by Zina Abbott
“Not this morning, Jamie. Next time I have enough money to go to the mercantile, I’ll get some flour and maybe some eggs so I can make you flapjacks. Would you like that?”
“With maple syrup, like we used have them?”
“No, but maybe with a little sugar. Now, I already have a fire going on the stove outside. I’ll use that to get this cooked up. Stay inside with your sister.” Nissa rushed out with the much-smaller pan of oats and water to put on the stove in the laundry shed. While she waited for the oats to cook, she began searching through the previous day’s linens from the hotel to look for spots to pre-scrub with her bar of soap.
“Well, isn’t this a sight.”
Nissa cringed inside as she recognized the voice and spun around to face her late husband’s employer and her nemesis, Mortimer Crane. “What are you doing here? You have not been invited to come onto my property. I want you to go now.”
Mortimer smiled sardonically as he spread his hands, palms up, and stepped closer. “Now, Mrs. Stillwell. Tsk. Tsk. Is this any way to behave around an old friend?”
“We have never been friends, Mr. Crane. You are not welcome here. You need to leave.”
Mortimer dropped his smile and glared at her. “This is not your property, Mrs. Stillwell. You have no right to order me to leave.”
“This is not one of the properties in town you own. I rent this building and the yard from Mrs. Ames. As long as my payments to her are current, I have the right to decide who comes on this property.”
“Mrs. Stillwell, we have business to discuss.” Mortimer looked around, taking in the flimsily built laundry shed, the bare boards of the porch and roof overhang that allowed laundry to be washed and hung to dry in wet or icy weather. He also glanced at the rope lines strung across a mostly dirt yard. “Surely, you can do better than this, Mrs. Stillwell. I have made you a reasonable offer so that you may pay off the debt owed me, plus also put a little money in your account—more than you make washing the filthy laundry of others, I’m sure. I think you should reconsider my offer.”
“First, Mr. Crane, I owe you nothing. Whatever you claim you have coming was owed by James. You can take it from his estate, which you already have.”
Mortimer barked a depreciating laugh. “What estate, Mrs. Stillwell? The house you lived in and the property on which it was built was already mine. Yet, there is still the matter of the loan with my bank that needs to be paid off.”
“You have the furnishings from the house. Sell those.”
Mortimer balled his hands into fists and took another step towards her, at the same time he glared at her through hooded eyes. “They were used, Mrs. Stillwell—almost worthless. It is up to you to make up the difference.”
The man now stood close enough Nissa could smell his cologne and the hint of a more feminine scent. She guessed he had just come from spending the night with his favorite whore at the Gentlemen Only Salon, which would explain why he was about so early in the morning. Using her peripheral vision, she searched for something to use as a weapon since now she kept her two-shot derringer stored in a box high on top of the dresser in the cook’s room. Her eyes lit on the wooden paddle she used to stir and pound clothes in the wash water. As she edged towards the paddle, she kept her gaze focused on Mortimer.
“It is not up to me to make up the difference. Utah is not a community property state. Any property we had after my husband and I moved here was my husband’s and his alone. You can only take what was his. I am not responsible for his debts. If you’re not happy he didn’t pay you off, go talk to him. You know where he’s buried.”
“There was money in his bank account.”
“A very small amount remained on his account. I used it to pay his debts—just not what debts you claim are owed. What I have now is what I came to Utah with or what I have earned on my own since my late husband’s death.” Nissa jutted out her chin and tossed her head defiantly. “Unless you wish to take from my children’s back the few clothes I brought with me for them. Is that what you wish, Mr. Crane? To strip my small children bare—the children of your former trusted supervisor? If you do, you may be sure I will tell everyone in town you took clothes off the backs of your dead employee’s children and left them with nothing.”
