The Wildflowers at the Edge of the World

by Shaylin Gandhi

  Sophia made a sound of protest. The highest moral caliber? Was he serious?

  “You already know,” Temperance said.

  “I’m aware of the dubious business transacted here, yes. But I’m asking if you stole this money.”

  To Sophia’s amazement, Madam Hyacinth’s tone turned acidic.

  “We worked ourselves to the bone to scrape that together. These girls earned every last cent in honest trade, and if you’re accusing me of thievery, I’ll see you banned from my saloon and thrown out of Canada.”

  “Temper, temper, Temperance. Haven’t you always been a shining example of equanimity?” He clucked his tongue, searching Madam’s face. Then he drew back, relenting. “You’ve never been a liar. As such, I’ve made up my mind to believe you.”

  “Why on Earth would you brand us thieves?”

  He flashed an angelic smile. “Don’t you read that scurrilous rag that poses as a newspaper?”

  Temperance shook her head.

  “Well, I do. With great attention to detail. I suggest you do the same. Perhaps then, you’ll understand my suspicions.”

  “Just take your money and get out of my saloon.”

  “Ah, but is the Blossom yours? As I said, I read the paper. Including advertisements announcing the dispensation of estates.”

  Temperance paled. Sophia stepped in, ready to defend against the Reverend’s stabbing words.

  “No need, kitten.” Gray raised his hands in surrender. “We’ll go.”

  Henry picked up the sack and shouldered it, scowling. “We’ll be weighing this. Twice.”

  Annie snorted. “Weigh your damn conscience, while you’re at it.”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed to slits, but when the Reverend retreated, he followed.

  As Gray’s scent receded, Sophia’s frozen muscles eased. Her fingers relaxed, her palms loosened around wooden grips. Even her shoulders slackened as he moved away.

  He paused by the door. “Until next week, kitten. I dare say, I do hope you decide differently, next time.”

  Before Sophia could respond, the door opened and daylight swallowed both men.

  Temperance stared after them, taut as a bowstring. “He knows about the hearing.” She sounded affronted. Maybe even angry, if that was possible.

  A surge of guilt engulfed Sophia. She’d had Gray at the end of her guns, dead to rights. She could have ended it so easily, and liberated them all.

  She should’ve killed him, but she’d hesitated. Again. Shame pressed down, crushing her beneath its weight.

  Somehow, the frozen, ice-hardened North seemed to be making her soft.

  31. Temperance.

  Minutes passed before Temperance realized what the poisonous churn in her stomach meant. Was she…angry?

  It seemed so. Blinking in shock, she drew toward the window and gazed out over the muddy mire of Paradise Alley.

  Gray had stripped away her calm. She’d meant to meet him with kindness—yet one look at the threat outside and something dark and fiery had taken over. Something wholly unfamiliar. Now, that jagged-edged anger seemed to follow her, and God help her, it was intense. It swelled up the back of her throat, acrid and prickling and completely beyond anything she was accustomed to.

  Watching a horse-drawn cart struggle through the knee-deep muck, Temperance realized she’d failed. God had tested her faith and equanimity, and she’d lost hold of both.

  She clenched her jaw until her molars hurt. That wasn’t even the worst part.

  He knows about the hearing. Lord help us.

  A sudden touch jolted her. Annie’s sweet, freckled face hovered at her shoulder.

  “He’s so vile he’d steal the nickels off a dead man’s eyes. Don’t let it get to you none. It don’t matter how many battles he wins, so long as it’s us who win the war.”

  Temperance reached out, pinning a lock of Annie’s flaming hair between her fingers. She moored herself to the silken feel, trying to suppress the truth she suspected—that they wouldn’t win. They couldn’t, not if Gray found a way to ensure the hearing went against them, which he doubtlessly would. Even if he didn’t, she couldn’t keep paying him every week. The money would fail, eventually. Then the Blossom would burn and they’d be out on the street, stranded in an unfriendly town with no way back to an even unfriendlier Outside.

  Her life’s purpose would be torn from her.

  Unless she could save the Reverend, as she so desperately wanted. Yet how would she do such a thing?

