come here for gold! A man’s got to eat, don’t he?” He chuckled and straightened. “Besides, yer askin’ for somethin’ extra. Now, do you want what you asked for, or not?”
Elizabeth reminded herself that even this repulsive man who was literally stealing from everyone in his restaurant was a child of God. “Fine,” she answered, digging into her skirt pocket. She handed him two fifty-cent pieces. “Please hurry. My friend has been very sick and hasn’t eaten in two or three days.”
The man shrugged and shouted an order to another cook. Both cooks were women who looked quite harried and overworked. The owner looked at Elizabeth again. “You make sure I get back my dishes and the tray,” he told her. “I’ll come lookin’ for ya’ if ya’ don’t.” He grinned. “You wouldn’t be holed up at some whorehouse, would you?”
Elizabeth stiffened. “I’m at Wheeler’s Hotel,” she answered curtly. “And you needn’t worry. You’ll get your tray back, although for a whole dollar, I should get to keep it!”
Regretting her sharp tongue, she stood back and waited, noticing filth on the floor and hoping that after being so sick, Clint would not end up dying from eating the food she brought back to him. Minutes later one of the cooks arranged the food on a plate and set it on a tray, covering it with a towel. She then poured coffee into a pewter pot and set the pot and a tin cup on the tray. “Here you go, ma’am,” the woman told her.
“Thank you, and God bless you,” Elizabeth answered, feeling sorry for the overworked woman. The cook just stared at her a moment, obviously surprised at her last remark. She smiled. “Why, thank you,” she told Elizabeth. “That’s a nice thing to say.”
Elizabeth took the tray, smiling in return, and feeling better that she’d said something kind rather than let the owner make her rude to everyone else. She left, thinking how people and places like this were such a test of one’s faith and one’s desire to be kind to others.
She made her way to the hotel and after briefly relating Clint’s condition to Mr. Wheeler she entered the storeroom.
“Here you are!” she told Clint as she set the tray on the only table in the room. “I have eggs and ham and biscuits and coffee! It cost me a whole dollar, but you need to start eating.” She turned to face him. “I think you’ll—” She did not finish her sentence. There sat Clint Brady, with a look on his face she couldn’t even read, a brown bottle in his hand. He held it up.
“How about a toast, Miss Christian-Holier-than-Thou Breckenridge? What does your Bible say about a woman drinking whiskey? Jesus drank wine, I think, didn’t He?” He chuckled. “Maybe He wasn’t so perfect after all.” He waved her over. “Come on. Take a swig. This stuff will cure anything that ails you. I drink enough of this and I’ll be back to my old self within twenty-four hours.”
Elizabeth’s heart fell. “I just spent a whole dollar on you, Clint Brady, and I come back to find you drunk!”
He winked at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll eat the food, soon as I finish this bottle.”
Elizabeth felt like crying. “You can finish it alone, Mr. Brady, and if you do, I highly doubt you will be one-hundred-percent cured by tomorrow. It is more likely you’ll hardly be able to get out of bed!”
He laughed again. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you? What the heck does it take to get you to loosen up, Miss God’s-Gift-to-the-World?”
“Certainly not whiskey! And no, I don’t have the answer for everything. I don’t have an answer for why you behave the way you do.” She folded her arms, struggling to control her fury and deciding to say something that would wipe the drunken smile off his face. “One thing I don’t know is—who is Jenny? You called me Jenny a couple of times while you were your sickest. Was she your wife, Clint? What happened to her?”
The remark certainly did wipe the smile off his face—to a greater extent than she’d thought it would. The smile turned to a grim look, his blue eyes suddenly looking much darker. “Get out!” he told her. “Get out of here before I knock you clear out the back door!”
He rose, making ready to come for her, and Elizabeth backed away. The anger in his eyes was unnerving. She grasped the door handle, but