Page 17 of Silver Lining
Long after Low Down lay wrapped in her bedroll, he sat beside the fire pit staring at the coals and thinking about the next few days.
*
Denver had grown and changed since Low Down had last passed through. There were more hotels, more saloons, more shops, more trees in the residential areas, more everything. The last time she'd been here, drovers were yee-hawing a herd down the main street, and gunshots were as common as horse apples.
Now there seemed to be an oyster bar on every other corner, and more silk hats than caps or Stetsons.
Hustlers worked the board sidewalks and called to passengers in hacks and fancy carriages.
Construction crews seemed to be everywhere. She wouldn't have recognized the place.
"I've never stayed at the Belle Mark, but I've heard it's clean and comfortable," Max said, raising his voice above the rattle of a passing beer wagon. Pointing toward Fourteenth Street , he turned away from the noisy mayhem of downtown.
If he hadn't stayed at the Belle Mark, then where did he usually stay when he and his family visited Denver ? Wherever it was, he didn't want to be seen there with her.
By now she ought to know better than to allow this kind of assumption to undermine her confidence.
Such as it was. Besides, she knew she didn't belong in fancy diggings, and Max knew it, too. A plain old cheap-side boardinghouse was good enough for her, and that's undoubtedly where they were headed.
As long as the room had a real bed and clean sheets, she'd think she was sleeping in a palace.
Her mouth fell open when she saw the Belle Mark. This was not a boardinghouse, and staying here wouldn't be cheap. The Belle Mark was four full stories of redstone elegance. The front door gleamed with brass fittings and a green-and-white-striped awning extended to the street. She couldn't get over it.
Never in her life had she stood beneath an awning.
Next she noticed a man dressed in a green uniform all shiny with brass buttons and gold epaulets standing at the foot of the awning, smiling at passing carriages with an expression that invited passengers to stop and step inside. He flicked a glance toward Max and Low Down, noted their horses and travel-worn appearance, then turned away without interest.
"Max?" She rode up beside him, frowning at the man in the green uniform. The uniform and cap and the man's superiority intimidated the bejezus out of her. "Is that man the owner of the hotel?"
"He's just the doorman." While she continued to stare at the details of his uniform, Max added, "His job is to open the door for patrons of the hotel."
Lordy. The man was togged out like a general in a foreign army, and all he did was stand in the awning's shade and open the door? He looked like he ought to be deciding who would live and who would die.
She noticed how he deliberately ignored them. "You know, this place is just too fancy-dancy. There used to be a boardinghouse down on Walnut Street that took overnight lodgers. Let's go there."
"After a summer of living in a tent, I'm ready for a real hotel."
There he went, deciding things his way. Already she recognized the set jaw and closed expression that stated he had made up his mind and no argument from her would change his decision.
Fuming, she shifted in her saddle and searched for a way to deal with the situation since she had to accept it. "All right," she said finally. "You go inside and get us a room, then let me know the number and I'll come along later." Maybe there was a back entrance without an inflated swell in a uniform passing judgment on all who walked beneath his awning.
For a moment she believed Max would accept her suggestion and a rush of relief made her feel light-headed. Nothing but embarrassment lay under that awning. Max would hate being seen in a place like this with such a sorry specimen as her, and she would feel ashamed because she knew she looked like the devil. Hell, she looked so disreputable and wrung out that sixty-three men had refused to share her bed. And the sixty-fourth wasn't chomping at the bit for his opportunity, she thought, sliding a look up at Max.
"We're honorably married," he said slowly, his gaze fixed on the man in the green uniform. "I'm not going to have my wife slipping in after registration like some dollar-a-night doxie." His shoulders pulled back and squared, and his eyes went as hard as blue stones. He was going to insist that the two of them walk past the man in the green uniform and stroll on inside as if they had as much right to be there as anyone else.
Maybe he had that kind of backbone, but she didn't.
Low Down swung off of Rebecca and thrust the reins up at him. "I'm going to buy me some dresses,"
she announced, anxious to escape. "I'll find you later." She'd already taken a few steps toward California Street before he called to her in an exasperated voice.
"Have the bills and your parcels sent to the Belle Mark."
Low Down nodded and hurried toward the noisy rush and bustle of traffic. A few years ago, no one would have given her a second glance. Now, with Colorado a state and Denver the capital, with the new air of cosmopolitan growth, Low Down found herself the object of disapproving stares from the windows of carriages and from ladies passing on the street. Well, that didn't bother her. Since when did she care what anyone thought of her?
But she paced up and down in front of the Colorado Merchant's Bank for twenty minutes before she could make herself raise her chin, square her shoulders, and push open the doors. Almost immediately a frosty-eyed gentleman strode toward her wearing an expression that said his bank wasn't for the likes of her. She bit her lips and thrust out her chin. "I got some money I want to invest. Or ain't my money as good as everyone else's?"
In the end he was a banker. The word "money" rearranged his opinion regarding how a respectable woman ought to look. She could have smelled of worse things than mule and perspiration and he would still have smiled when she untied the thong around her neck and showed him the chipping-in money, Frank's nuggets, and her heavy pouch of gold dust. The banker led her to an office off the lobby, and before they finished doing business, he'd even called her "ma'am" once or twice.
