“No sin in that sort of work. But you know the type of work I mean. Think, Jo—what other task is a woman fit for, unless it’s work inside the home? She can’t toil in the sawmill or load ships at the docks. She can’t keep a shop—not all day long; her constitution is too delicate.”
“I think you sell short the constitutions of a good many women,” Jo muttered.
“Outside of the nurturing fields—teaching, nursing—you’ll find women engaged in only one other professional activity.”
“Selling her flesh?” Jo said frankly.
Sophronia blushed. “That’s the sort of world these suffragists are seeking to create, Jo! A place where women may run free and engage in any sin their hearts desire. One need only look around the streets of Seattle to see where that particular freedom leads.”
Jo gave that unreadable smile again, and then pushed back her chair. “I see I can’t convince you,” she said lightly. “You’ve always been a woman of strong convictions, Sophronia.” She clasped Sophronia’s hand in farewell. “It was good to see you again. God willing, we’ll meet again soon.”
Josephine left the café and drifted off, lost in a moment among the city’s noise and bustle. A curious, hollow sensation settled in Sophronia’s middle as she gazed at the empty chair where Jo had so recently sat. Was it only her long years as a spinster that made Sophronia feel so empty and disheartened? Or was it the confident enthusiasm sparkling in Josephine’s manner—the gumption that seemed to fire her up, lighting her from within to make her glow in a way Sophronia had never known her to glow before?
Sophronia, musing and discouraged, reached for the last cookie on Jo’s abandoned plate. She noticed something small and pale peeking out from beneath the dish—a folded scrap of paper. Jo must have placed it there, sometime during their conversation. Sophronia hadn’t seen her do it.
She picked it up the paper and examined it curiously.
It was a clipping torn carefully from a newspaper. Sophronia popped the cookie into her mouth and chewed slowly as she read.
The clipping recounted a sad tale—a child abducted by a desperate mother, then pulled from the very jaws of Gomorrah when his father found the woman working in a bawdy house with the child in tow. Sophronia was inclined to judge the woman a poor specimen of motherhood, but the lines that followed the story gave her pause.
When the weaker sex assert their power to make the laws that vitally concern their personal weal, these houses of ill fame, that flourish under the pay and patronage of men, will languish and die for want of support.
Sophronia left the cookie’s crumbs clinging to her lip. Can it be true? Can this be the stance of the suffragists? Guided by the longer experience and—she assumed—the wisdom of the elder members of the Women’s League, Sophronia had listened attentively to their opinions on the suffragists. But she had never, until now, taken it upon herself to read the letters of the women who rallied for legal clout.
My friends in the League wouldn’t steer me wrong, Sophronia told herself. They know the suffragists to be supporters of hedonism. Indeed, a swift erosion of morals was the only logical outcome of women voting, women working, women doing away with the walls of propriety that protected the world from sin.
But the words in the clipping tugged at Sophronia’s conscience. These houses of ill fame, that flourish under the pay and patronage of men …
Perhaps, after all, the suffragists’ ideals were not so far from alignment with Sophronia’s own.
Don’t listen to the banter of suffragists, she told herself firmly. They are nearly as sinful as prostitutes—chipping away at the institutions of motherhood and wifery.
But Sophronia was neither mother nor wife, and she could not fault her own morals. Perhaps society allowed for broader definitions of femininity than the Women’s League deemed proper.
Act in wisdom, she counseled herself, and at all times display womanly modesty. That was ever a sound policy. It might—perhaps—be safe to inquire further into the writings of these suffragist champions whom Josephine so adored. But Sophronia most certainly would not watch them climb upon a soapbox and hear their immodest speeches.
