Page 47 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot
“Do you think I’m awful?” she asked with apprehension.
“I would think him awful if you had no choice in the matter.” Jane held Temperance’s gaze, waiting for her to respond to her unasked question.
“I had a choice,” she assured her, even though she had felt at the time as though the urge to kiss him had been beyond her own control. “You’ll never believe what else he has asked me to do. Don’t look at me like that.” She pointed at Jane’s alarmed expression. “He’s purchased the undertaking parlor and plans to turn it into a saloon.”
“No!”
“Yes. He wants me to work for him.”
“You have employment. That’s good. Where will you stay?” Jane bent to scratch behind Clarence’s ear as he trotted up from sniffing along the edge of the creek.
“At the funeral parlor.”
“Isn’t it full of ghosts?” Jane asked with a grimace.
“I guess we’ll have chaperones.”
“Pah!” Jane sputtered a laugh. “I don’t suppose I could get with a man if there was a ghoul looking over his shoulder at me.”
They enjoyed a hearty chuckle over that. Temperance was deeply grateful for the laugh. Anyone else, like Ivy Greenly or Adelaide, would find the mere topic too unseemly to mention and be incapable of seeing the humor in Temperance’s agreement to live with a man, unmarried, all winter.
“Owen said he’ll build me a room of my own upstairs, once the snow melts and the roof can be lifted. I told him I plan to save up and go back to Chicago by then, but?—”
But as much as she missed her siblings, she didn’t have much of a future there. Adelaide wouldn’t welcome her and neither would the seminary. Even if she found a way to finish her teaching qualifications, what school would hire her after she’d been a saloon girl?
“He said we could ask you to come work there, too, once it’s open,” Temperance added, trying to look on the bright side. “I expect you’ll be making good tips at the Bijou unless Mr. Fritz hires another girl, but will you consider it?”
“Actually, that’s why I’m out so early. Mr. Fritz came knocking on the door first thing.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “He asked Mavis to come speak to him in the saloon, so she left Freddie with me. I thought he wanted her to make his breakfast, but she came back a little later and said Mr. Fritz has asked her to marry him.”
“And stay here? With Freddie? Will she?” They were staring at each other with mirrored expressions of astonishment.
“I don’t know. That’s all she told me. Now I think on it, though, he did seem sweet on her from the beginning. When I told him she’d had a baby, he was most upset that she hadn’t told him she was expecting. He’s been fussing since the baby arrived, getting in extra milk and telling me to give it to her when she needs it.”
This would explain why Mr. Fritz had been so quick to blame Temperance for Mavis leaving. He had thought he was losing a woman he cared about.
“Good heavens, that wind,” Jane said with a fresh shiver.
“I’m sorry I worried you into coming out.” She gave Jane a squeeze of affection. “Shall we warm up in the mercantile? Owen asked me to meet him there.”
“Oh, yes. I need a few things.”
They hurried down the street, Clarence close on their heels.
Elmer’s offer of a drink at the Dudley Saloon was a pretense to get Owen to the brothel where Elmer witnessed for himself that Owen took over the debt he’d incurred for Mavis’s baby.
Not that either breathed a word about that as Madame Beauville made an adjustment in her ledger for the small fee of five dollars. Owen paid it as a goodwill gesture, since he was now asking her to wait until he’d had a chance to visit Quail’s Creek before he settled up.
Elmer eagerly took Owen to Dudley’s after that. It was the middle of the day, so it held only a handful of patrons turning cards and nursing flat beer. Owen tipped his hat at the men while Elmer, the loudmouth, made a pronouncement that was heard by all.
“Two shots of your best bourbon, Cecil. Three, actually. One for you. You’ll want some comfort once I tell you why we’re celebrating. You’re about to have competition.”
“Oh?” Cecil turned from reaching down the bottle from his top shelf. “Who? Where?”
“This one right here.” Elmer thumbed toward Owen. “He’s bought himself the undertaking parlor. He’s going to turn it into a saloon.”
“Is that true, Owen?” one of the men asked from a table. “Does that mean your claim has dried up?”
“Not at all, Frenchie.” Owen turned to face the man who had been working at Quail’s Creek when Sureshot had turned up there. Owen set his elbows on the bar behind him. “But I can’t pick gold out of frozen ground, can I? I’ll head back in spring and hope to see you there. For now, I’ll focus on this liquid gold right here.”