Page 31

A pparently, the fear of snakes kept the women interested in shooting away from the area that Thursday morning.

Lily fired off a couple of rounds and hit the target each time; then she hiked a hip on the table and sat down.

Daisy did the same, and her short legs dangled in the air, but Lily pulled her long ones up and wrapped her arms around her knees.

“Not very ladylike, but it looks like we are the only ones who are going to show up out here this morning.”

“We were supposed to go hunting,” Daisy reminded her, “but then Elijah and Claude brought in a whole deer last evening, already dressed out and ready to butcher. We don’t need meat right now, but if this lingers on past when we eat all that up, we will go out to find food.

If the flour and sugar from Beulah’s runs out, we may have to eat venison or rabbit stew with no bread. ”

“‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger,’” quoted Lily, and thought again of that first year she worked in the brothel. She had certainly come out of that experience a stronger, more determined woman.

Frannie approached them from behind a big oak tree with a wave.

“If that’s the truth, then my friends and I should be able to lift a good-sized longhorn bull.

I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to the saloon.

I’ve liked living out here and not dealing with .

..” She paused and hopped up to sit on the table with the other two.

“With what?” Sally Anne seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“With having to put up with several men every night and going to the doctor every month for him to be sure I’m not carrying a baby,” Frannie answered bluntly. “What are you doing out here?”

Lily half expected Sally Anne to at least flinch at Frannie’s curt answer, but instead she gave the saloon worker half a smile.

“I’ve been struggling with my wedding and future marriage—and I needed a place to think. I didn’t know that shooting lessons were still going on today,” she answered.

Frannie patted the table and extended a hand toward Sally Anne. “Scoot down far enough that she can sit with us,” she said to Daisy and Lily.

Sally Anne took her hand and joined the three women.

“I’m not sure I want to marry Wesley,” she blurted out.

“He wants a big wedding. I just wanted a small event with maybe a dozen members of the family there. I don’t care a thing about a long honeymoon, and I’m not sure I want to have a houseful of children. ”

“That sure is a lot on your mind,” Frannie said. “If you could do anything else with your life, what would it be?”

“I want to own and operate my own newspaper, to write articles for women’s rights like Victoria Woodhull and others have done.

I couldn’t do it here in Autrie, of course, but maybe in a bigger town like Houston—or even farther away, where I could make the biggest impact,” she answered.

“Even if we get the things on our list and I marry Wesley, not a lot will change. I will still be expected to cook and rock the cradle and look beautiful when we are out in public together.”

“You are beautiful,” Frannie said.

“But in time that will fade,” Sally Anne said.

“Look at my aunts, Edith and Maudie. I’ve been told that they were beautiful when they were young.

Age is catching up to them pretty fast. When I get old and die, I want to be remembered for more than being a judge’s wife or hosting the tea for the church ladies once a month. ”

“Who is this Victoria that you mentioned?” Frannie asked.

“She is a free thinker. Especially about rights for women. She lives in England now, but I read everything I can get my hands on about her,” Sally Anne told her.

“What do you mean ‘free thinker’?” Frannie asked.

Lily knew very well what she meant. Miz Raven had preached the same thing to her girls more than once.

Miz Raven had always kept up with everything that Victoria did, from her two failed marriages—the first one being forced on her when she was barely fifteen—to the day that she became a stockbroker and a newspaper woman, and even ran for president of the United States.

Too bad she wasn’t elected, Lily thought. The world might be a different place if she had been.

Sally Anne’s eyes went all glassy as she told Frannie about the woman she wanted to take the torch from when the time came.

“And this is what she said, word for word—and I memorized it and believe with all my heart: ‘Yes, I am a free lover. I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can; to change that love every day if I please, and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere.’”

Lily thought Sally Anne might pop down off the table, put one hand on her heart, and raise the other one toward heaven.

“Holy Mother of God!” Frannie swore. “There are really women like that?”

“Yes, ma’am, there are—and I not only believe it, I practice it. I am not a sweet little virgin like Wesley seems to think that I am. I have had lovers, and I’m not so sure I want to settle down to one man,” she said.

