"It's their gold and their money that started this town." How could she dismiss the origin of the place where she was living? He looked to the mayor, but the man was studying the pile of glazed carrots on his plate. "It's still their money supportin' the economy," Nate pointed out.

"Not for long," she replied with conviction. "We don't need their money. We're generating a thriving community here."

Again Nate looked to Mayor Gibbs. The woman was being unrealistic if she thought the place would thrive without the miners. Who would support her fancy restaurant and a theater? "You'd better be lookin' for a whole lot more residents, then," he told her.

The mayor continued to eat and stayed out of the discussion.

The serving girl poured coffee for the men and tea for the ladies.

Mrs. Gibbs got up and returned with dessert, a fluffy white cake served with juicy ripe strawberries and sugary red sauce.

"Evangeline made the cake, didn't you, dear?" Beatrice served thick slices.

Her daughter nodded.

Nate took a bite. "It's the best dessert I've had since I don't know when."

The young woman blushed and lowered her gaze to her plate.

Nate enjoyed every bit of his dessert, but refused a second piece. He finished his coffee.

"Let's retire for a smoke, shall we?" Peyton suggested.

"That's a disgusting habit, Mr. Gibbs," his wife said, but he ignored her and led Nate to his study, where he closed the door and opened both windows.

He handed Nate a cigar and then lit it with a match he struck against a flint on his desk.

"Men built the saloons and the liveries and the stores," Peyton told Nate through a haze of smoke. "Womenfolk brought schools and churches. Takes both to make a flourishing town."

"I see your point. But I don't see the town bein' much without the miners and the saloons. I've seen other towns where the gold ran out. The people up and moved on and there was nothing left. You have to have money comin' in."

"The women would think it was all their doing if suddenly the miners or the dance halls were gone."

Nate chuckled.

"In time there will be more ranchers. There's money in horses and cattle, too. Amos Douglas is working on building up a substantial ranch."

Nate slanted his head in concession to the mayor's point. "I guess it's good to have a plan in case the gold ever does run out."

The mayor nodded.

"I'm walkin' a fine line here," Nate told him. "Between the wives and the dance halls. You know it, because you put me here."

Mayor Gibbs leaned back in his chair. "Better you than me, son. Better you than me."

Not very encouraging words, he thought. The more Nate was around these people, the more he wondered what he'd gotten himself into.

CHAPTER FIVE.

AN HOUR LATER Nate strolled the boardwalk, coming to the front of the Big Nugget and pushing through the doors.

Heads turned in his direction. The place reeked like smoke and whiskey and unwashed bodies, definitely a step down from the Shady Lady. He nodded a greeting and walked to the bar, his heels encountering grit on the filthy wood floor.

"Evenin', Sheriff." Bernie Kendrick ran his own bar. He poured a shot and slid the glass toward Nate. "On the house."

"Thanks." Nate picked up the whiskey and the rotgut smell burned his nose before he ever got it to his lips. In contrast, Mayor Gibbs had served him smooth Kentucky bourbon.

Nate downed the shot so he didn't offend the saloon owner, but it burned his throat and landed on top of his dinner with a vengeance.

The women who accompanied men at the card tables were thin, with harsh expressions and weary eyes. No one danced to the music, and the piano player looked as if he would fall off the stool in a drunken heap at any moment. The clash of notes the man was pounding on the keyboard sounded more like a cat running over the keys than a song.

Bernie said something to one of the girls, who then ran up the open stairway and disappeared to the second floor. No doubt warning the men and women upstairs not to come down while the sheriff was present, he surmised. Nate was already convinced that there was money being exchanged for favors in the rooms above. He just didn't know what he was supposed to do about it.

His job was to be visible and vigilant. To look like he was cracking down. Well, he was visible, making an appearance in each dance hall at least once a night. He was vigilant. He knew what was going on. Cracking down? Unless he had instructions otherwise, or complaints, he was keeping things on an even keel.

Nate spoke to a few miners, listened to one of the girls tell an off-color joke, then nodded his goodbye to Bernie and left.

