Page 22 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot
Owen smirked. He could watch her argue with that dog all day, but a pair of miners waiting for their hotcakes caught his attention with an overly loud whisper.
“Owen! Who’s that gal?”
If there was a more gossipy group of animals than men in a mining town, Owen had yet to come across them. He brought his plate to the wash tub, then walked over to the men.
“Her name is?—”
Something hit him in the leg. A stick.
It no sooner landed in the dirt at his feet than Clarence came galloping toward him in an ungainly rush.
Owen had a bare second to brace himself with a hand on one of the other men’s shoulders, certain he was about to be bowled over, but the dog managed to skid to a halt at the last second, kicking up a cloud of dust as he snatched up the stick with his teeth.
“What the hell?” Owen looked for Temperance, catching the flash of her skirt disappearing around the corner of the tent.
She was not foisting this animal onto him.
“Go on,” he told Clarence. “She’s the one who threw it. Take it to her.”
The dog looked up at him with expectation, tail thumping.
“When did you get a dog, Owen? What’s his name?”
“Clarence, but he mostly goes by, ‘Not my fucking dog.’ Go on.” Owen wrestled the stick from his teeth and threw it in the direction Temperance had run.
Clarence didn’t even look for it. He’d become more interested in snuffling into Owen’s hand and the jacket he held.
“I don’t have anything for you.” He strode to the corner of the tent. The dog padded along beside him, watching with a hopeful look.
Temperance was very good at disappearing. Owen swore and went back to the men.
“Do either of you know...” Hell, had she given him the name of her landlady? No. Only her friend Jane. Who the hell was Jane?
Screw it. The dog would find his own way home when he was ready. They always did.
Once again, Temperance was dwelling on Owen Stames as she made her way to Jane’s.
She kept trying to dismiss him as a man pursuing her for his below-the-belt interest, but he’d sounded sincerely concerned that he hadn’t known whether she had arrived home safely last night.
She’d been too embarrassed to admit she hadn’t gone home at all. She was mortified that she’d lost her job and had had to rely on him for a meal, especially when she wasn’t sure of his motives. She knew what kind of woman he thought her to be, yet he’d seemed insulted when she had accused him of paying her to sit on his knee.
I don’t buy favors from women, Miss Goodrich. Not Rosie or Temperance. Miss Goodrich. Then he had seemed sincerely interested in her father’s work. In her.
In the midst of that, she’d realized she could write the report. Or, at least, enough of it to earn a stage ticket back to Chicago. It was a long shot that Mr. Gardner would believe in her any more than Owen did, but it gave her a ray of hope.
In the meantime, she had to sustain herself. She would visit Jane until the saloons opened, then make the rounds and hopefully find one that would include a room to rent, the way Jane’s did.
As she rounded the Bijou, she glanced up at the miners who were chewing fat outside a line of rough shacks built up on the hillock. Were any of those shacks empty, she wondered?
She was considering whether to walk up and ask when a scream from within Jane’s room curdled her blood.
Chapter 7
“Jane?” Temperance rushed to knock frantically at her door. “Jane? Mavis? I’m coming in!”
She snatched up a piece of the short branch wood stacked outside the door. What she thought she would do when she confronted their knife-wielding rapist, she didn’t know, but the door was unlatched, so she thrust herself inside.
Jane was perfectly fine. She was kneeling on the floor, sweaty and wearing the thin, gray gown she’d worn when Temperance had met her on the trail.