Clara Mae Whitfield threw her last three dollars onto the frozen ground at Thomas Harding's boots and looked him dead in the eye. "Keep it," she said. "Buy yourself a conscience." He didn't flinch.
His new wife stood in the doorway behind him, arms folded, lips curled into something that wasn't quite a smile. The door of the only boarding house in Coldwater Creek, Wyoming, closed with a quiet, final click. Clara stood alone in the worst blizzard the territory had seen in ten years. She was 28 years old, she had nowhere to go, and the snow was already past her ankles.
The wind off the Wyoming mountains didn't ask permission. It hit Clara straight across the face the moment she turned away from Thomas Harding's door, and she gasped. Not from the cold, though the cold was savage, but from the sheer sudden weight of understanding that she had made a catastrophic mistake. Two days on a rattling stagecoach from Kansas City, 41 dollars saved over three years of taking in laundry, and one advertisement clipped from the back of the Missouri Dispatch, folded and refolded until the paper had gone soft at the creases.
"Widower, two sons, seeks capable woman of good character. Coldwater Creek, Wyoming. Serious inquiries only." She had written Thomas Harding four letters before he wrote back.
She had memorized his final reply. "Come before December. The boys need a woman's touch before winter sets in hard." She had come before December, on the exact date he specified.
Thomas Harding had opened his door with a new wife at his side, a soft-faced woman from Cheyenne he'd married three weeks prior, and looked at Clara the way a man looks at a bill he'd forgotten he owed. "I sent a letter," he said. "I never received it." "Well," he said, glancing back at his wife, "things changed."
"I can see that." Thomas shifted. "I'm sorry for your trouble, miss. I truly am." Clara had stood on that porch for a full ten seconds, her travel bag in both hands, the cold working through her coat, staring at the man who had summoned her across half the country and then forgotten to cancel the order.
She thought about crying. She thought about screaming. She thought about the 41 dollars. Then she set her bag down, reached into her coat pocket, pulled out the three dollars she had left after paying for the coach fare, and threw them at his feet.
"Keep it," she said. "Buy yourself a conscience." The door closed. Clara picked up her bag and walked back into the storm.
Coldwater Creek was not a large town. It had one main road, a general store, a livery stable, a church that doubled as a schoolhouse, a saloon that didn't bother to double as anything, and a train station at the far end of the road that handled passengers three times a week when the weather permitted. The weather had not been permitting for the past four days. Clara walked with her head down and her bag pressed against her chest.
She counted the buildings as she passed them. She was looking for a sign that said hotel, rooms, or even boarding. She found the general store first, a wide, square building with yellow lamplight pushing through the frost on the windows. She pushed the door open.
The warmth hit her like a wall. She stood in the doorway for one grateful second, letting it move over her face. Then a voice from behind the counter said, "Close that door, would you, miss? You're letting all the heat out." She closed the door.
The man behind the counter was somewhere in his mid-50s, with a thick gray mustache and the particular expression of a man who had decided his opinion of you before you'd finished walking through the door. A tin sign above his head read, "Harold Briggs — General Merchandise." "Help you?" he said. He did not sound like he wanted to help her.
"I'm looking for a room," Clara said. "A boarding house. Somewhere I can stay for two or three nights while I wait for the next coach south." Harold Briggs looked her over slowly.