She huddled in bed for a while wondering what to do. Find somewhere cheap to live and a job. No reason she couldn’t stay here in Laramie. There would be more opportunities to find employment in a large town like this.
Her stomach grumbled and she realized she was hungry. She had missed supper last night and breakfast this morning. If she didn’t eat, she would get sick and that was something she could not afford.
After having a quick wash, she glanced around for her clothes. They were thrown in a corner, and the pink dress was gone. Feeling about a hundred years old she slowly made her way downstairs to the dining room. A pot of tea and toast was all that would be available, as the staff were now preparing luncheon. It would be enough for now.
She had just finished eating when the maid who had been to her room told her Mr. Jones, the hotel manager, wanted to see her. Probably wants to know how long I’ll be staying. She hurried out to the lobby.
“Oh, Miss McMullen, I’m wondering how long you wish to stay here.”
“Well, I’m not sure.”
“I have your account here.”
“Account!” Sheer will power dredged, from only God knew where, stopped her going into hysterics.
“Mrs. Sawyer said you would be paying.”
A black mist rose up in front of her. The next thing she knew she was lying on the lobby floor with the maid fanning her with a newspaper. Another betrayal by the Sawyers. What else could they do to her?
Finally, she had to open her eyes. The maid helped her up. “Are you all right, Miss McMullen?” Mr. Jones asked.
“Not really.” She stood trembling before him.
“H….How much do I owe?”
“Twelve dollars.”
Twelve dollars, he might as well have said twelve hundred. She grasped the desk so she wouldn’t crumple to the floor again. “I don’t have twelve dollars.”
His expression hardened. He waved the maid away with an impatient flick of one wrist. “Obtaining goods or services unlawfully is a serious crime. I need to report this to the sheriff.”
“No, please. I was duped by these people.”
“Maybe so, but they’re gone, and you are still here, so you have to pay.”
“Twelve dollars seems a lot for the rooms, we only stayed….”
“There’s the meals, the expensive whiskey Mr. Sawyer ordered.”
The true extent of the Sawyer’s treachery hit her like a whirlwind, knocking the breath from her lungs. What other shock was in store for her?
“I don’t have much money.” She reached into her reticule and only found a few dimes. They had even stolen the little money she did have. How could they have gone through it without her knowing? The bitter coffee, the sickly water. They had drugged her. It was the only explanation.
“Miss McMullen.” Mr. Jones snapped his fingers next to her ear. “Are you listening to me?”
“What! Oh sorry. They drugged me.”
“Nothing to do with me. Now, the money.”
“I don’t have it. Maybe I could work it off for you.”
“Doing what?” He gave her a haughty stare.
“Housekeeping, cooking, waitressing.”
His eyes narrowed, speculative, assessing.
“I could even help at your stables. I’m experienced with horses. I’ll do anything except….”
He pulled himself up to his full height of about five feet five inches. “This is a respectable, high class establishment.” His eyes flashed with outrage. “If you’re inferring that this is a front for a house of ill-repute…”
“No, no, of course not. I just wanted it to be clear. I might be poor but I’m respectable.”
“Very well, you can work here. You can muck out the stables and help with cleaning.”
“Yes, yes. I’ll do anything.”
“There is a loft above the stables you can sleep there, and cook will provide you with food. Three months should see the debt cleared.”
Three months! She wanted to scream at him. He had her over a barrel and they both knew it.
****
Katie didn’t mind mucking out the stables, filling up the chaff boxes and brushing down the horse. She was used to that. It was the other jobs she hated. On her hands and knees scrubbing the hearth in the kitchen or the floor was bearable. She had to also empty the guests’ chamber pots into the outside privy and then wash them out. She never ate anything until this chore was done each morning or she would have lost her breakfast. People were so putrid in their habits.
I can’t keep doing this she thought carrying a particularly offensive chamber pot down to the privy. Because of the menial tasks she performed, the other servants didn’t have much to do with her. She was the lowest of the low. Dressed in cut down men’s pants, wearing a faded shirt, she wouldn’t have had much to do with herself either had she been in their shoes.
After three weeks of humiliation and degradation she wondered whether she would last the full three months. She washed and dried the offending chamber pot, covered it with a towel and trudged back upstairs with it. The people who had used this room had left. The bed was stripped back ready for fresh linen.
A St. Louis newspaper was tossed on the floor. What pigs these people were. She bent to pick it up and spotted the words. Write to Lovelorn and let me help you. Could she do it? Bare her soul in the St. Louis Gazette. Anything would be better than this.
She tore the page out and shoved it in her pocket to read later. She retired early and rose early. It was the only way she could cope with the work she was expected to do. She slept in her clothes because it was dark when she retired, and she wouldn’t be able to change in the blackness. She had a blanket and a pillow but dared not light a lamp as there was too much hay lying around. One spark and the place would erupt into flames and she would likely be incinerated. Early in the morning when no-one was around, she washed herself.