Satisfied with her own resolve, she paid her share of the luncheon bill and left the café. But as she stepped out into the street, she tucked the newspaper clipping into her glove. It nestled against her palm, safely hidden from the eyes of all the women she would canvass. But Sophronia could feel its papery whisper against her skin, and all afternoon, as she sipped her tea and joined in the gossip of the League’s supporters, she heard the words of the suffragists speaking in her soul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A NEW MAN IN TOWN
Dovey slid from the saddle, her sharp-toed boots hitting the ground with a smart thump that raised a puff of dust from the corral. She patted Blue’s flank as the old gelding slurped noisily at the water trough, then reached between his empty saddlebag and his sweaty flank to untie the secret knot that held her collection purse out of sight. The heavy oilcloth purse fell with a clank of coins into her hand. She tossed it, considering its weight with no small amount of pride. A very good haul: Virgil would be pleased.
The thought brought a quick, hot flush to her cheeks. After seven years, she was still as stupid as ever over Virgil’s smile and his low, velvety voice—his way of walking; his slow-blinking, half-crooked smile. She was stupider still over the things he did to her between the bedsheets. Dovey still remained unmarried, officially unattached to any man. But Virgil was just as officially unattached—and therefore free for Dovey’s love—and that was some comfort. If the man simply had no desire to tie himself down to a wife, Dovey couldn’t blame him for that. Marriages were nothing but trouble, especially from a woman’s perspective—and yet if Virgil had ever asked her to be his wife, she’d have said yes in the beat of a bug’s wings.
But the situation being what it was, Dovey never bothered to lose any sleep over her unwedded state. Unlike the other high-minded women of Seattle, she didn’t define herself by marriage.
Of course, she mused as she pulled cockleburs from Blue’s tail, none of the other women of Seattle would call Dovey high-minded—but she knew the truth. It was high-minded to have ambitions of one’s own, regardless of one’s sex. It was high-minded to work for one’s bread. Dovey saw no reason why women couldn’t or shouldn’t toil and earn, just like any able-bodied man. Work brought her satisfaction—a sense of deep fulfillment she knew she’d never find anywhere else, especially not bent over a stove or with a baby dragging on her bosom.
At the end of a long day of collecting, Dovey would bathe, washing the saddle ache from her body, and settle into her cozy bed in the spare room of the Harris house. Where she had once stayed as a guest, she now dwelt as a tenant, proudly paying her hard-earned rent to Mrs. Harris every week. The Harrises were happy for the extra income; they needed it now, with three children in the house. Dovey was content to keep to her rented room and leave the children to their mother. She saw plenty of what Mrs. Harris went through, wrangling three little ones, and Dovey couldn’t imagine herself into that role, no matter how many times she tried. The working life was perfection, as far as Dovey was concerned. She simply couldn’t have been any happier with the tax-collecting circuit.
And she certainly couldn’t have been any happier with her savings. It had taken seven years, but Dovey had amassed a comfortable stash of bank notes and coins, all hidden in boxes and cushions in her rented room. She bounced the day’s collection on her palm again, mentally figuring her cut.
I’ve almost met my goal, she realized with a thrill. Soon she would have enough squirreled away to lease one of the big houses down by Skid Road and decorate it in the style of a really appealing, high-class brothel. The girls on the docks would be eager to come and work for her, once she opened for business. She had the trust of the seamstresses and intended to offer excellent terms to her girls. Her dream was so close she could almost reach out and touch the red velvet, could alm
ost smell the clouds of cigarette smoke and fancy perfume.
Dovey pulled Blue’s saddle off his back and slung it over the fence’s topmost rail. As she wiped down his sweaty back, the gelding turned his head to nip gently at her behind.
“You awful flirt,” she said, swatting his big, soft muzzle. “Not you, too.”
Dovey was twenty-three now and had grown out of the innocent-girl charm that so put her clients off their guard. But even now, as a confident woman with a strut in her step, she still possessed the dark curls and beguiling dimples that endeared her to men. Many of her clients supposed they could keep all their coin in their pockets if they only flirted hard enough with the collector.
But Dovey still possessed the Colt, too. She had spent so many Saturday afternoons shooting at tin cans that she was as crack with her pistol as any exhibition shooter. She could wield the heavy gun with ease now, too; her arms had grown strong and capable, and her eye steely and unforgiving.
