Elaine Coffman - [MacKinnon 04] Read Online Free PDF

enough to drive a woman crazy. She’ll
never be able to keep her floors clean.”
    “I don’t spit on the floors, Molly.”
    “You don’t always aim to spit on the floors,” she
amended. “Lord have mercy! The cookhouse floor looks like a bunch of bugs have
been squashed on it.”
    “I’m not the only man who chews,” he said.
    “No, but you’re the only one I can’t fuss at about it.”
    “You’re fussing now,” he said with a laugh, dodging the
sourdough roll she tossed at him.
     
    One week later, Adrian was sitting in a barber’s chair in
San Francisco, once again thinking about what Molly had said. She was right. He
had been fishing in a herring barrel, looking for trout.
    “You say you came all the way from Humboldt country to find
yourself a wife?” the barber asked.
    Adrian nodded, then stared at the toes of his boots. He
regretted telling the man anything. He didn’t want to discuss his personal life
with anyone. He watched the barber strop the straightedge, waiting impatiently
for him to lather his face.
    “Well, you’ve been here a week now. Got any particular woman
picked out?”
    “No.”
    “You might try the Silver Dollar. Most folks in these parts
think the Silver Dollar has the best-looking women in San Francisco.”
    “I want a wife, not a whore.”
    “Lots of men in these parts see no difference. Most of them
think nothing of taking a whore to wife. You got something against whores?”
    “Not as long as they remain in a brothel, where they belong.
I just don’t want to take one for—”
    He had been about to say, for a wife , but he didn’t
get to finish. At that moment the barber slapped a wide path of lather across
his face, and he closed his mouth, a moment too late. He spit out a mouthful of
soap and settled back in the chair. The barber cleared the two clean-scraped
paths down the side of his face, then stood back. He pointed the razor at
Adrian. “I hear tell a reformed whore makes a fine wife. Now, you take your
whores, why, they don’t have to be stoked like a stack of old, dry wood.
They’re like kindling, ready to burst into flame at the slightest spark.”
    “And they don’t particularly care whose spark it is,” Adrian
said. “Now, can we get on with my shave before all of this lather dries on my
face?”
    “Well, if you’re dead set against a whore, I hear tell the
Widow Peabody has a couple of daughters…”
    “I’ve had the pleasure,” Adrian said, coming to his feet,
the memory of the Widow Peabody and her homely daughters following him. Heaven
help him, but that woman and her daughters were as ugly as forty miles of bad
road.
    He removed the cape and wiped the lather from his face,
tossing the cape in the chair he had just vacated. This whole absurd
conversation was pointless. Just as this trip to San Francisco had been
pointless. He reached into his pocket.
    “Hey! I’m not finished.”
    “Yes, you are,” Adrian said, flipping the man two bits.
    An hour later, he stepped out of the Pacific Express
Building on Montgomery Street and paused for a moment at the edge of the
street. It took him only a second or two to search up the street and down,
finding no hack he could hire to take him back to the hotel. Turning the collar
up on his coat, he turned up the street and began walking. It was raining
again. He was sick of San Francisco. He was sick of nosy people. He was even sicker
of this asinine search for a wife.
    Perhaps the rain was a godsend. Perhaps it was the cause of
his morose mood, his loneliness, his sense of desolation, and if so, it must
have accounted for his realization that the trip had been a futile one. It was
as clear as glass to him now. No self-respecting woman was going to rush into
marriage with a man she had just met, no matter how rich the man might be.
    On top of that, he hadn’t met one woman since coming to San
Francisco whom he would ask to dance, much less take to wife. It was mighty
slim pickings in San Francisco as