Page 28 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot

“Call yourself a widow,” Temperance suggested. “We’ll use some of your money to buy you a wedding band.” She pointed at the tip jar. “You can tell your aunt that your gold-fevered husband died on you. Then go to church and pray for his soul. No one will dare question it.”

Jane’s brows went up at the outlandish lie.

Temperance shrugged, already thinking she could use a similar story when she returned to Chicago. Adelaide could spend the rest of her days wondering if it was true.

They slept well enough, but Freddie had them all up early.

After they each ate a boiled egg, Mavis and the baby went back to bed, but the morning was bright enough that Jane suggested she and Temperance walk over to the trading post in search of a ring for Mavis.

They didn’t have any luck, but ran into Owen as they passed the corncake tent on their way home.

Temperance’s heart gave a little skip even as she tried not to watch for any warmth or connection between him and Jane. As she dropped her gaze, she realized Clarence was at his heels.

“How do you still have him?” She blinked in astonishment.

“I told you last night. He won’t stop following me. I have to lock him in my room when I go out at night.”

“You lock him in your room?” she cried. “Why don’t you leave him outside to find his way home?”

“It’s cold.” He frowned his disapproval.

“What is Mrs. Pincher going to think?”

“Are you the hussy who stole Old Lady Pincher’s dog?” Skip, one of the miners who had danced with them last night, was eavesdropping as he stood in line for corncakes. “She was a hen with a bee up her feathers, fluttering all over Denver the other day, calling for him.”

“I am not the hussy who stole her dog. He is. He just admitted it.” Temperance waved at Owen. “I’ll have to take him home,” she told Jane, who was crouched down, scratching the dog’s neck while murmuring endearments.

Clarence was soaking up the attention, thumping his tail against the hard-packed ground.

“Don’t leave yet,” Owen said. “Let me eat my breakfast first.”

“You want to confess it was actually you who stole her dog?” she asked.

“No. But I have to go to the stage office. It was busy when I walked by, so I decided to get breakfast first.” He walked away to order his meal, calling back to her, “Get yourselves some coffee, my treat.”

They did, then Skip joined them to report on the number of men in a recent shootout in a camp called Horsefly. Apparently, fire had engulfed another camp nearby.

“It’s their own fault,” Skip muttered. “Did they think the Arapaho were kidding when they called it Lightning Lake?”

Half an hour later, Jane went home while Temperance headed to the bridge over Cherry Creek with Owen and Clarence.

“Can I ask you why you’re helping Mavis?” she asked tentatively.

“Do I not strike you as a man with a generous heart?” He threw a stick for the dog as they walked, ensuring Clarence kept up with them.

“No,” she choked on a half-laugh. “You strike me as a man who went to warn the father of her baby, which makes me wonder if it’s really Mavis you’re helping or that faithless man.”

Owen turned his head. His good-natured expression was gone, iced over with a thicker frost than the layers still sitting in the mid-morning shadows.

She swallowed back the taste of tar left in the back of her throat from her coffee.

“Forgive my cynicism,” she said stiffly. “I have some experience with a man who lacked character.” It made her feel sick and ashamed to even mention it.

The way he looked at her made her chagrined to accuse him of being anything like Dewey, but how could she know if he possessed a conscience or not?

“If you’re helping Mavis for your own reasons, without expecting anything for it, I’ll simply thank you,” she said stiffly. “I was very concerned for her, and I appreciate that she won’t be destitute and shunned.”

“I know what that’s like,” he said in a hollow voice. “My father left us after my little brother died. He was grieving. I understand that, but it wasn’t my mother’s fault. He left her with nothing except a child she couldn’t feed. I wasn’t old enough to work, not at the kind of job that earns more than a few pennies. She worked in the fields and took in sewing, but we went hungry more often than not.”