Page 4 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot

She was lucky she hadn’t woken anyone, including Mrs. Pincher’s dog, when she had used a pilfered key to slip in after two. Mrs. Pincher only took in respectable long-term boarders. She preferred married couples, but she had made an exception for Temperance, seeing as her father was joining her soon.

Temperance’s wages and tips for the night at Dudley’s had amounted to a dollar ninety-five. She ought to give all of it to Mrs. Pincher for her overdue rent, but she recounted it, then wrapped it in a handkerchief, leaving out the quarter that the stage office charged for receiving a letter, should one be there from her father.

She examined her purse, wondering if she could get anything for it. She had mended the hole in the ruched silk and the bright green hadn’t faded. Only one bead was missing off the leather trim.

She sighed. Whatever she got wouldn’t go very far. Not nearly far enough. What on earth is keeping these men who had offered Papa a contract?

“You turned in early last night,” Mrs. Pincher said when Temperance came to the table for a bowl of porridge.

“I did.” Temperance flicked her gaze around the room, ensuring she hadn’t seen any of her fellow boarders in Dudley’s last night.

“But you didn’t sleep well? You look tired. Do I smell cigar? Gentlemen, I’ve asked you not to smoke in the house.”

Temperance resisted the urge to sniff her sleeve and ate her porridge in short order.

When she rose, Mrs. Pincher asked, “You’re going out this morning, Miss Goodrich?”

“To the stage office, yes.”

“Your father is arriving?”

“I hope so.” It was the same conversation they had every morning, and it was wearing thin with both of them. “Then I’ll see if Mr. Gardner has come to town.” The man’s name seemed to carry weight, so she dropped it as often as she had to.

Please let him be here.

The sanctimonious Mrs. Pincher had started out amiable and motherly but had grown as frosty as these fall mornings when Temperance had been unable to pay her rent last Thursday. Papa wouldn’t have much more in his pockets than Temperance did, but his arrival would reassure Mrs. Pincher that they were, in fact, here to accept gainful employment.

If these men from the Venturous Mining Company turned up as promised.

Temperance had been told the stage office here in Denver or the mercantile in Auraria were the best places to learn whether one of the partners had come to town. The stage office was closer, so she always started there.

“Shall I take Clarence with me?” Temperance asked after she had fetched her coat and gloves.

Mrs. Pincher made a noise that Temperance didn’t know how to decipher so she left him at home. It was too bad. The dog was good company when she made her daily trek. Not much protection, though. The yellow mutt had a tail that wagged the rest of him, and his mission was to buddy up to everyone he met.

Without his oblivious cheer lightening her step, a morose mood closed in on her. The weak sunshine held little warmth, and what leaves were left on the trees were yellow and burnt orange. There was a sense of urgency permeating the town that was almost tangible. Everyone knew that cold nights meant decisions had to be made. Would they stay and tough out the winter? Or go back to wherever they’d come from?

Then there were those infernal mountains, looming over her like a monstrous wave about to crest.

Twelve days ago, the sight of those distant peaks, vaguely reminiscent of the sails on ships in Chicago Harbor, had given Temperance a lift of hope. She had been relieved to see them as she came off the sea of the prairies to arrive at her destination.

They had continued to grow in height, though. So much height. She had seen the mountains of Upper Canada. They were nothing compared to these towering behemoths that stood as a formidable wall against the sky, hemming her in.

If the mountains made a mockery of her understanding of mountains, Denver City undercut her definition of a city. It was more like an ants’ nest turned over by a plow. People moved with purpose in every direction except for those who wandered aimlessly, begging.

That won’t be me. It won’t.

But she could still hear her stepmother saying, “You cannot stay in this house.”

A knot formed in Temperance’s stomach. She forced her attention to her surroundings again, amazed anew at how much growth seemed to happen overnight. Commercial buildings of all sorts were establishing themselves between the houses. Homesteads were in every stage of construction and were fashioned from every type of material. Some were ragged tents or sod huts dug into the earth. Others were rectangular structures of stacked logs or a weatherboard building like Mrs. Pincher’s. A few had a coat of whitewash and a garden. Two had an upper floor.

She had been warned that Pike’s Peak was a hardscrabble place. A humbug. Every emigrant she had passed on her way here became more credible by the day. There’s nothing there, they had said. No gold. No chance at a life. Nothing of civilized order.

A brawl on the boardwalk ahead of her proved it. She lifted her skirts and crossed the manure-strewn street to the other side.

Despite its primitive, rough-and-tumble reputation, the town wanted a railroad. At least, the Venturous Mining Company did, or so one of its owners, Mr. Gardner, had claimed in his correspondence with her father.

Temperance had written back to him, outlining her father’s credentials and his typical compensation with an additional allowance for travel expenses, accommodation, the hiring of guides, and other sundries.

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