Another two months and the debt would be paid. She had to keep going. She dared not renege on the deal or Jones would put her into the law. She was in the lobby, no one else was around. Dare she? Glancing around one last time, she opened the desk drawer and took out a piece of paper and an envelope which she stuffed in her pocket. Later when she had a spare minute, she would write to this Lovelorn person on the off chance she would be able to help.
In between jobs, Katie ducked up to the loft and pulling out the paper and a pencil stub from her pocket sat down to write. Lovelorn would have to write to her as there was no way she could obtain a later copy of the St Louis Gazette here in Laramie.
Dear Lovelorn.
I read your article in a newspaper that I found. Can you help me?
I owe my landlord money and he is letting me pay the debt off by working for him, well slaving for him is more like it.
The debt was not mine. I was tricked into coming here, then deceived once I arrived. I have no money or family now and am working such long hours I can’t make friends.
I need to leave here as soon as I repay the money owed.
It is terrible being so alone. I know you don’t normally do it, but please write back to me and let me know what suggestions you have?
She couldn’t use her real name in case it was published. She debated about what to put then signed it - Lost in Laramie.
On the back of the envelope she wrote her name, and the address of the hotel, so if Lovelorn did write back, she would receive the letter. After addressing the front of the envelope, she slipped it into her pocket ready to drop it in the canvas bag where guests were invited to leave their mail. Someone from the hotel would take it over to the postal people and pay to have it sent off.
****
A month later Mr. Jones handed her a letter. Katie’s heart raced. But she tried not to let her excitement and trepidation show. Was it from Lovelorn? She had almost given up hope of receiving a reply.
“Thank you, Mr. Jones.” She shoved the letter into the pocket of her pants
. He didn’t ask who it was from, he obviously didn’t care enough to bother.
“You can go up to room five. Take a mop and a bucket and some cleaning rags. There’s been an accident up there.”
“Accident? Was someone hurt?”
“It was not that kind of accident.” He gave her a haughty stare. “The maid in the room refused to clean up the mess and I don’t really blame her. I’ve never come across such disgusting behavior in twenty years of managing hotels.”
Too filthy even for a lowly maid, yet it’s all right for me to clean it up. I’m dirt beneath the feet of everyone who works here.
“Yes, Mr. Jones, I’ll do it straight away.” She hurried off to get the cleaning materials. She hated this hotel and the people in it, and they despised her because of her lowly position here. “The lowest of the low, that’s you,” she muttered.
“They’re making you clean up room five?” Madge one of the maids asked as she passed by. “Poor you.” Madge was the only one of the staff who was anyway friendly, but only when no-one else was around. She was too fearful of falling foul of the other girls and finding herself friendless and Katie couldn’t blame her.
While she waited in the kitchen for cook to get the hot water ready, she slipped out the kitchen door and pulled out the letter. Please Lovelorn have a solution for me.
Dear Lost in Laramie, or maybe I should call you Katie. I’ve read your letter and your situation does sound desperate.
I hope you will forgive me, but I discussed your problem with a friend of mine who might have a solution. Her cousin’s husband is a sheriff up Cheyanne way, who sometimes comes to Laramie. He has a friend we’ll call him S.C. for the moment. They served in the army together.
S.C. has had a few tragedies in his life and now lives on a ranch a few miles out of Laramie. My friend’s cousin who has met him says he is a decent, God-fearing man. Quite handsome in a rugged kind of way. Six feet in height, dark hair and blue eyes. He is lonely and would like a wife but can’t find one in the usual way.
No. A hundred times. No. She covered her face with her hands.
“Water’s ready.”
Katie shoved the letter back in her pocket. Marry a man she didn’t know? Move to an isolated ranch? Maybe get murdered there? She couldn’t do it. Lovelorn’s solution was no solution at all. Disappointment crushed her spirit. Hunched over she stumbled into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with you,” cook snapped. “You better set to work and be quick about it. The longer you wait the harder it will be to clean up.”
“Thank you.” She didn’t want to fall out with the cook. All things considered the woman didn’t treat her too badly.
Katie emptied a pot of hot water into the bucket and topped it up with cold water. She made it as hot as she could bear and dropped the square of lye soap in it. Carrying the mop and rags in one hand and the bucket in the other she staggered off. Luckily room five was one of only a couple of downstairs rooms.
The door was closed when she got there, and as she pushed it open, the stench was overwhelming. Bile rose in her throat. As bitter as it was, it could not hide the taste of revulsion surging into her mouth. Some disgusting person had used the corner of the room as a privy. She opened the window to let in the fresh air. The filthy muck along with a pile of vomit caused her to retch.
She emptied some of the water into a china bowl on the dresser because there was no way she would be touching the water in the bucket after she had mopped up the worst of the mess.
Of all the things she had been forced to do in her life, this was the most revolting. She was able to mop up most of the mess, some of which had even splashed on to the wall. On her hands and knees, she used the rags to scrub the floor clean. She felt physically sick by the time she finished. Her head ached and she somehow knew this was her darkest hour.