Things were much the same at Zeke Taylor's saloon, the Three Moon Palace. Nate avoided the bar so he wouldn't be obliged to accept a drink. The inside of the "palace" was a crude structure with rough-hewn walls, and floors that hadn't been scrubbed since Moses was a baby. Nate's skin crawled when he thought about the women and the rooms upstairs.

At a table in the corner two men argued over a hand of cards, and Nate waited around until the dispute was settled without incident.

He gratefully walked out into the fresh air and took his time making his way to the Shady Lady. As he reached the entrance, he glanced inside. The place was twice as full as the other saloons, and it was easy to see why. The drinks cost just as much, but the whiskey was better, the place clean and the atmosphere lively.

He entered the room and heads nodded in acknowledgment. He spotted Lily at the bar and settled on a stool close by. Avoiding looking up at the painting, he looked at her instead.

The low neckline of her green satin dress revealed tantalizing crests of cleavage that made his head feel light and his other parts feel heavy. She'd wound a rope of pearls around her throat a few times, and her hair was caught up by tortoiseshell combs studded with rhinestones.

With one hand on her hip, she smiled. "You look like you could use some cheering up. I have just the thing for you."

He raised a brow and watched as she poured a shot of rye into a glass of cider and then twisted a slice of lemon into the mixture. He'd bet neither of the other saloon owners ever spent a penny on a lemon.

"This is Buffalo Bill's favorite drink," she said, pushing the glass toward him.

"You've served drinks to William Cody?"

She grinned. "Passed through on one of his buffalo hunts."

Nate didn't know whether or not to believe her, but he tasted the drink and enjoyed it even more than he had the mayor's bourbon. "How'd you know I'd like it?"

"I have a knack for knowing what men like," she replied with a wink.

He studied her but didn't see a suggestive gleam in her eye or any hint of double meaning. His body reacted all the same. How a whore could tie him in a double knot, he didn't know. But he didn't like his weakness.

The dark-haired girl came through the doorway behind Lily and loaded dirty glasses into a small crate. The girl glanced over at Nate, then quickly away.

Without thick powder and rouge, the purpling under her eye was visible. She didn't appear the same, because of her hair color and the way it had been cut, but there was no doubt in Nate's mind that this girl was Violet Brand.

"New girl?" he asked.

Lily nodded. "Francesca, this is Sheriff Harding."

The girl gave him a sideways glance and a nod, then carried the crate into the back room.

"Not very friendly, is she?" he asked.

"She's shy." Lily made herself a drink like Nate's and came around the end of the bar to sit beside him. "I don't do this often, but it's a good drink on a warm summer night."

He had the opportunity to note that the hem of her dress decently covered all but her ankles, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Her delicate floral scent drifted to where he sat and melted his resolve.

His gaze unerringly rose to the portrait of the nude Lily, where he observed the pearls and her breasts for a moment, then forced his attention back to the drink in front of him.

He shouldn't be thinking about Lily Divine naked. Shouldn't notice the way her dress pushed up her breasts or molded her slender waist. Shouldn't have any personal thoughts about her at all. He thought about her comfortable-looking room upstairs, the carved hickory bed and patchwork quilt, and wondered if that was where she took customers.

The whiskey he'd slugged back at the Big Nugget still burned in his belly, but now the heat had spread. He took off his hat and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

"Warm night," Lily observed.

He nodded.

Nate let his gaze wander the room, resting on a customer here and there, recognizing Doc Umber, the Callahan fellow who owned the restaurant where he ate many nights, and Wade Reed, who sat at a table playing cards with Helena and two miners.

The livery owner's presence didn't really surprise him. There wasn't much other entertainment in town. But it did amuse him that the husband of the woman who led the Women's Temperance Prayer League was playing poker and sipping a beer.

As though his thoughts had conjured it up, the sound of the women's nightly caterwauling drifted through the doorway.

He turned to meet Lily's eyes and saw a bright fire light in their blue depths.

"Excuse me, Sheriff." Lily slipped down from the stool and strolled to the doorway, where she pushed open the bat wings and stood in the dark opening. "Choir's a mite slim this evening," she called to the group. "Some of the ladies find amusement elsewhere?"

She'd be better off to ignore them rather than taunt them, he thought, listening to their haughty replies and glancing at Wade Reed, who'd just heard his wife's voice and suddenly seemed interested in the rear hallway.