  With a sigh, she let Annie’s hair slide through her fingers. “Bring me a newspaper?”

  Palmer found one first. He thrust the flimsy sheets into her waiting hands, sending the sharp scent of fresh ink whooshing up.

  At the top of the page, gaudy block letters announced The Klondike Nugget. Below that, a blaring headline shouted the day’s news. Temperance read aloud.

  MASKED OUTLAW INVADES NTC HEADQUARTERS, STEALS THOUSANDS.

  Annie gaped. “Stealing from the NTC? That’s about as bold as brass balls on a bull.”

  “What’s the NTC?” Sophia said.

  “The Northwestern Trading Company.” Annie scoffed. “Only the most heartless and conniving set of souls this side of the border.”

  Temperance refrained. Of course, she’d heard the stories: that the Company had built the fur trade on the backs of underpaid, overworked men who died in droves during the harsh winters. That now they ruthlessly pushed into the gold business, buying up claims and paying men pittances to break themselves mining. That they were nothing but a scourge.

  Repeating those sentiments would serve no purpose. More importantly, nothing explained why the Reverend thought she might have stolen from the most powerful company in Canada.

  She sifted through the article for salient facts. “Someone robbed the Company’s storehouse yesterday. They took ten thousand dollars. The same amount we just paid the Reverend.”

  Sophia’s black eyes brightened. “Ten thousand? From a storehouse? How’d they even get in?”

  Annie snickered. “'Storehouse' is a mighty generous term. More like a canvas tent on Main Street, stuffed to the gills with yellow. Whoever this outlaw was, he probably strolled right in and picked that money up.”

  Sophia raised an eyebrow. “If robbing them’s really that easy, why didn’t we think of it? That would’ve been infinitely easier than the week we just had.”

  Annie threw an exasperated look. “Because. It’s the Northwestern Trading Company. They’d just as soon kill you as look at you, and they’re Canadian, so they’re in good with the Mounties. Whoever this outlaw is, he—”

  “Or she,” Sophia interjected.

  “—is liable to find himself behind bars for the rest of his natural life. Or maybe at the end of a rope.”

  Temperance pored over the print, but the article didn’t offer much. “The paper calls the outlaw a man. But with long black hair. Armed with a shotgun, riding a black horse.”

  “Wait,” Sophia said. “Doesn’t the only black horse in Caribou Crossing belong to Corporal O’Cahill?”

  “Holy buckets. You think the Mountie’s behind it?” Annie waved her shotgun. “He could’ve gotten his hands on one of these, no problem.”

  “No,” Temperance said, firm. “He wouldn’t rob anyone. He believes in justice, and the law.”

  “Christ, really? Guess that makes you two a proper Romeo and Juliet, don’t it? The whore and the lawman, star-crossed lovers doomed to—”

  “Annie.” Temperance rubbed at her temples, where an impending headache germinated. “Corporal O’Cahill didn’t rob that storehouse. I’m certain of it.”

  Annie shrugged. In the quiet, the wheels in Temperance’s head turned. Ten thousand dollars. The amount bothered her, despite being a nice round number anyone might stop at. What were the chances of someone stealing that much, the day before she’d given an identical amount to the Reverend?

  Sophia lounged against the mantel, a lone gun still gripped in one delicate porcela
in hand. “Anyone could put on a wig and mask. Absolutely anybody. But the black horse? That’s tougher to explain.”

  “Either way,” Annie said. “The Superintendent’ll be crying for blood. That’s for damn sure.”

  Temperance shook her head, trying to clear an advancing fog of foreboding. Was that the headache clamping down, or the shadow of her growing dread? “We need to be careful. If Gray accuses us of this, there’s nothing stopping the Mounties from believing him. In their eyes, he’s an upstanding man of God. And we…” She shrugged.

  Sophia’s mouth hardened. “Could he do that?”

  Temperance wanted to say no. She wanted to believe that even the Reverend wouldn’t stoop to such treachery…but he’d threatened to set the house ablaze. “I only know that someone stole ten thousand dollars from the Northwest Trading Company, and the very next day, the three highest-earning women in town tithed that exact amount to the Church. What does that look like?”