Dovey’s reputation had spread—tales of the tax-collecting vixen with an angelic face and a nasty surprise hidden in a holster beneath her petticoat preceded her, and she seldom had occasion to draw the Colt anymore. But she was glad of its presence all the same. Seattle seemed to have grown rougher around its edges as the years passed—or perhaps Dovey had simply grown wiser, more cautious. At any rate, she was all too familiar with the dangerous types who populated the city, who made up its tangled network of businessmen and scoundrels. It seemed every man had his fellow’s back, especially among the hard-driving, enterprising, still-unmarried crowd—and few of those men would balk at using violence to defend their interests and keep more dollars in their coffers.
She pulled up her skirt and petticoat, unstrapped the holster from her thigh, and laid the gun on the smooth-worn cedar stump that stood beside the trough. Then she found a cigarette and a match in her saddlebag. Dovey struck the match alight on the stump. The first long, savory inhalation rasped in her throat, but when the drag hit her blood, smoke seemed to fill her veins with a thick, soothing peace. Her tension and aches eased.
If the Women’s League could see me now, she thought mischievously. The League viewed Dovey Mason as Threat to Morality Number Two, right in line behind the seamstresses who plied their questionable trade in the cribs and cathouses near Skid Road. Dovey was often seen riding through the streets of Seattle, spread legged and trouser clad, fit to stop the hearts of every proper lady in the Territory. Dovey never smoked while she was on the job—she never could say when she’d be forced to draw her Colt, and she always kept her right hand empty. Therefore, she had no idea whether the Women’s League was aware of her objectionable smoking habit. Once they find out, they’re sure to promote me to the greatest menace to morality in all of Seattle.
Virgil stepped out onto the back porch, carrying a wide leather-bound ledger under one arm. He gave the air an exaggerated sniff. “Does my nose detect the cutest little tax hustler in Washington Territory?” When he found Dovey puffing away beside the trough, his slow smile sent a delicious thrill up her back. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
He dropped the ledger on the chunk of cedarwood that served for a porch table and sank into a ladder-back chair, fishing in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt for a cigarette of his own. Dovey sauntered toward the porch, swinging the oilcloth purse in one hand. Her eyes never left Virgil’s face. Even after seven years of tax collecting—and of lying in his arms whenever the opportunity presented itself—she was wild about him, entranced by his weathered good looks and his cocky, devil-may-care demeanor. Years of riding the tax circuit in all kinds of weather—and of fretting over his ledgers—had deepened the lines around his eyes, and his sharp goatee was now bisected with a streak of early gray hairs. Those features only made him all the more fascinating, in Dovey’s estimation. He’s like saltwater taffy for the eyes, she thought, dragging on her cigarette. And for the rest of a body, too. Sweet, satisfying, and addictive.
She took the second ladder-back chair, on the other side of the makeshift table, and set her collection purse on the cedar stump with a smirk of satisfaction. “That’s the last of it—for this month, anyway. We’re all caught up on the quota, and we still have a few days left in September.”
“You are the hardest-working little cuss I ever did see.” Virgil shook his head in wonder and scooped the purse into his lap. “But I’m afraid we’ve got a new man on the rolls now, so we can’t close out the month yet.”
“Bother,” Dovey said. “I was looking forward to taking a few days off.”
“It’s just one new fella. Shouldn’t be too hard to manage. He just got into town a few weeks ago, but he’s already setting up a sawmill of his own, well south of Yesler’s.”
“Seems like a fool’s errand to try to compete with Yesler’s sawmill. That big, hulking thing practically runs the whole town. Just think of all the men who depend on Yesler’s mill for work, in one way or another—and all the boards and shingles it produces for export. I’d estimate that Yesler’s money is in nearly every pocket in Seattle.”
“You’d be right about that,” Virgil said, exhaling smoke. “But a few other mills have managed to survive in Yesler’s shadow. There are an awful lot of trees to go around, and Yesler can’t saw ’em all himself, no matter how hard he tries.
“And it seems this new fella is no stranger to running mills. Ran one back on the East Coast, before he ventured out here.”
