In a town where hard-rock miners worked for less than a dollar a day, and twenty-five cents would buy a person a solid meal and a room, fifty dollars for a small can of fish eggs was almost more than she could get her head around.
Then came all the other expenses.
The first few weeks, Sarah had been appalled. Aggie’s ceramic jar had had five dollars that first night. Two the following week. On the third, Aggie had brought the jar down with one hundred and twenty dollars in it.
“I had to pay for a wagonload of supplies,” Aggie had explained. “That’s all them paper receipts I stacked there. To pay it off, Pat O’Reilly loaned me five hundred dollars.”
Her pencil in hand, Sarah had stared, dumbfounded, at the woman. “Aggie, you borrowed five hundred dollars?”
“Well, it ain’t the first time.” Aggie had given her the look a dog might when caught lifting its leg on a chair.
“How much do you owe Pat O’Reilly?”
“All told?” She’d looked away. “Reckon it’s close to six thousand or so. You’d have to ask him.” Then she’d dropped down to take Sarah’s hand. “That’s why you gotta help me, Sarah. We gotta figure out how to make this pay.”
And over the months, Sarah had done so. Cutting some expenses, keeping track of orders and deliveries, double-checking the invoices for fraud. The work was dry, for the most part boring, but with it had come triumphs. Aggie’s was making a steady profit. Aggie had managed to pay Pat O’Reilly nearly a thousand dollars on her loan, and Sarah had another thousand saved away in a second ceramic jar for an emergency.
She finished her final total as Aggie hurried into the kitchen, her hand pressed to her belly. She wore a green satin dress with velvet trim, cut low on the shoulders to show the cleave between her breasts. Her expression seemed strained as she hurried through and out the back.
Sarah finished her figures, took another drink of her coffee. She was thinking of refilling it, when Aggie stepped back in, her blanched face pinched.
“Are you all right?” Sarah asked.
“Food poisoning. I think.” Aggie pressed her hand to her abdomen. “God, please tell me the girls aren’t going to come down with…” She clapped a hand to her mouth, turned, and charged back out the door.
Sarah stood, poured more coffee, and gave her figures one last look. Aggie’s had made a solid seven hundred and fifty dollars and seventy-two cents profit that week. She sat down to do a final count on the money in the ceramic jar when Aggie staggered back in, her dress spotted with vomit.
“Sarah? I’m sick. I hate to ask it, but there’s no one else. Could you attend to the gentlemen at the card table? Mick can see to the girls and johnnies. But the men at the game…” Her throat worked, and she whirled, fleeing once again into the night in search of the privy.
Sarah took a deep breath, replaced the money, and closed the ledger. Standing, she brushed her skirt, a blue-and-white gingham, and smoothed her blouse. While her apparel was fit for a day dress, compared to Aggie’s verdant splendor she looked like a miller moth in a butterfly’s shadow. Nor was her hair done; it hung down her back in a simple ponytail.
Nevertheless, a faint smile bent her lips. She’d been desperately curious about Bret’s game. Had never set foot beyond the kitchen during business hours. Generally, after the accounting was done, she’d compose herself in the kitchen chair, put her feet up on a keg or coal oil tin, and try to sleep until Bret came to get her. Usually sometime around dawn.
Very well! Sarah had had ample opportunity to watch Mrs. Pennington act the perfect hostess in Little Rock, surely she could do just as well. Sarah left the kitchen, paused long enough to glance in the hallway mirror to ensure she at least looked presentable, and stepped through the door into the small side parlor Aggie had dedicated to the game.
A thick blue cloud of cigar smoke hung low in the light of the oil lamps and stung her nose. She’d expected this, given the way Bret’s hair and clothing smelled when he took her home.
Stuffed animal heads hung from two of the walls. A large painting of a much-too-fleshy nude dominated the wall across from her. The artist had apparently never seen how a woman’s breasts looked when she reclined on a sofa; the nude’s defied both gravity and anatomy.
A serving cart stood in the rear corner, bottles of cognac, whiskey, rum, sherry, and Madeira, ready to pour. Sparkling crystal glasses were stacked to either side, along with a box of two-dollar cigars from which four were missing.
The table was felt-covered and had five chairs, of which three were occupied. Cards, stacks of greenbacks and coins, glasses with various levels of tan-colored liquor, and brass ashtrays marked each player’s position.
At her entry the men looked up, Bret’s eyes going wide.
The man to his right she recognized as the infamous Pat O’Reilly—a big bluff Irishman with ruddy features, blazing hair tinged with silver at the temples, and a pug nose. He wore a fine charcoal-gray broadcloth suit; diamond cuff links glinted in the light. His hazel eyes fixed first on her face, then he looked her up and down with open admiration, a red eyebrow rising.
The fellow on Bret’s left was dapper, mid-thirties, impeccably dressed in a black wool suit with a frock-cut jacket and a frilly cravat at his throat. He had a strong jaw, thick black