Mortimer dropped all pretense of joviality and leaned forward with a menacing stance. “It is you I want to strip bare of that peasant sack you are wearing, Mrs. Stillwell. I want you dressed in a fetching green evening gown to entertain gentlemen who will appreciate your assets at my salon.” Mortimer narrowed his eyes and smiled with a salacious expression. “You know the one I mean, Mrs. Stillwell. You flaunted yourself before me the night your late husband brought me home for supper in hopes of him securing a raise from me.”
Nissa felt her flesh crawl. She knew the gown of which he spoke. The one time she wore it, the ice green silk skirt draped lavishly across her front before it gathered into a bustle made of three layers of flounces. The tight, low-cut bodice and off-the-shoulder sleeves displayed far too much skin for her to feel comfortable wearing it. James, having understood his employer’s tastes, had insisted she buy and wear it for the very purpose the reprobate before her stated.
“You left it in the house when you moved out, Mrs. Stillwell. I saved it, knowing I and my guests would want to see you in it again. Now, let’s not be foolish by claiming any false sense of propriety. Your husband owed me money, he’s dead and it is up to you to make up my loss. I want you in my Gentlemen Only Salon entertaining customers to pay for your late husband’s…indiscriminate spending, shall we say? It is only fitting, don’t you think, since part of what he owes me is for services he availed himself of at the very establishment where I expect you to work off his debts?”
Nissa snorted. “When pigs fly.”
“This is the week pigs will fly, Mrs. Stillwell. Besides my regular customers being discriminating enough that they wish for a little variety instead of the same sweet flesh they see there every week, there is this horse auction. As much as I plan to take steps to stop it, that does not change the fact that men flush with money will come to town with the intent of participating in the auction. When they find out there will be no auction, they will wish to console themselves at my fine establishments. There is no reason for them to take that money back home with them. I want you at the Gentlemen Only Salon so none of my customers are inconvenienced.”
Nissa grabbed up the wooden paddle and held it like a club. Taking care to keep her voice down in order to not frighten her children or disturb the hotel guests, she hissed her response through clenched teeth. “And I already told you, you degenerate lecher, I will not whore for you. If you had my late husband in your fancy bordello in the name of conducting business, as you claimed last time, it was up to you and the business owner to pick up the tab. I owe you nothing.”
Mortimer lunged towards Nissa, and she swung the paddle at his head. Before it could connect, he jerked it out of her hands. Left with nothing to use as a weapon, Nissa took several quick steps backwards.
“Why, you insolent slut. I’ll take what’s owed me out of your hide one way or the other.”
The smell of burned oatmeal reminded Nissa she had her children’s breakfast cooking on the outside stove. She ran inside the laundry shed, snatched up a folded cloth she used to lift the copper of hot water off the stove and grabbed her pan of mush. The handle of the saucepan held in both hands, she twirled around to face Mortimer who had followed her and now stood barely inside the doorway. At the sight of the bubbling oatmeal, he jerked to a halt.
The soft voice of Diantha Ames floated through the air. “Nissa, honey, are you all right?”
“No. Go get Marshal Wentz for me, Diantha. Tell her this man invaded my home without permission intending to assault me. Tell her I want to press charges.”
In spite of his depreciating sneer, Mortimer tossed the paddle to the side and backed up until he stepped off the porch. He showered his oily, wheedling charm on Diantha. “
That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Ames. Mrs. Stillwell is mistaken as to my intent. Besides, I own this town. That sad excuse of a trouser-wearing woman you ladies chose to be your marshal won’t dare do anything to me.” Mortimer took two steps towards Chestnut Street that fronted the side of the laundry building and drying yard. He turned back to glare at Nissa. “I meant what I said. I expect you at my establishment no later than two nights from now.” He glanced between Nissa and Diantha. “Good day, ladies.”
Still holding the pan, Nissa leaned against the doorjamb to keep from collapsing. She closed her eyes and fought back tears. Holding one shaking hand out in front of her, her quivering fingers splayed, she wondered how long it would take for her nerves to settle down. When she felt Diantha’s arms circle her shoulders, she allowed herself to sink into the warmth and comfort of her friend’s embrace before she once again straightened up and tossed her head as if to shake away the memory of her encounter with Mortimer Crane.
