staring down into the saloon, watching the young woman play. Sometimes, late at night, with the street gone quiet, she could even hear the music from the hotel suite.
Footsteps approached from behind; strong hands settling on her shoulders. She finished peeling one of the oranges from the basket Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice had left at her door the night before, offered him a wedge, her suite redolent of citrus.
“I was thinking, Jack. Could we take a trip to San Francisco in the spring? I’m so tired of all this dreadful snow.”
“That’s a lovely idea.”
She squeezed his hand. Jack gazed down at her, eyes luminous with adoration, said, “Remember the first time I saw you? I was walking down the street on a San Francisco evening, when I passed this spectacular creature. I doffed my hat, smiled.”
“Did she smile back?”
“Oh no. This was a lady, by every account. She simply nodded, and I thought, I have to know who that woman is.”
“So what did you do?”
“Followed her to a ball.”
“And then?”
“We danced. We danced all night.”
“Do you remember what she wore?”
“An evening gown the color of roses. You were the most exquisite thing I’d ever seen. You still are.”
“I’m so happy, Jack.” Molly rose from the divan and stepped around to her husband. Even after all this time, he seemed utterly unchanged from the man she’d married in 1883—short blond hair, boxy jaw, ice blue eyes, even that same spruce tailcoat he’d worn the night of their first encounter. “Let me show you what I want for Christmas,” she said, reaching back to untie her filthy corset, letting it fall to her feet. She pulled her chemise over her head, tossed it at the wardrobe, and climbed into bed. “Jaaaaack.” She whispered his name like a prayer, fingers already fast at work in that swampy heat between her thighs.
EIGHTEEN
O
n their way to Packer’s mansion for a Christmas brunch, Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice eyed the steep treeless slopes that swept up on both sides of the trail, listening for the first hint of the breaking snow that would precede a slide. Lying in bed in their fire-warmed cabin, they’d heard them going throughout the night, like the thunder of distant cannons. Stephen Cole sent up a prayer for protection as they moved into the treacherous gap between the mountains, their webs sinking through a foot and a half of powder with every step. When they emerged from the avalanche path, the party stopped to rest near a spring that erupted out of the rock.
Ezekiel and Stephen packed down an area of snow so they could sit without sinking. Then the preacher dipped an Indian earthenware vessel he’d brought into the spring, offered the first sip to Gloria.
“No thank you. I’m afraid it’ll chill me down even more.”
“Zeke?”
“Naw, Preach, you go ahead.”
They sat in the cold and awesome silence. Ezekiel pulled off his fleece-lined gloves, took out a hip-flask tin of Prince Albert tobacco, set to work loading his pipe.
Ahead, the terrain flattened into a high basin, with a lake in the middle that in the summer turned a luminescent green, as though the lakebed were made of solid emerald, with the sun underneath it. Even then, no one could stand the water for more than a minute, leading the residents of Abandon to bestow it with the most extreme temperature designation in their arsenal—“
Gloria tucked in the blond curls that had escaped from her sealskin cap, shivering despite having bundled herself in two petticoats, two pairs of stockings, one of Ezekiel’s heavy woolen jackets, and an enormous pommel slicker.
“Mind if I ask you something, Stephen?”
“Gloria, you can ask me anything anytime.”
Ezekiel blew smoke rings, watched the snowflakes cut them down.
“If I tell you this, can it stay between us? ’Cause nobody else in Abandon knows what I’m about to say.”
“What do you think you’re doin, Glori?” Ezekiel said.
“Trying to ask the preacher something.”
“Don’t go botherin him with—”
“Zeke,” said Stephen, “let her say what’s on her mind. I’m here to help if I can.”
“Glori, wish you’d let it lie,” Ezekiel said, but she ignored him.
“There’s no easy way to say it, Stephen. I used to be a whore.”
“Aw hell,” Ezekiel said.
“And Zeke used to be a outlaw. Killed a few men in his time. We each did enough sinning for ten. We changed. Not perfect by any means, but we’re decent folk now, or try to be at least.”
“I believe that,” Stephen said as he brushed the snow off his visored felt hat.