  “Holy buckets.” Annie shouldered her shotgun. “You think he’s gonna frame us?”

  Temperance couldn’t bring herself to answer. Instead, she glanced outside. The horse and cart had only moved a few feet, leaving deep rifts in the mud where the wheels had sunk in.

  Surreptitiously, she flipped to the Nugget’s back page. In tiny letters, the advertisement Alex had instructed her to print sat unobtrusively at the bottom of a column.

  All citizens are hereby advised that the Court will administer the estate of Irene Blumen, recently deceased. Dispensation will take place on Tuesday, July the 12th, at nine o’clock, with Judge Orrin Weatherby presiding. All concerned parties are advised to attend.

  A fist closed around her gut. All concerned parties. Including anyone who might believe the Blossom his stolen inheritance. The thought, along with the possibility of Gray accusing them of theft, shrank her stomach to a pinpoint.

  Send me a sign, Lord. Tell me which way to go.

  Briefly, she thought of Connor, of appealing to his just nature for help. Yet she couldn’t run to him—the Blossom was her problem. Her duty. For the first time, she comprehended the full weight of Madam Irene’s trust. The crushing press nearly made her sag. Still, she straightened her spine, letting the newspaper fall from her fingers.

  Outside, the cart driver climbed down and waded through the mire, pushing the stuck wagon from behind. Mud poured in over the tops of his gumboots.

  She zeroed in, wondering if she was staring at her answer.

  Was that what you did when life bogged you down—got out and pushed? Refused to surrender, no matter the odds?

  She pulled away from the window, determined to master her fear. She reached past it, into the well at her center, where a new resolve crystallized: she’d get out and push. She’d be the Madam the girls deserved, just as Irene had wished.

  That decided, she almost felt like herself again. “Maybe the Reverend does plan to accuse us. It’s very possible. So we fight back for all we’re worth. Does anyone have an idea?”

  Annie just looked stricken.

  Only Sophia broke the silence, her dark eyes glinting. “Actually, I do.”

  32. Kendall Blumen’s Diary.

  Shame follows me everywhere. In truth, it always has—it has forever crouched on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.

  “You’re nothing but a mistake.”

  And, “You don’t even know who your father is.”

  Now, after what happened with Pliskin, shame shouts, telling me I’m no better than a whore. In my stronger moments, I refuse to believe that. In my weaker ones, I suspect it may be true.

  Thankfully, Pliskin hasn’t tried again. Still, his eyes follow me, and he waggles his scarred eyebrow sometimes, as if relishing the pain and humiliation he inflicted. Then, the abyss inside me is difficult to describe. Hate isn’t the right word; it’s more like an empty black void where my heart used to be.

  And Mother knows. I’m certain. How could she miss the ugliness leaking from my skin? She watches me, piecing together the reason why I always leave the room when Pliskin enters. Or why, when the girls go out, I do, too. Or why I’ve started sleeping in the parlor, with the fireplace poker within easy reach.

  My misery means nothing to her. I don’t know what I expected from a woman who decided to raise her only child in a whorehouse, but I’m embarrassed to say it was…more.

  I asked if we could leave. She just touched my cheek, pretended not to notice when I cringed. “We have nowhere else to go.”

  As if ‘nowhere’ isn’t a better place than here.

  I’m beginning to hate her.

  So I did something I’d never have done a month ago. It was almost an accident—Kitty broke a vase and I offered to clean it up. I shoved the pieces into a box and was hurrying past the staircase when Mother’s last customer came down and barreled straight into me.

  The box flew from my hands, making an awful crash as it hit the carpet, as if the vase had broken all over again. I don’t know what possessed me then, or where the idea came from. The words simply arrived in my head, fully formed, like a gift from somewhere else.

  “The master’s heirloom vase.” I let tears well up, which was simple enough, as they’re always chasing me these days. “It’s broken.”

  The john looked horrified. He was a stupid one, with thick lips and the kind of dishwater eyes that meant he wasn’t overburdened with a surplus of intelligence. He told me not to cry—that clearly distressed him—and he offered to pay for a new vase.

