in her palm, satisfied herself it was correct, and dropped it into her apron pocket.
She pulled a key from a hook on the wall.
“Second floor, end of the hall. Breakfast is not included. Checkout is seven sharp. If you can’t pay for another night, I’ll need the room by then. ”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” The woman looked her over, taking in the calico dress, the dust-covered boots, the trunk Clara had dragged across half of Redstone. “Lot of girls come through here thinking Montana will hand them something. It won’t.”
Clara picked up her trunk and climbed the stairs.
The room was small, barely wider than the iron-framed bed that filled most of it. A chipped basin sat on the washstand, and the single window looked out over the alley behind the building.
The mattress was thin, the pillow thinner, and the blanket carried the sharp smell of camphor beneath the stale trace of someone else’s sleep. Clara set her trunk at the foot of the bed and lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress, where the springs groaned under even that small surrender.
Clara opened her traveling coat and took out Edward’s letters: four thin promises tied with ribbon from the orphanage sewing box.
She loosened the knot and spread them across the bed, her gaze moving over the neat, slanting handwriting and the careful words of a man who had once imagined a place for her beside him.
Three weeks. He had already been in the ground three weeks when she boarded the stage in Helena. All that time, while she read his letters, pressed her dress, and practiced the smile she hoped would please him, Edward Langley had lain in the Redstone cemetery beneath a wooden cross.
She gathered the letters and put them away. Crying would not help. It never had. At the orphanage, tears earned nothing but a sharp word from the matron and extra chores. Clara had learned early that grief was a luxury for people who could afford it.
Clara lay on the hard mattress and stared at the ceiling while her mind turned over every possible way forward. Each hope proved as thin as the last.
There was no fare to take her back, no family waiting for a wire, no reference in the territory that might earn her a position by morning.
The headmistress at the orphanage would likely send a letter on her behalf, but such help would take weeks, and Clara had only until seven o’clock tomorrow morning.
Sleep came in fragments, thin and restless.
In her dreams, she was back at the orphanage, scrubbing floors on her hands and knees while the youngest children called her names, certain she would come because she always had.
Before dawn, she woke with her jaw clenched and both hands fisted in the blanket.
By first light she was dressed, her hair pinned, her calico smoothed as flat as her hands could manage. She dragged her trunk down the stairs and set it beside the front door. The proprietress looked up from behind her desk.
“I need to find work today. Could I leave my trunk here until this evening?”
The woman’s mouth thinned. “It can sit on the porch. If it’s still there at sundown and you haven’t paid for another night, it goes in the street.”
Clara nodded and walked into Redstone’s morning chill. The town was waking. A man loaded sacks of grain onto a wagon outside the feed store. Smoke rose from chimneys along the main street. A dog trotted past with something dead in its mouth.
Clara went to the general store first.
A woman stood behind the counter arranging canned goods on a shelf. When the bell over the door rang, she turned, gave Clara a quick assessing look, and set another can in place.
“Good morning,” Clara said, stepping forward. “I’m Clara Whitford.”
The woman wiped her hands on her apron. “Mrs. Hadley.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Hadley.” Clara clasped her gloved hands together to keep them still. “I’m new to Redstone, and I wondered whether you might know of anyone looking for help.”
Mrs. Hadley’s gaze moved over her again, not unkindly, but with the caution of a woman who had learned not to make promises too quickly. “What sort of help?”
“Any honest work. I can keep a ledger, stock shelves, sweep floors, mend, and clean. I’m a hard worker, and I learn quickly.”
Mrs. Hadley’s mouth tightened. “I don’t doubt it.”
Hope stirred before Clara could stop it.
“But we don’t need help here,” Mrs. Hadley continued. “My husband and I manage well enough.”
“I’d work for very little,” Clara said. “Just enough to cover room and board until I can find something steadier.”
For a moment, Mrs. Hadley looked as though she might say something more. Then she reached for another can and turned it label-out on the shelf. “That’s not a bargain I can afford to make.”
Clara swallowed. “I understand.”
“You might try the hotel,” Mrs. Hadley said, her voice still firm but not sharp. “They go through girls quicker than they ought to. Someone may have left.”
“Thank you.” Clara dipped her head. “I appreciate the suggestion.”
Mrs. Hadley gave a short nod and returned to her work, leaving Clara with a direction, if not much hope.
The hotel did not need help either. The desk clerk, a young man with ink-stained fingers, listened to Clara’s request with the pained expression of someone watching a bird fly into a window. He said he was sorry. They had just filled their last position. Perhaps she might try the dress shop.
The dress shop was owned by a woman named Mrs. Pruitt, who took one look at Clara’s calico and her lack of references and shook her head before Clara finished her first sentence. “I can’t hire someone I don’t know, dear. You understand.”
“I was corresponding with Edward Langley,” Clara tried. “I came west at his invitation. His sister Harriet can confirm I’m telling the truth.”
Mrs. Pruitt’s expression shifted at the Langley name, softening for a moment before it closed again. “Edward was a good man, and I’m sorry for what happened to him. But correspondence from a dead man isn’t a reference, Miss Whitford. I need someone the town already knows and trusts.”
Clara understood. Redstone was small, cautious, and slow to make room for anyone it did not already know. A woman alone, with no references and no local ties, gave people pause. She was not unwelcome exactly, but she was inconvenient.
By midday, she had tried every respectable business on the main street. The livery did not hire women. The feed store owner laughed at her. The boarding house proprietress suggested she take the next stage back to wherever she came from.
Clara stood on the sidewalk in the thin October sun and looked at the one place she had not tried.
The Silver Strike Saloon sat in the middle of the block, its painted sign peeling at the edges.
Piano music leaked through the doors, tinny and cheerful in a way that had nothing to do with joy.
A man stumbled out, squinting against the daylight, and weaved his way down the street without seeing her.
She could not go in there. She could not.
Her hand found the coins in her coat pocket, though there were not enough left to buy breakfast.