he murmured his thanks, she went out the door without another word.
The eggs and bacon were cold, but it was food, and soon the ache in his belly had subsided. The ache in his head had faded to a dull whisper, too.
Now all he could do was wait for Sheriff Bishop and his deputy to return. He doubted they’d have Salali with them when they did. And if he was being realistic, by the time he was freed, it was unlikely he’d able to catch up with Salali, either. The wily charlatan would be gone by the time he was able to make his way to the canyon hideout.
He wasn’t sleepy, even now that his belly was full, so it seemed he would have an indefinite amount of time to contemplate what he would do after he was freed—assuming they didn’t try to hold him responsible for what his erstwhile employer had done.
He wanted to stick to his original plan and to shake the dust of Simpson Creek off his boots as soon as possible. Somehow he’d get a horse, even if he had to stay here long enough to earn the price of it. He’d head for the railroad terminus at Council Bluffs, taking jobs along the way to earn the price of a ticket to San Francisco. He’d never work in a medicine show—he didn’t want to be someone’s shill ever again.
Fortunately he had more cards in his deck. His father had passed along a number of skills to his son before he’d died. Nate hadn’t valued them then—he’d been too full of big plans and as little common sense as most wet-behind-the-ears young’uns possessed.
Something about Miss Ella’s stricken face as she spoke about the wreck of her café nagged at him. He couldn’t leave until he assured himself she would be all right. Surely she had parents who would take her in, or relatives, or friends. Maybe even someone who could afford to help her rebuild. Perhaps she had a beau who’d been pressing her to marry him, yet some stubborn independent streak had driven her to prove she could take care of herself. Perhaps this incident would force her to be practical and marry the man. A young woman should be cooking in her own kitchen, with babies crawling at her feet, and a hungry husband on the way home for supper. Serving sandwiches to rowdy cowboys and saddle tramps was for some plain old maid or a widow, not for a pretty thing like Ella Justiss.
That was it. If Bishop let him go, he’d linger just long enough to ensure himself that Miss Ella had some reasonable options. Then he was San Francisco bound.
Chapter Four
Ella parted the batwing doors of the saloon and walked inside. She’d expected that Detwiler would have made some start at cleaning up the mess, but the ruined tables and chairs, the broken glass, were still strewn everywhere. George Detwiler, Dolly and Trudy were sitting on the floor along the wall, sniffling and swollen-eyed, staring dully ahead of them.
“What’re y’all doing?” Ella demanded. “Don’t you think you should at least sweep up the broken glass?”
Detwiler studied her with doleful eyes. “Won’t make no diff’rence, Miss Ella. How’m I gonna fix all this? Those medicine-show swindlers took what was in the till an’ every whiskey bottle they didn’t drink. I don’t have anything t’sell, even if customers were willing to stand while they drink.”
Ella looked around. “You still have the piano,” she said, spotting it against the far wall. Amazingly, it had escaped the destruction. Had Robert Salali possessed some innate respect for a musical instrument that had caused him to leave the piano alone during his destructive spree?
“Ain’t no one gonna pay to come hear me play,” he said.
It was true—Detwiler could only pick out a few tunes poorly.
“Well, you can’t leave the place like this,” she said, making a sweeping gesture at the piles of splintered wood and glass. “Unless you’re planning on tearing it down and selling your lot.”
At her words, the two saloon girls set up a keening wail. If there was no saloon, they had no livelihood, any more than Detwiler did.
“Come on,” she said. “Get the brooms out and let’s start cleaning up. We could at least separate the trash and firewood from what could be repaired. Some of those tables and chairs just need new legs, looks like.”
“An’ who’s gonna repair them?” he asked, though without heat. “I’m no carpenter.”
“Hank Dayton’s got a lathe at the mill,” Dolly mumbled. “I seen it once.”
“What does that matter?” Detwiler muttered. “Hank Dayton’s a skinflint who doesn’t give anything away. I don’t know how to operate a lathe.”
“So we need someone who does,” Ella said, going behind the bar and fetching the two brooms that were propped in the corner. She handed Detwiler one of them. “Let’s get started clearing this mess, and maybe one of us will think of something.”
“You girls kin go home,” Detwiler said to Dolly and Trudy. “I’ll let you know what I’m going to do—soon’s I figure it out.”
Ella didn’t try to stop them. There were only two brooms, and the women hadn’t seemed inclined to do more than sit and blubber. She started sweeping, intending to leave the café till last, for she was too afraid Detwiler would give way to despair again if she left him on his own.
Lord, if you’re up there, we could use some help. She’d never quite believed that the Deity was interested in aiding Ella Justiss, or He would have done so years ago at the asylum, but she figured she’d offer Him the opportunity, at least.
She left Detwiler to clean his saloon while she went to do the same with her café. She had soon swept the debris into the center of her area and came back to help Detwiler with his larger one. For a time both of them plied their brooms in silence, but as the afternoon went on, the interruptions began—the saloon’s faithful customers stopping in to see if the rumor was true that there was no whiskey or poker games to be had in Simpson Creek because of the vandalism in the saloon. Ella ignored them and kept sweeping, but Detwiler stopped to tell each of his customers what had happened. Ella rather thought he was enjoying the sympathy gained with each encounter, but as these patrons began to build up inside the saloon, chattering with each other over where they would have to go to get their whiskey and card games, and doing nothing to help, even Detwiler began to get testy. Ella was past exasperated at having to ask gents to move while she swept the areas they had been standing in.
Finally, to Ella’s relief, Detwiler roared an order for all of them to leave, saying he’d put up a sign when the saloon was open again. Then he took a piece of a broken table, and a brush and bootblacking he’d dug up from who knew where and handed them to Ella.
“Your book learnin’s probably better than mine, Miss Ella,” he said. “Write on the bottom a’ this tabletop Closed Till Further Notice, an’ I’ll prop it up outside.”
If George only knew how haphazard her “book learning” had been, Ella thought as she bent to her task. The asylum orphans’ schooling had been hit-or-miss, since they couldn’t attend if they were needed to work in the laundry or the kitchens or the superintendent’s wife’s garden. But when Ella was able to go to class, she’d paid attention with a desperate intensity, for she’d known even then it was her ticket to a better life.
Detwiler had returned after placing the sign outside and Ella was sweeping piles of broken glass into a dustpan when the sound of footsteps had them both looking up. Ella recognized Faith Chadwick, the preacher’s wife, and wondered what she was doing here.