Nissa reached to the table where she had placed the wooden spoon for stirring the mush. She tentatively poked at the sticky oatmeal only to have it confirmed that part of her morning meal had burned to the bottom of the pan. She hoped there was enough of the good mush left to feed the children. Today she would go without breakfast. Nissa turned to walk the pan inside where her children waited. She felt a hand on her wrist to stay her.
“Nissa, I was just getting ready to cook a few scrambled eggs and some corn bread with honey for breakfast. Would you and the children please join me?”
Nissa sighed in defeat. “Oh, Diantha, I don’t want you to step in to feed me and my children every time I turn around. It makes me feel like I’m taking advantage.”
“You’re not. If I thought you were, I wouldn’t invite you. Besides, after being badgered by that wretch, you need a little treat. Afterwards, while your laundry soaks, I’ll watch the children while you go talk to our dear marshal, Cordelia Wentz.”
“I don’t know. Do you really think it will do any good to go to the marshal to press charges?”
“I don’t think there’s any harm in it. That man is a trial to us all, and we need to find a way to stop him. Let’s give Marshal Wentz a chance to do her job.”
“Thank you. Let me finish getting these whites soaking, and I’ll bring the children over.”
“Take your time. I don’t need to check the guest rooms until later. I’ll just open the door between your room and the kitchen and let your children stay with me while I cook.”
Nissa studied the now-drying oatmeal as she set the pan on the worktable. She sprinkled a little water over the top to keep it moist, then turned to her copper of hot water and pulled it off the stove. She dumped it into the wash tub along with some shaved soap. Before she joined Diantha and the children, she’d scoop what she could salvage of the mush into a bowl for her to eat at noon and put the saucepan on the warm back corner of the stove to soak so it would be easier to scrape off the burnt mess. She’d find something from her limited food supply for the children to eat at noontime.
Nissa had no doubt Mortimer Crane’s claims her late husband had visited the Gentlemen Only Salon and partaken of all the services it offered were true. She only knew she would never give in to the miscreant’s demand to allow other men to use her body to pay off any supposed debt her husband had incurred.
Chapter Four
N
Nissa brushed a stray lock that had escaped the handkerchief she had tied around her hair to keep it from falling forward while she scrubbed laundry. Her anger and heartrate had finally settled after her scene with Mortimer Crane, and she felt a sense of accomplishment. Not only had she fended off the immoral and illegal demands of the reprobate, she was nearly finished with the last of the Ridge Hotel sheets that needed washing.
A breeze caught the edge of the sheet and flipped the corner into Nissa’s face. She wasn’t sure which was damper—the sheet that had been put through the wringer twice or her brow with its sheen of perspiration. Although Wildcat Ridge, high in the mountains, never grew truly hot like she had experienced when she lived with her parents in the mining towns of the eastern California and the western Nevada desert, in relation to its usual temperatures to which her body had adapted, she felt overheated.
Nissa wondered if Scotland, the home country of her MacGregor parents, was anything like where she lived now in Utah. Both highland Scots, their ancestors had survived the Highland Clearances, but the family had remained poor. Once her father heard of the gold strikes in the western part of North America, he had scraped together enough to pay for passage across the Atlantic. In New York, he found work and spent the next several years earning enough to book passage on a boat that brought them to the isthmus of Panama.
Nissa recalled hearing tales of their crossing the Atlantic where her oldest brother had died and been buried at sea. While her mother had still been alive, they had not talked much about the difficulties of crossing the tropical country from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific. Once they arrived in California, the easy gold had already been found, and those wishing to be miners were forced to work for wages. Her father had done so, moving from one town to the next as the gold played out. First her second brother was born, and then Nissa. Her mother seemed weak and sick often during her early childhood. She learned later much of it was due to not only poor nutrition and illness, but more than one miscarriage. Her mother died trying to give birth to one last stillborn daughter.