  Then he slipped me five dollars.

  Five dollars. The same amount he’d just given my mother.

  I can’t describe how I felt afterward. The dark void receded, driven back by the thrill of my deception, by the small taste of power that came with it.

  Now, all I can think of is trying again.

  I haven’t forgotten Pliskin, of course. But, at the very least, I intend to distract myself until the day I can repay him in the currency he deserves.

  33. Temperance.

  Despite her misgivings, Temperance agreed to Sophia’s plan, if only because she couldn’t think of a better one.

  She rode Bea out into a crisp summer morning while Sophia trotted alongside on the blue-eyed paint horse. Once or twice, Temperance almost turned around, but echoes of her anger drifted up, propelling her ahead.

  Overhead, myriad shades of indigo cascaded down, warming Caribou Crossing’s dingy maze of false-fronted stores and hastily staked canvas tents. The muddy streets glistened, dotted with disks of shining color where water had gathered in left-behind boot-holes.

  “What’s his name?” Temperance asked, to break the silence.

  Sophia jerked her head up, as if escaping some deep thought. Her profile sketched a graceful line against the morning, her loose hair like streaming ink. “Who?”

  “Your horse.”

  “Oh. Him.” Sophia patted her mount’s neck absent-mindedly. She rode without thinking, it seemed, with a careless skill that spoke of years in the saddle.

  Surprising. Temperance had never seen her on a horse before.

  Blocks passed without an answer, filled with squelching mud and shifting sky and wispy mist floating in from the river. The ominous stillness did nothing to soothe Temperance’s unrest.

  Finally, Sophia spoke. “I think I’ll call him Larkspur.”

  “Like the flower?”

  “Yeah. My way of honoring Irene, I guess.”

  Irene. The name struck Temperance like an arrow thudding home.

  Just last night, she’d read the journal again, poring over the painstakingly elegant swoops that transcribed a young girl’s confusion and pain. Once again, she’d forgiven Irene, and wondered at the courage required to grow from that wounded girl into the woman she’d become.

  Grieving her hadn’t gotten any easier, though.

  They passed into the shade of the church, and the world contracted to a cold square of shadow. Temperance wavered, her uncertainty growing amid the silence. “Are you sure
about this?”

  “Definitely.” Sophia cocked her head. “Are you not?”

  Temperance considered. Doubt licked at her like a slow-burning flame, but beneath that, indignant outrage still smoldered, too. She marveled at that unfamiliar darkness, even as she acknowledged its power. “No. I’m not. But I’d do anything to save the Blossom. Anything to keep our home.”

  Sophia bestowed a rare smile. “This is the only way, then. So let’s stay back here. Whoever comes out the front of the church won’t even see us.”

  ***

  Just as Sophia had guessed, the Reverend Gray’s money-mover left the split-log church a few hours before the Sunday services began.

  Henry headed out of town on foot. With his cloth cap pulled low, he toted a lumpy buckskin sack and trekked toward the wilderness, out into the rough terrain that funneled the barreling Klondike toward its confluence with the Yukon.

  Temperance kept Bea at a distance. Beside their path, meltwater roared, overflowing the riverbanks. Bea skittered away from the whitecaps, sticking to the track’s farthest edge, where bursting flowers punctuated tender showers of grass.

  They trailed Henry past a split in the river and up onto Mayhem Creek. Here and there, bundled between the hillsides, miners toiled beside towers of earth and rushing sluice boxes.

  Yet this made poor mining country. Though Temperance rarely ventured up onto the stakes, she knew from her nights with Klondike Kings that the best claims clustered along Cornucopia Creek—the opposite direction.

  Frowning, she glanced back. “Where’s he going?”

  “I don’t know. Gray told me Henry moves the money to a ‘secure location.’ That’s all I know.” Sophia’s paint horse rolled beneath her. “Let me go in front, though, will you?”

  “Why?”

  In answer, Sophia melted past, moving as if her horse’s every step were spread from warm butter. “Because Henry’s dangerous. Without Gray here, he’s unpredictable, too. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  A tender flutter of surprise awakened. “I thought you didn’t like me.”