The Snowflake (11 page)

“Oh, posh! This is Dawson, Ellen. None of that kind of propriety stands to reason out here. Now come inside before you turn into an icicle. I’ll get you some breakfast.” Her smile was dazzling.

“Well, just for a few minutes to warm up.” I looked around and saw that, indeed, no one seemed to care in the least that I was stepping into a saloon.

Kate led me over to a round table and pulled out a chair. “Just sit a spell while I round up something hot for you to eat.”

I nodded, taking in the patrons and the décor. A long bar occupied one end with a smoky, wavy mirror hanging on the wall behind it. The room was well lit from the many windows and several chandeliers burning, even though it was early in the day. The walls had flocked velvet green and purple wall coverings on them, and the floor was high-polished wood planks.

More than a dozen people sat at the tables around me. Four men were playing cards at the table I faced. A young man plucked a cheerful song from the piano, and two young women, expensively dressed and perfectly coifed, hugged the end of the bar, chatting with each other. It didn’t seem as bad as I imagined it would be. It actually seemed pretty nice.

Sighing at my assessment, I slumped back in the chair and worked off my mittens. My goodness, how the cold had taken grip of my hands!

“Here you go, dear.” Kate set a plate of eggs, bacon, and a biscuit in front of me along with a steaming cup of coffee. My mouth watered as the smells drifted to my nose. “So, have you found a place to stay?” Kate sat across from me and folded her elegant hands on top of the table.

I paused, shook my head, and took a bite of bacon. “Everything is so expensive. I didn’t realize the costs here were so much greater. My couple of hundred dollars is not going to last long.”

“Yes, not many realize that when they finally land here. You’ll need to find a job quick.” She raised her brows in silent question.

“Don’t even consider it.” My tone lowered to a hushed hiss. “I’ll never be a prostitute.”

“Of course not,” Kate snapped back. “If you hadn’t rushed off . . . if you would have let me explain, you might be surprised by my offer.”

I eyed her with raised brows and dove into my eggs. I’d heard eggs were two dollars each, and I wasn’t about to let them grow cold.

Kate motioned a hand around the room. “The Monte Carlo is one of my dancing halls. A dancing hall is a respectable place, Ellen. The women I employ”—she gestured with her head toward the two women at the end of the bar—“get paid to dance with the men, a waltz or a square dance, that’s all, nothing more.”

I glanced at the young women in question. One was blonde, plump, and pretty. The other was dark with big slanting eyes and striking facial features.

“They charge a dollar a dance, which they split with the house at the end of each night. On a busy night those girls have made over two hundred dollars.”

I sputtered, choking on my coffee. That was more money than Jonah or I had been able to make in a month.

Kate clicked her fingernails on the table and leaned in. “As pretty as you are, you would make a fortune. There’s more ways to strike it rich out here than slopping around in icy streambeds and panning for gold, you know.” She sat back and smiled, her perfect pink lips pressed together in satisfaction.

“Kate, I appreciate the offer, but I couldn’t. I don’t know anything about men, normal men anyway. I just couldn’t.”

She looked down at her hands. “I understand, Ellen, more than you know.” She looked up at me with eyes that had gone from smug to vulnerable.

I put down my fork. “How did you end up being a . . . a prostitute?”

Kate shrugged a slim shoulder. “It didn’t start out that way. I came here near the beginning of the rush, with my husband.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did he die?”

“Don’t be sorry. He was a meal ticket out of small-town life. A traveling salesman. He died on the rapids, and I can’t honestly say I missed him. I arrived in Dawson with five dollars to my name, a one-ton outfit, and my husband’s wares. That was a bit of luck, I’ll tell you.” She grinned. “I thought him a fool to bring brooms to this frozen tundra to sell, but no one had thought of that. I made my grubstake on wooden handles and straw.” Her laugh tinkled through the room. “But I didn’t buy a claim, no.” She lifted a hand. “I bought my first saloon. It wasn’t long before women started coming in, and I saw an opportunity. The men here are lonely, Ellen, and they were getting rich fast with nothing to spend it on. I found the need and supplied it with dance-hall girls.”

“Not prostitutes?”

“Not at first. After a time I noticed some of the girls were making their own deals with men after their shift here. It was a dirty business, like the fallen birds on Paradise Alley. I knew I could do better so I built a fancy brothel, hired the prettiest women I could find, and charged through the roof for their services. A year later I owned several businesses with the gold dust flowing like a fast-moving stream right into my pockets.”

“But what about you? Did you . . . ?”

“I didn’t need to. I was busy running the places and didn’t need the money.”

“But I saw you, that night, with—”

Kate’s mouth flattened in a hard line, but her eyes spoke the sorrow of a wounded heart. “I met a man, my first and only love.” She smiled in a self-deprecating way. “A gambler, of course. He was one tall, dark, and handsome drink of water, and I fell hard. I gave him everything—my heart, my body, my soul. He promised to marry me.”

“He didn’t?”

“Left me standing at the altar like a desperate fool and skulked out of town. I hope he’s dead.”

“Kate! You can’t mean that.”

“Well, maybe not dead but suffering. I hope he’s suffering real bad.” She shrugged a pearl-white shoulder. “After he left, I didn’t much care about anything. Something kind of snapped inside me. Here I had all the money and adventure I ever wanted, but it meant nothing to me anymore. One night a man offered me five hundred dollars to share his hotel room. I did it. Not because I wanted the money; I could have gotten more. But because I was lonely and tired of sleeping by myself at night. I’m picky now, but there was a time I would spend the night with anyone decent, just to have him hold me afterward. That was my only demand.”