Nissa’s brother, Robert, had stayed only a few years after their mother’s death. He left to make his own way in the world without saying where he intended to go. He never wrote. Home alone with only her father, Nissa continued to get as much schooling as she was able. Otherwise, she took care of the home for her father who every night, six days a week, returned home and collapsed with exhaustion into his favorite chair.
Nissa did not realize how severely illness gripped her father at the time he began to encourage James Stillwell to court her. She only knew she did not love James and preferred to stay with her father rather than marry. However, Robert MacGregor all but forced the wedding when Nissa had barely turned sixteen. Feeling betrayed by her father, she started her marriage with an attitude of resentment.
Nissa only began to understand why her father wanted to see her settled in a marriage so young when the following winter he died of pneumonia. The doctor told her his lungs had already grown weak from spending so much time underground breathing in the dust. In addition, coming from the relatively warm air of the inside of the mines to the cold air outside resulted in many miners contracting pneumonia.
It was then Nissa knew her father had been doing his best to look out for her. She never did develop a deep love for James, but she grew to appreciate him more, at least for a time.
Nissa sniffed with disgust as she picked up the laundry basket. Her appreciation for James lasted until he moved her to Wildcat Ridge. Between his mining experience and the efforts he took to flatter Mortimer Crane, he quickly convinced the mine owner to appoint him the mine supervisor after a mishap permanently disabled the previous supervisor.
Yes, his appointment meant they moved to the mining supervisor’s house, the nicest house in which Nissa had ever lived. But no, the move did not improve her life. James’s ego swelled to the point he thought himself much better than everyone around him, including her. It no longer mattered to him that he had pursued her for a wife or that she had borne him four children, two still living. He treated her like a servant, only there to do his bidding. When it came to clothes, cigars, liquor, or personal items, he never held back on purchasing whatever he wanted for himself. When it came to providing clothing for Nissa and the children, he kept a tight rein on the credit allowed her at the mercantile and questioned every purchase. He made sure the rooms that might be seen by Mortimer Crane or other prominent men were furnished suitably, if not extravagantly. When it came to the rooms used by Nissa and the children, that was an entirely different matter.
She soon
found herself without friends, for James forbade her to associate with anyone in Wildcat Ridge he considered beneath them socially, which, in his mind, included just about everyone. He allowed Jamie to go to school but expected Nissa to stay home, even from church, unless it was necessary for her to purchase necessities. The few times she defied him, she had paid for her independence by being beaten. Once Jamie grew old enough for James to begin issuing veiled threats to punish him for her disobedience, she quietly stayed at home.
Nissa did not blame the women of Wildcat Ridge for avoiding and ignoring her. She knew the way her husband had pandered to Mortimer Crane, combined with her seeming unwillingness to socialize, left the impression she thought she was too good for everyone else in town—just as her husband had planned in order to control her.
As for Mortimer Crane, during the few times the man had come to her house, she had caught him on more than one occasion studying her in a way that made her involuntarily shiver. The dirt had not had a chance to settle around her late husband before he had begun to intrude on her life. Not a week had passed since the mass burial when he came to her suggesting she could earn money to support her family by working in his Gentlemen Only Salon. When she refused, he informed her she had a week to vacate the supervisor’s house or be thrown out without being allowed to pack her belongings.
When Nissa made the rounds of the bank and stores where James had set up credit accounts, she discovered how destitute her husband had left his family. She next went to Diantha Ames to beg for a job doing the hotel laundry piling up since the former laundress, a miner’s widow, had left town to return to her parents’ home.
She knew she would never be free of Mortimer unless she could live someplace where he did not own the land or the building on it. Once settled in the laundry shed, and moved her children into the old cook’s quarters after Diantha closed the hotel restaurant so the heat from the kitchen stove could help keep them warm at night, she thought she had solved the problem of Mortimer Crane bullying her. She soon learned he refused to give up, this morning being proof of it.