Lily turned back to the room and called to the man at the piano. "Play something lively, Isaac!"

Nate got up and strode toward Lily. "Just shut the doors and ignore them."

"Like they're ignoring me?" She called out again, "It's warm in here, isn't it? Come dance by the doorway, so you can feel the night breeze. Mr. Ridley, will you dance with me?"

A grinning rancher joined Lily in the doorway, and a few at a time, others joined them, until a dozen dancers frolicked just inside the entrance.

Nate skirted the perimeter of the group and edged his way out into the night. He couldn't even hear his boots on the boardwalk above the clomping of the feet inside, the piano music, and the women who shrieked a hymn at the tops of their voices on the street. "'Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves...'"

Meriel Reed had edged up near the boardwalk and was peeking under the bat wing doors to get a better look. "'We shall come rejoicing, bringing i-i-in the sheaves'!"

Nate observed the gathering of women with a sinking feeling. He didn't see how any of this would bode well.

Finally their song wound down.

"Let us pray for the sinners!" Blythe Shaw called.

The women gathered in a circle, held hands and bowed their heads.

Nate didn't know how God could hear their silent prayers over the clamor coming from the dance hall, nor why they'd want the competition. "Shouldn't you move your prayer meetin' to the church?" he asked.

"This is where we're needed to do God's work," one of the wives replied. "This is a battleground, and we're here to wage war against sin and drunkenness."

"I was just in there," he told them. "I didn't see much sinnin' going on."

"The whole place is a den of iniquity and evil," Blythe told him. Her eyes narrowed. "You'll do well to remember who you're working for, Sheriff Harding."

"I'm workin' for the people of Thunder Canyon, you can be assured. And when I see someone breakin' the law, you can bet I'll take care of it."

"See that you do," she retorted. "Let's move on to the next battlefield, ladies."

As the gathering moved away, Nate noted that Beatrice Gibbs hadn't been in their midst that night. He couldn't recall ever seeing Evangeline with them, but he'd never had his attention called to her until that evening, so he might not have noticed.

Behind him, Lily stepped out onto the boardwalk and joined him near the stairs. "Guess they didn't like our music."

"Why do you taunt them?"

"Why do they harass me?"

"They think you're doing something sinful in there."

"And that's my business, isn't it? I was here before those women packed their fancy dresses and uppity ways and came hunting husbands. I washed smelly laundry, served drinks and earned my place in this town. I've shoveled more snow and horse dung off that street out there than they've seen clouds in their useless lives. I built my dance hall from the ground up and paid for every board and beer glass with hard work." Conviction was evident in her determined tone.

"It's your kind of work they're objectin' to, Miss Lily," he said respectfully. "Don't you see that?"

"I'm not ashamed of what I do, Sheriff. It's more shameful to rely on a man for your next meal and a roof over your head than it is to control your own life."

"But you do rely on men, lots of them," he replied. "The Shady Lady wouldn't be in business if it wasn't for men."

"Wrong." She faced him with angry passion in her eyes and conviction in her expression. "I rely on customers, the same as Wade Reed and Howard Shaw and Amos Douglas. I choose who sets foot in my doors and I set the rules for their behavior while they're inside. I am not the one sleeping with a man to keep my so-called respectable place in their home. Which of us are truly whoring ourselves, Sheriff?"

He stared at her, the accuracy of her statement sinking in. Again, he'd never thought that much about the plight of women. And he damned well wasn't sure he liked it now that she'd made him think-made him see things he didn't like. Things he knew weren't fair.

"I know how to deal with men," she told him, intensity in her voice. "You call them out. You see yourself as an equal, and you make them see you that way, too. But those women?" She gestured in the direction the singers had gone and shook her head. "I don't know how to deal with them. They don't look at themselves honestly. They're living in some sort of fairy-tale world where they're good and every one else is evil."

She glanced up at the dark heavens, and he studied her profile against the luminous gas lamps. Her delicate beauty belied a strength and conviction she didn't bother to hide.

She looked back at him then. "Real evil is a person controlling another person's will and life and livelihood, man or woman."

He saw what she was talking about, and her insight scared the hell out of him. Right here, right now, she made more sense than anyone he'd met in this town so far.