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“Aye. Salty Stevens, by name. And I’ve fallen on hard times, amigo. Mighty hard times.”

Frank heard the soft drawl of the Southwest in the old man’s voice and felt an immediate kinship with him. He rested a hand on the man’s shoulder for a second, or where he thought the shoulder would be in that pile of furs, and said, “Maybe I’ll have something for you later.”

“Be much obliged, Tex. That’s where you hail from, ain’t it?”

Frank smiled. “You’ve got a good ear, Salty.”

“Been all over that country.” The old-timer sighed. “Wisht I was down on the Rio right now, listenin’ to some Mex play the guitar in a cantina and watchin’ the señoritas.”

Frank patted his shoulder. “Sounds good. We’ll have to get together and talk about old times.”

He led the others into the hotel, where a skinny, balding man with spectacles perched on the end of a long nose waited behind a desk. Frank gestured toward his companions and said, “We’re going to need some rooms.”

The prominent Adam’s apple in the clerk’s neck bobbed up and down. “I don’t have but three rooms empty, mister, and they’re in the east wing. No heat over there. Got plenty of blankets, though. You’re lucky we have any empties at all.”

Frank wasn’t so sure about that. The streets of Skagway were less crowded than he had thought they would be. He figured that most of the men who were headed for the gold fields around Whitehorse had already set out, hoping to reach their destination and get situated before winter closed everything down. Most of the people in Skagway now were either gold-hunters who planned to wait out the winter here or folks who worked in the settlement.

He and his companions couldn’t afford to be too particular about their accommodations, though. He nodded and said, “We’ll take them. You ladies can have the rooms. Pete and Bart and I will find someplace else to bunk down.”

“I hate for you to have to do that,” Fiona said. “For one thing, I was hoping to have you close by in case of trouble, Frank.”

“Don’t worry, we won’t be far off,” Frank assured her. “I think I spotted a livery stable across the street. We can bed down with the horses.” He smiled. “After all we’ve been through, I reckon that’ll seem almost like the lap of luxury.”

“Yes, but there’s one more thing…” Fiona tugged him aside and whispered, “How are we going to pay for this? All my traveling funds went down with the Montclair.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Frank told her. He reached under his coat and shirt and took out a thin leather wallet. The greenbacks in there had gotten soaked in the various drenchings they had taken, but they hadn’t fallen apart and were dry by now. He slipped a couple of bills out of the wallet.

Fiona smiled. “I thought you told that preacher you didn’t have any money.”

“I don’t have any money for a crooked sky pilot, and I had a hunch that’s what he was. Bart confirmed it.” Frank turned back to the desk and slapped the bills down on it. “That cover the rooms for a few days?”

The clerk scooped them up. “Yes, sir!” He pointed. “Go right through that door over there. They’ll be the third, fourth, and fifth rooms on the left.”

Frank nodded. “Much obliged.”

The next ten minutes were spent carrying in their supplies and arranging for the horses to be stabled across the street. The liveryman was agreeable to letting Frank, Conway, Jennings, and Dog stay with the horses, for an extra price, of course.

The hotel rooms were crude and primitive, with dirt floors, no windows, and only a flap of canvas for a door. The flap could be tied closed, but that wouldn’t keep anybody out who wanted to get in.

“Tell the ladies to keep their pistols handy,” Frank advised Fiona as they stood in the dirt-floored corridor of the hotel’s east wing, just outside the rented rooms. “And if there’s trouble, let out a holler. We’ll be just across the street, so I reckon we’ll be able to hear it.”

“Thank you, Frank.” She put a hand on his arm and rubbed her fingers back and forth on the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. “And thank you for getting us this far. I don’t think there’s another man in the world who could have pulled us through all that trouble.”

“I don’t know about that,” Frank said. “I’m just trying to keep my word to Jacob. As soon as we can figure out what we’ll need, we’ll round up an outfit and set out for Whitehorse.”

“You think we can still make it before winter sets in? Captain Hoffman was wrong about how much time we had left to get here to Skagway.”

“Maybe that storm was just a fluke and there’s still some time. Jennings has been up here for a while. I’ll talk to him about it.”

Fiona frowned at him. “You’d trust that man? He’s an outlaw! He kidnapped us!”

“Yeah, but he seems genuinely grateful that I didn’t kill him. Don’t worry, he’s not the only one I plan to talk to. If we have to, we can wait out the winter here, I suppose.”

“My clients in Whitehorse won’t like that.”

“Better to have a warm wife next spring than a frozen fiancée this winter.”

She looked at him for a second, then laughed. “You do have a way with words, Frank Morgan.” With a sigh and a shake of her head, she went on. “I was hoping we might be able to spend some time together here, just you and me.”

“Maybe when we get back from Whitehorse,” Frank said. “We won’t be able to return to Seattle until spring, so we’ll be spending all winter in Skagway.”

“A long, cold winter…” Fiona mused. “We’ll have to come up with some way to keep warm.”

Frank smiled. “I reckon we’ll manage,” he said.

Chapter 19

Frank had noticed when he went across the street with Conway and Jennings to stable the horses that Salty Stevens was no longer huddled in his furs on the front porch of the hotel. He asked the clerk, “That old-timer who was outside earlier, where can I find him?”

The clerk frowned. “You mean Salty? Did that old beggar bother you, mister? I try to run him off whenever I see him out there. The boss doesn’t like him hanging around the hotel.”

Frank wondered if the boss was Soapy Smith. Smith had been quick to direct them here to the Klondike and might well be the owner of the place.

“No, the old man didn’t bother us,” Frank said in reply to the clerk’s question. “I just want to talk to him. I think we may be from the same part of the country.”

“Oh. In that case…there’s a saloon down the street called Ike’s. I think Salty hangs around there a lot, too, trying to cadge drinks.” The clerk shook his head. “I warn you, though, mister, it’s a pretty squalid place.”

From what Frank had seen so far, most of Skagway fit that description. But he just nodded and said, “All right, thanks.”

As he came out of the hotel, Conway and Jennings emerged from the stable across the street. They had been tending to the horses, or rather Conway had, since Jennings couldn’t see. He was able to stand and hold a saddle, though, if somebody handed it to him.

Frank told them, “I want to talk to that old-timer who was at the hotel earlier. I figure he can tell us something about what the weather’s going to do. The clerk says that if he’s not here, he’s probably at a saloon called Ike’s.”

“I know the place,” Jennings said. “I can show—Well, no, I reckon I can’t show you where it is, after all.”

“We’ll find it. Come on.”

Jennings looked surprised. “You still want me to come with you? I figured once we got to Skagway, I’d be on my own.”

Frank lowered his voice and asked, “How long would you last in this town without being able to see? From what I can tell, there are as many dangerous critters around here as there are in the woods.”

Jennings sighed. “Maybe more.”