LITMIR.BIZ

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to attend that inquest after all. If you’re going to be with us for hundreds of miles, I think I should be sure you’ve been officially cleared of any wrongdoing.”

      Frank fished his pocket watch from his jeans and flipped it open. “I reckon we’d better be going, then. It’s closing in on eleven o’clock.”

      He opened the door and let her precede him back to the deck. They paused there to look up at the bridge, where Captain Hoffman stood with his hands on the railing around it.

      “Captain, it appears that Mr. Morgan will probably be joining my party after all,” Fiona said.

      Hoffman tugged on the brim of his cap. “Aye, ma’am. Whatever you say. That’s your business.”

      Fiona smiled. “It certainly is.”

      As they left the ship, they passed the officer called Brewster, who was still at the head of the gangplank. He smiled and nodded to Fiona, then glared darkly at Frank, who just gave him a cool, level stare in return. Brewster didn’t like him, and Frank didn’t give a damn one way or the other.

      As they walked away from the waterfront, Frank said, “I’ll have to talk to the captain about my horses. I hope the ship can accommodate them.”

      “You’re bringing horses along?”

      “We’ll have to have some sort of transportation once we get to Alaska.”

      “Well, certainly, but I assumed we could hire a couple of wagons once we get there.”

      “Wagons may not be able to get over Chilkoot Pass,” Frank pointed out. “We’ll have to look into that. You and the ladies may have to ride all the way to Whitehorse. Seems like I’ve heard that they sometimes use dogsleds to get around up there, too, but only when there’s a lot of snow on the ground.”

      “There’ll be a lot to figure out once we get there, won’t there?”

      “Yes, ma’am…I mean, Fiona.”

      “And I’ll call you Frank.”

      “Fine by me.”

      “There’s one thing you haven’t mentioned, Frank…your wages.”

      He chuckled. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t even thought about it. Whatever you were going to pay Jacob will be fine by me.”

      He didn’t try to explain to her that he wasn’t doing it for the money, that he already had more money than he could ever possibly spend. That would just complicate matters unnecessarily. All he really cared about was keeping his word to Trench.

      “We can discuss that,” Fiona said. “Isn’t that the courthouse up ahead?”

      “Yep.” Frank checked his watch again. Not quite eleven o’clock. “Let’s get this over with. I never did like court.”

      The inquest went smoothly, however. Frank was sworn in and testified as to what had happened, and several witnesses who had been on hand for the shoot-outs agreed with his story. The police had also taken statements from a number of witnesses who weren’t there to testify, and those were entered into the record, too. The coroner’s jury didn’t have to deliberate. They rendered a verdict of murder in the case of Trench’s death at the hands of one of the Haggarty brothers, and the other four deaths were ruled to be self-defense on the part of Frank and Trench. The coroner dismissed the proceedings, and Frank was free to go.

      “Satisfied?” he asked Fiona as they left the courthouse.

      “As a matter of fact, I am. There’s just one more hurdle you have to clear, Frank, before you officially become a member of our party.”

      “And what’s that?” he asked.

      She smiled at him. “You have to meet the brides.”

      Chapter 6

      Frank and Fiona went back to the Majestic Hotel. Along the way, Fiona explained, “These are fine, upstanding young ladies from respectable families in places like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, you understand. Many of them are quite well educated. I’m sure you’re wondering why such women would want to travel thousands of miles to a wilderness such as Alaska to marry men that they’ve never met.”

      “The thought crossed my mind,” Frank admitted. “I can understand why a man might send off for a wife when he’s in a place where there aren’t any women, but I can’t quite figure why a woman would be interested in a deal like that.”

      “There are a number of reasons. Some of them simply have a thirst for adventure. Others have suffered tragedies of some sort—the loss of a loved one, a failed romance, things like that—and want to make a fresh start somewhere else.”

      “I reckon Alaska’s about as much ‘somewhere else’ as you can get,” Frank commented with a smile.

      “Indeed it is. To these young women, it’s as faraway and exotic as, say, China would be.” Fiona paused. “But to finish my thought, and to be totally honest with you, Frank, some of the women who enter into arrangements like this are rather unattractive and don’t believe they’ll ever have a man any other way. Also, some are looking for a degree of financial security. If a man can afford to engage my services and have a bride brought to him, generally he’s either already well-to-do or has excellent prospects for being so. The women know that.” She laughed. “So, if you want to look at it that way, I suppose what I do is sort of like being a madam. I shouldn’t have been so offended when you mentioned it earlier.”

      Frank shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that at all. Seems completely different to me.”

      “I am in the business of selling women for money.”

      “Nope, not the same thing,” Frank insisted.

      “Well, I’m glad you feel that way.” She looked up at the front of the hotel. “Here we are.”

      They went inside the redbrick building and up the stairs to the second floor. Fiona said, “We’ll go to my suite, and I’ll have the ladies assemble there. I engaged six rooms for them, two to a room.”

      The mail-order bride business must pay pretty well, Frank thought. The Majestic wasn’t the fanciest hotel in the world, but Fiona had to be doing all right if she could afford to rent a suite and six more rooms for her charges.

      The sitting room of Fiona’s suite was comfortably furnished. She discreetly closed the door to the bedroom, then told Frank, “Wait here. I’ll be back in a moment.”

      He felt a mite odd, standing there holding his hat in the sitting room of a lady’s suite, but luckily Fiona wasn’t gone very long. When she came back in, she had a dozen young women trooping along behind her.

      They were all shapes and sizes, Frank saw right away, with hair that ranged from palest blond to black as dark as a raven’s wing. The only thing they had in common was their age. Frank estimated that all of them were around twenty-five, past the first blush of youth but hardly getting on in years. Although some people uncharitably figured that a woman past the age of twenty who had never been married was an old maid, Frank thought.

      As Fiona had pointed out, some of the women were rather plain, but there wasn’t a single one of them Frank would have called downright ugly, and a few were pretty darned good-looking, in his opinion. One blonde in particular was really pretty, he thought. She had a nice quirky smile and cornflower blue eyes.

      She was the one Fiona introduced to him first, as well. “Frank, this is Margaret Goodwin. Meg, as she’s called.”

      Frank nodded. “Miss Goodwin.”

      “Meg,” she said. She held out a hand to shake, just like a man would have. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Morgan. Mrs. Devereaux tells us that you’re a famous gunfighter.”

      “Well…some folks might say infamous,” Frank said as he shook hands with her. “Or even notorious.”

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