“A sawmill?”
“Nope. Seems it was a cotton mill. But the idea’s the same, isn’t it? Turning raw material into exportable goods. And if it’s exportable, it’s taxable.”
“He can’t be exporting already. It takes time to set up a mill. There’s no money for me to collect yet, is there?”
“I’d imagine not. But you ought to stop by and see him, I reckon. Make an impression, so he knows the Revenue Service has its eye on him. You know how these East Coast types are—think they can cheat the system, think we’re all backwoods fools who don’t know right from left or a dollar from a penny.”
Dovey picked up the ledger and flipped its grid-lined pages to the most recent entry. “All right, I’ll see the man, and smile at him and bat my eyes. But after that, I’m taking a few days off. I want to—”
The words froze on her tongue. She stared disbelieving at the entry in the ledger—at the impossible, the unfathomable, written in Virgil’s neat, careful hand.
John Mason—Lowell, Mass.—prev. textile mill, to set up saw business south of Skid Road
“Is something wrong, Dove?” Virgil tapped the ash from his cigarette. “You look like you just swallowed a bug.”
“My God, Virgil. This is my father.”
He narrowed his eyes; one side of his mouth curved up uncertainly. “Stop joking.”
“I’m not joking. John Mason from Lowell, former owner of a cotton mill—it’s him! Land sakes, Virgil, I haven’t seen my father in seven years. I haven’t even written to him!” She slammed the ledger closed with a hollow thump. “What in blazes made him come all the way out here to Seattle?”
“I take it you and your pa didn’t have a very gracious parting,” Virgil drawled, halfway amused.
“You can say that again. And it’s not funny. Of all the people who’ve thought they could control my life to suit their own whims, he was the very worst.”
“Well, I’ll pay him a visit if you like,” Virgil offered. “You can stay well clear of him, and leave this client to me.”
Dovey sucked on her cigarette, long and deep, but the smoke did nothing to soothe the new rash of jitters that jangled her nerves. She was on the point of accepting Virgil’s proposal—she recalled with a pang of fear the lock clicking in her bedroom door and her father’s calm insistence that an arranged marriage would be for her own good, and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to stay as far from John Mason as circumstances would allow.
But she sighed and then crushed out her cigarette on the cedar stump. “No,
I’ll go. I’m not afraid of him, Virgil. I’m not a girl anymore—he can’t control me as he once did. I’ll go, and I’ll tell him face-to-face that I’m beyond his reach now.”
As she reopened the ledger to memorize John Mason’s new address, she prayed desperately that her words were more than just brave talk. Please, God, let it all be true.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CAPITAL
Dovey ground-tied Blue outside a narrow, whitewashed boardinghouse on the northern edge of town. She hesitated for a moment, patting the roan’s warm flank as he buried his muzzle in a thick patch of weeds to search for the choicest bits.
“This is it,” she told Blue quietly, watching the boardinghouse’s two stories of curtained windows with a suspicious squint. “I’d better get this dang business over and done with.”
When she knocked on the door, the proprietress answered almost at once. She was a stout lady with a gray bun and eyes that shone with kindness behind the lenses of her spectacles.
“I’ve come to see John Mason,” Dovey said.
“Is he expecting you, my dear? I make it clear to all my boarders that female visitors are not allowed on the premises.”
The proprietress smiled warmly and gave no hint of disapproval, but Dovey felt the blood drain from her face. Lord, she thinks I’ve come to do the unmentionable deed!
Dovey shot a quick glance down at her dress. It was a drab blue-gray linen, unadorned with the usual frills and fripperies that the working girls favored, and Dovey certainly wore no eye paint or rouge. Perhaps any lone woman calling on a male boarder would be suspect, regardless of how plain or painted she looked. This was Seattle, after all, where entrepreneurial girls came to earn money by the fistful.
Dovey certainly felt no shame at being mistaken for a working girl—she of all Seattle women knew how hard the night flowers worked, and she admired them for their independence. But after all, John Mason was her own father … !
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