Once she finished cleaning, she had to take the bucket and mop outside and clean them with cold water pumped from the well outside the kitchen.
She raced down to one of the privies to read the rest of the letter.
You can rest assured my friend’s cousin and her husband are decent people also, and they want S.C. to find the happiness marriage has given them.
If you are interested, and I pray that you will be, write back and tell me and I will make the arrangements with my friend. We don’t have much time as her cousin is visiting Laramie within the next month or so. If you agree, he will contact you at the hotel.
Yours Truly:The Lovelorn
“I’ll do it,” Katie said out loud. “I can’t put up with working here much longer, it’s killing me.”
She didn’t mind hard work, but this kind of filthy job was unbearable.
Chapter Seven
“No! I’m not that desperate for a woman.” Steven Colby stared at his friend, Sheriff Douglas Farrell. “You had no right to do it.” He took an angry gulp of coffee and swore as it burned his mouth.
“Look, Steve. This poor gal is in dire straits, she wouldn’t ask much of you.”
“No. She’s probably as ugly as a dimes worth of dog meat.”
“She isn’t. She’d be real pretty if she had decent clothes to wear. I couldn’t believe it when I met her at the Royal. That miserable varmint, Jones is making her work off a debt which isn’t even hers.”
“No.”
“The jobs he gives her, well, she has to wear cut down men’s clothing.”
“What?”
“She sleeps in the loft above the stables too. She feels so degraded and used, I don’t blame her for trying to get out of the situation by any means possible.”
“Why should I be lumbered with her, Doug?”
“Because you need a woman, you said so yourself. Living in the wilderness alone and brooding all the time isn’t good for you. You know that as well as I do.”
“I am not marrying Charlie Jones’ bed faggot.” Steve raked his fingers through his hair in angry frustration.
“Charlie Jones is a snobbish, miserable varmint who doesn’t fraternize with women working at the hotel. I checked with the local sheriff about that. The man thinks it would be beneath his dignity to have any kind of relations with a mere employee.”
“How do you know this woman isn’t of loose morals.”
“The sheriff hasn’t heard anything about her at all. She’s apparently too busy working to have much spare time. Let’s face it. If she were the type, she could earn a lot more money by lifting her skirt and pay the debt off more quickly. So, that has to tell you something.”
Steve gnawed his lip. “I don’t know.”
“Just meet her. Go to the Royal, ask for her and see what you think.”
“She mightn’t want damaged goods like me.”
“Tarnation, you’re not so damaged the right woman couldn’t fix it. We’ve all been touched by tragedy you know it as well as I do. This gal is so desperate I really felt sorry for her.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Oh, yeah, probably forty if she’s a day, some old hag left on the shelf. I won’t do it.”
“She doesn’t even look twenty-one but assured me she has papers to prove it. Cleaned up and in a nice dress she’d be pretty. She lived on a ranch before coming to Laramie. I honestly think she would be suitable.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Changing topics, have you found a suitable gelding for me? Poncho is starting to get too old for the miles we have to cover.”
“Yeah, I have. He’s already broken in so you can take him with you if you like the looks of him. There were also a couple of real good mares in the last bunch I got.”
“I don’t want a mare.” Doug laughed. “I’ll trade you a woman for the horse. I can’t take him today, though.”
“I would take a good horse over a woman anytime.”
“A horse won’t keep you warm in bed at night.”
Steve grinned. “Horses are
much cheaper than women, more loyal, too. Do you want to look the gelding over?”
“I’ll trust your judgement. Just make sure you keep him for me. You need a good woman like my Beth.”
“Yeah, well they don’t come along very often. You’re lucky. I wish I’d met someone like her years ago.” He envied Doug his beautiful wife and two fine sons.
“You could have happiness with this Katie McMullen, I liked her. She must have principles to be working off a debt that isn’t even hers. Some varmint and his mother tricked her.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“It’s true. Jones as good as admitted it, but he’s not complaining, he’s more than getting his money back from what Katie said.”
“You believe her?”
“Yes, I do. Look, Steve, I’ve got to go. It’s a long trip home. I even spoke to the preacher for you.”
“You didn’t?”
“Yeah, well just in conversation. He said if you bring your woman and a wedding ring to his house, if he’s home, he’ll marry you. He went to West Point before he got the calling.”
“You are incorrigible, Doug. Do you know that?”
“No, just being a good friend. Will you promise me something, Steve?”
“What?” He wondered why he bothered asking the question when he knew what his friend would say.
“Meet Katie McMullen, then make up your mind. You would be a fool to miss out on a chance like this.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think about it. Do it.”
****
Steve slopped beans on to his plate for supper and poured out a mug of coffee. Dare he do what Doug suggested? He would trust his friend with his life. Well, he’d already done so.
Doug had great taste when it came to women. He’d married Beth, the sweetest, the prettiest gal he had ever met. Even before Beth, Doug always got himself the best looking, gals. It was so easy for him.
Lost in Laramie (Yours Truly: The Lovelorn Book 4) Page 4