Daisy gasped.

Frannie giggled.

Lily’s mouth made a perfect little O, but no sound came out.

“Maybe you better come clean with Wesley.” Lily finally got words to come out of her mouth, and then the imaginary devil that sat on her shoulder and often whispered in her ear reminded her that she should do the same thing with Matt.

“I don’t want to break his heart,” Sally Anne said.

“I have written a long letter to Victoria and am waiting to hear back from her. If she says that she will mentor me, I’m on the next train out of Autrie, and then I’ll board a ship to take me to England to help her and her daughter however I can.

If not, then I’ll count that as a sign that I need to stay in Texas.

But if I do, then I’m still stuck between the idea of marriage or going to a bigger place and starting my own newspaper. ”

“Do you have that kind of money?” Frannie asked.

“My mother and father left me well fixed when they passed away last year. I own a big house at the east end of town and have enough money that I can do whatever I want.”

“Have you slept with Wesley?” Daisy asked.

Sally Anne shook her head. “I have not.”

“How have you had other lovers? But more importantly, ones that no one in Autrie found out about?” Frannie asked.

Sally Anne shrugged. “I traveled abroad with my parents.”

Lily was stunned at how badly she had misread the woman. “Why didn’t you stand up for women before we even came to town?”

Sally Anne shrugged again. “Not enough women would follow me, especially when I’m engaged to the judge, who, as you could see, is very traditional in his beliefs.”

Lily was still in shock at the way even Sally Anne’s expressions and demeanor had changed over the course of a few minutes. “Why did you let him court you?”

“Aunt Edith,” she answered. “She knows how I feel about the movement and about Victoria. She thought it would be a good thing for me to settle down and—”

“But she was one of the first ones to stand up for what we are fighting for,” Lily argued.

“I’m not stupid,” Sally Anne declared. “I know she’s doing this for her own rights here in Autrie, but also to appease me. This is just to give me a ...” She hesitated.

“A little feeling that you’ve done something, and now you can marry the judge with that behind you,” Daisy finished for her.

“Exactly,” Sally Anne said. “But all it’s done is make me want to fight on a bigger scale. If I get a letter that invites me to England, do you want to go with me, Frannie? Two women traveling together is safer than one going alone. But I will even do that if I need to.”

“No, I don’t, but Molly reads every newspaper that gets left behind, so I bet she would gladly go with you if she had the money,” Frannie replied.

“She won’t need to pay for anything if and when the time comes,” Sally Anne said. “I’ll take care of everything and will even pay her to be my assistant. But please don’t tell her until I hear from Victoria.”

“You’ve got my word,” Frannie promised. “But why not take Lily and—”

Lily held up both hands in a defensive gesture. “Oh, no, we are happy to stay right here and fight on a local level.”

Then she wished she had at least considered the option. Miz Raven was most likely in England by now, and Lily could join her. She wondered if maybe her old madam was even working right alongside Victoria and her daughter, Zula.

“How about you, Daisy?” Sally Anne asked.

“I’ll stay with Lily,” Daisy answered.

Frannie threw an arm around Sally Anne’s shoulders. “Thank you for sharing all that with us. It means more than you’ll ever know.”

Sally Anne slipped her arm around Frannie’s waist. “Thanks for listening, and for not telling me that I’m silly and stupid. We’ve talked about my dream. What is yours, Frannie?”

“To get out of that saloon. Not to get married again by any means, though,” Frannie answered.

“How would you like to be the madam of your own house?” Lily asked.

Frannie laughed so hard that she snorted. “That’s not funny, so why am I ...” She wiped her face with the tail of her skirt.

“In Spanish Fort, there was this very fancy brothel that men talked about,” Lily chose her words carefully.

“I heard that they only let seven men inside the gates at night. One for each woman who worked there. Staying in the house from seven at night until after breakfast in the morning was very expensive, but the men who got to go inside said it was worth every penny.”

Frannie cocked her head to one side and frowned. “What made it so special?”