Kate stopped her story, looked down at her clasped hands on the table, and then suddenlike, rallied herself and stared into my eyes. “Sounds pretty pathetic, doesn’t it?”

I shook my head. It sounded . . . familiar.

“I know I put on an air of independence; heck, we all do around here. But there is one disease in Dawson City, Ellen, and it infects almost everyone.”

“What’s that?”

“Its name is loneliness.”

Her words, her story, left me breathless. Tears threatened my vision. I knew loneliness too. I knew it so well.

I sat speechless and thinking. Maybe there was no harm in dancing and filling a miner’s heart with company for a moment in time. Maybe, as different as I could imagine it, this was God’s answer. Maybe God didn’t see things at all like I did. I still couldn’t quite pray, but my heart was stretching, reaching out to hear Him give me direction, answers.

Kate remained quiet, letting me think. “I owe you an apology, Kate.”

“Now, how do you figure that?” The surprise in her eyes was real.

“I judged you. I thought myself better than you, and while I don’t think the way you’ve gone about filling up your loneliness is the right way, I’m sorry how I rejected you for it. You’re a good woman, Kate. I mean that.”

She blinked rapidly and lifted her chin. “I don’t know as anyone has ever said that to me before.”

I reached over and placed my hand over the top of hers, grinning to lighten the mood. “God loves you, Kate. He loves both of us, and I’m starting to believe He is the only real answer to anyone’s loneliness.”

Kate huffed. “You’re not going to go and turn all religious on me, are you?”

I laughed. “I just might.” I sat back in my chair and studied her guarded face. “Do you think you could get your hands on a Bible?”

Kate smirked. “I can get anything I want, Ellen.”

“Well, how about a deal of sorts. I’ll be one of your dance-hall girls, and a few times a week we’ll read the Bible together.”

Kate pursed her lips into a pout and narrowed her eyes. “What makes you think you are in any position to make deals?”

I laughed again. “You’ve said over and over how much you want me to work for you. Come on, Kate, what are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Well then, how does this being a dance-hall girl work?”

She sighed but I knew she’d given in. “There are rooms upstairs that the girls share—two to a room—and they’re real nice. I charge my girls one hundred dollars a month for rent, and that includes two meals a day. Really, you’ll not find a better offer in the entire city, I promise you.”

“There
is
one other problem.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t know how to dance.”

Her eyes widened, and then she burst out with that tinkling laughter of hers. “I’ll teach you myself. I’ve put on a few pounds of late and could use the exercise.”

I glanced at her tiny waist and doubted it. “Kate, I have to ask. Why do you want to help me so badly? I’m used to taking care of others, not someone looking out for me. I don’t quite trust it. Tell me the truth.”

Kate studied my eyes for a moment. “I’m a businesswoman, and you will be good for business. At least that’s how it started. Now?” Her brows raised and she leaned in. “There’s something special about you, Ellen. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I see it. I want us to be friends.”

Her gaze turned vulnerable again, hopeful. How could I deny her? She was like the family, the sister, I’d never had.

I popped the last bite of biscuit in my mouth and smiled at her. “Well, being your friend does have its perks.”

She rolled her eyes at me but joined in the laughter. I had a feeling I was going to like having a friend very much.

Chapter Nine

Buck, what are you doing?

Buck jerked awake and grasped quick hold of the team’s reins that were slipping from his cold-locked hands. He shook his head and slapped his thighs with either hand trying to bring some feeling back into his legs. He should jump off the sled and run awhile but . . . had someone spoken to him?

Fully awake now, he looked around at the snow-covered forest land and the river, Forty Mile River, he had been following all day. The landscape of white and black whizzed by, his dog team doing a manful job breaking the trail. Seeing nothing but the great timbered land of pine and rock and a pure blue sky left him feeling a certain amount of warm-faced chagrin that he’d allowed himself to drift off and thought he was hearing voices. But even as he tried to shrug it off, the question remained, echoing around the empty places within his chest.

What
was
he doing?

Lord, You know I won’t do anything stupid.
A vision of the gun strapped to his hip appeared, fully formed, in his mind’s eye.
I just want to hear the story from his own mouth. Then I’d like to haul his yellow-bellied hide into the Northwest Mounted Police and see some justice done. I have to know if it was truly an accident. But if it was carelessness and not giving a whit about anyone but himself . . . Well, then I plan to see that the man rethinks his selfishness and gets a glimpse of what he has done. Someone has to see what it’s cost me, Lord.

Buck paused for a long breath, and the question repeated itself, louder than before, louder than the jangling of the harnesses, louder than the wind song, louder than the rushing of the river beside him.

Son, what are you really doing?

Okay, he was hearing voices.
The
Voice.
Lord, I really have my mind made up about this.

Ellen’s face rushed to the fore of his imagination, squeezing his heart. It wasn’t right—how much he missed her, how often he thought of her, how he took her picture out and memorized each curve of her face. The memory of their kiss flowed like liquid heat through his veins. But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t go forward until he’d gone back.

He just couldn’t.

The town of Forty Mile came into view, causing a rush of mixed emotions to overcome conscious thought. He’d made it. And the man was close; he could feel it.

“Get, Shelby! Get, boys!” Buck gave the reins a gentle slap and set his teeth, ignoring the questions in his heart.