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“The women all dressed like angels, all white dresses with lots of lace, and their hair was clean and shiny, flowing down to their waists. When the client arrived, the woman took him up to her room, gave him a nice warm bath, cut his hair, shaved him, and dressed him in a clean robe. Then she fed him a nice supper at a table for two, let him talk or go to bed with her—whatever was his pleasure. I heard that those angels knew how to please a man so well that he said he had spent the night in heaven. The next morning, the clothing he wore inside had been washed and was ready for him to put on after he had enjoyed a hot breakfast with his angel. The woman walked him downstairs to the porch, and the butler took him and the other men out to the gate in a carriage.”

“Was there a doctor to take care of ...” Frannie stopped.

“The madam there had a special tea that she gave the women once a week. No babies came out of her place,” Daisy explained.

“I need the recipe for that tea,” Frannie said.

“So do I,” Sally Anne agreed with a nod.

“I had a friend who used a tea made with pennyroyal, tansy, and ergot,” Daisy said and shot a look toward Lily that let her know she had said enough. “It worked for her when she got in the family way and didn’t want children.”

“You could make a fortune if you know how to brew that up in bulk,” Sally Anne said.

“To have my own house, one like that, would be a dream come true,” Frannie said.

“It would mean so much more money for all of us than we could earn anywhere else at this point. It’d give us real independence.

But even at fifty percent of what we bring in, me and my friends couldn’t save up enough in ten years to start up something so fancy. ”

“If Victoria gives me permission to come to England, and you convince Molly to go with me, I’ll give you my house in exchange,” Sally Anne offered.

“And Daisy and I will make you some white dresses,” Lily said.

“You’d do that for me?” Frannie’s eyes shifted from one woman to the other.

“You fought tradition and joined us. We vowed to help each other,” Sally Anne said. “So yes, I will do that for you—and anyone that don’t like it can fall right into hell.”

“I can’t believe how much I misread you, girl,” Lily whispered.

“A good woman can be anything she wants to be, a good lover or an innocent bride—and she learns to bluff if need be,” Sally Anne quipped.

“How do you know so much about that brothel?” Frannie focused on Daisy.

“My parents lived on the farm next to it,” Daisy lied. “Lily has been my friend for years, and we used to sneak out at night to go over to the gate and stare at the house. There was this big man named Jems who was like a butler or protector or something. He answered our questions.”

Some of it was the truth, Lily decided, even if the rest just skipped around the bush, so to speak. “Looks like what we do now is wait for Sally Anne’s answer from Victoria,” she said.

“If there’s even a possibility of that woman telling Sally Anne to come on to England, then me and my girls are certainly not going back to the saloon.

We’ll stay right here and live off the land until y’all tell us that we can start our own establishment,” Frannie declared.

“I’ve got one more question. What did that madam do about drunks in her place? ”

“Jems didn’t let a man come through the gate if they were drunk, and no liquor was served to them in the house. If they asked for it, the madam would tell them in a sweet voice that they were having a heavenly experience and no liquor was served past the Pearly Gates,” Lily answered.

“That’s a nice story, but that’s all it is,” Frannie said.

“Things like that don’t happen to women like me.

I’d best get on up to the camp. You, too, Sally Anne.

Edith will need our help getting dinner ready.

I promised to stir up some biscuits to go with the venison stew.

And she said that she wanted you to learn to make her famous chocolate cake. ”

When they were out of sight, Lily took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, this was a profitable morning, even though we didn’t fire off any rounds or teach anyone how to load and unload a pistol.”

“Whew!” Daisy wiped her forehead in a dramatic gesture. “I never saw that coming where Sally Anne was concerned.”

“Me either,” Lily agreed. “I guess that old saying about not judging a book by the cover is true. You almost got tangled up in the bush as you tiptoed around it when you were telling that lie about living next to the brothel. I thought any minute, you would drop Miz Raven’s name or mention the Paradise. ”

Daisy put her forefinger on her lips and said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Frannie and Sally Anne were hidden so well by the underbrush, we didn’t know they were out here. We have to be very careful about what we say anywhere. Do you think we’ll be back in town by the weekend?”

“I predict that we will be sitting in the other church come Sunday morning, and Reverend Tobias will be telling us about Adam and Eve and blaming all womenkind for eating that apple,” Lily replied.

“It will have been two weeks by then. Unless Gertrude and her followers have been busy helping the menfolk, I bet there are some dirty houses that need to be cleaned, lots of laundry piled up, and gardens that need tending, if all the plants aren’t already dead. ”

“I hope that she and her friends didn’t do a thing but gather up and gossip.

” Daisy hopped down from the table. “I don’t imagine that a lot will change, but we will have taught the ladies to stand up for themselves, and that’s a big start in the right direction.

To tell the truth, I’m itching to get back to designing and making dresses, and we haven’t even started working on hats.

Think we can use the rattlesnake skins some way? ”

“I’m planning to twist them into roses, though Fannie had thought hatbands,” Lily said.

“Snakes to roses ... That reminds me of my idea of the rising sun.”

Lily eased off the table. “It does, doesn’t it? We came out here like snakes, having to crawl on the ground, to be stomped and even killed. But we won’t leave until we have turned into roses that will demand to be treated tenderly and loved.”

Daisy started down the path to the house. “That’s right, and the sun on our mission is just barely showing. Do you think we’ll live to see the day that you and I march into the polls and cast our votes?”

Lily fell into step beside her. “If we don’t, maybe our daughters or granddaughters will.”

“If we even get the privilege of having kids,” Daisy said.