Page 27 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot

“What did you say to make Owen leave like that?” Mr. Fritz asked Temperance shortly after Owen left.

“Nothing. Only that we wanted to help Mavis.” She had been equally surprised and disappointed by Owen’s abrupt departure. “You don’t think Mr. Stames and Mavis?—”

“No.” Mr. Fritz said bluntly. He paused a minute, then shook his head. “No. I opened in May. She turned up a few weeks later, saying she’d just arrived. Owen gets around, but he didn’t get there. Not for that, anyway.”

Temperance flinched, disturbed by pretty much every one of those statements, but especially that Owen ‘got around.’

She hated to think about him in that way when she had been looking forward to seeing him again. For business, she reminded herself. She was hoping she could persuade him to hire her for the report her father would have written. It was very slim odds that he would agree, but she had to try. It was her only means of raising enough money to travel home before the roads were obliterated by snow and the temperatures cold enough to freeze a mule in its stride.

If she had to stay here and work for the cost of a stage ticket, she would be here for years. Mr. Fritz had begrudgingly allowed her to work in Mavis’s stead and stay in the room with the other two women, but she was on a thin tick on the floor which she rolled up every morning when she rose. Between buying that, and rent and food, she was back to zero and still owed Mrs. Pincher.

“Where’s my kiss?” A drunken gambler demanded.

Temperance distractedly blew a kiss at the cards he’d been dealt, barely looking because Owen had returned. Something in his demeanor was so serious, she sobered in response, instantly alert.

Jane happened to be at the bar. Owen leaned close to say something in her ear that made Jane clasp her hands and smile at him so big, a searing jolt of jealousy ran through Temperance’s blood.

She mentally recoiled. Where had that reaction come from? She gave herself a small shake and smiled down at the men who were anteing up. She absolutely, positively refused to look up and see what Owen and Jane were doing. It was none of her business.

Maybe she would caution Jane later, though. Owen gets around.

Her willpower lasted all of seven minutes, long enough for the gambler’s stake to be lost.

“Shall I fetch you another drink as consolation?” she asked him.

He handed her a coin and she finally allowed herself to look for Owen. He was gone again.

She might have asked Jane what Owen had said to her, but Jane was being tortured by a miner who asked her to dance for the third time in a row. There was no piano here, only an intoxicated man with a squeezebox he played with more enthusiasm than skill.

Nearly two hours later, Mr. Fritz finally shut down for the night. At least Temperance had paid off her bedding with tonight’s wages. After Mr. Fritz deducted her rent, he still owed her forty-five cents.

They heard Freddie crying as they approached the door to their room.

“Oh,” Temperance said with a pang of sympathy.

“I’m glad she’s up. Wait until you hear,” Jane said with subdued excitement.

They entered the tiny room to find Mavis pacing with the baby. She was crying as hard as her son.

“Oh, Mavis,” Jane said as she lit a candle. “You don’t have to worry. I have good news. You have a benefactor. He’s going to arrange a ticket on the stage and give you two hundred and fifty dollars to set you up where it’s not such hard life.”

“Oh.” Mavis’s expression fell. She sat on the edge of her bunk. “I know who it is. It doesn’t surprise me that he wants to pay me to leave. I knew he didn’t want us. It was stupid of me to come here.” Fresh tears of anger and helplessness brimmed her eyes.

“Freddie’s father is here?” Temperance asked with shock. “Is that why you came to Denver?”

Mavis nodded jerkily. “He came back to Springfield last Christmas and I thought... I knew his mother didn’t think much of me, but I believed he loved me. He said he did. That’s why I let him...” She bit her lips as she looked down at the baby. “When I realized I was expecting, I came to tell him. At first, he acted happy to see me and wanted to...you know. But he was about to be married. I said I wanted to wait until he’d called it off and married me. Then he said some awful things, claimed Freddie wasn’t his, warned me against naming him as the father. I didn’t know what to do.” Her mouth quivered.

Temperance could imagine all too well that Mavis had wanted to pretend the inevitable wouldn’t happen, yet her baby had arrived all the same.

“Oh, Mavis. I’ve been in your shoes with a faithless man.” Temperance sat next to her on the bunk and rubbed her shoulder. “It’s not your fault for trusting him.” She had to believe that.

“I thought I’d punish him by finding a husband here and living under his nose, making him see his baby being raised by another man, but he doesn’t care, does he?” Mavis asked weepily.

Jane and Temperance exchanged a look, both loathe to say it aloud, even though it seemed to be true.

“Do you still have family at home?” Jane asked.

“In Springfield? My aunt won’t take me in like this.” She nodded at Freddie.