WEARING ONLY MY long underwear & ink-smelling high-heeled shoes, I pretended to yawn & stretch. As I did so, I stepped backwards towards the window. Then I whirled around, thrust my arm through the gap between sash & sill and fastened on to the girl who had been spying on me. I had seen her reflection in the mirror when I pretended to stretch.

I meant to catch her arm but I got a fistful of long, curly brown hair instead.

“Ow!” she squealed. “Let me go!” She tried to pull away but I held on tight, using both hands now.

“Why were you spying on me?” I cried. “Who hired you?”

“Let me go!” was her only response.

Using a hand-over-hand method on her long hair, I reeled her in a bit. “Who are you?” I repeated.

“I am Carrie. Carrie Pixley!” She was bent backwards, staring up at the blue sky with her hands to her head. “Please let me go. I didn’t mean to spy on you. I thought you were someone else.”

I saw two men coming along the boardwalk towards us. They had not yet seen her as they were about a block away and deep in conversation.

“Get in here, Carrie Pixley!” I said.

“What? Through the window?”

“Yes, through the window.” I pushed the sash up with one hand and tugged her hair with my other. Carrie Pixley tumbled through, head first. She almost knocked over the queen’s-ware washbowl on its stand.

I quickly shut the window, did the clasp & pulled down the painted oilcloth window curtain, all of which I should have done in the first place.

With the shade down it was dim in my room. Miss Carrie Pixley, the person who had been spying on me, was still on the floor, sitting up & rubbing her head.

She was about 13 or 14 with curly brown hair almost down to her waist & a mid-length woolen dress & button-up boots.

She glared up at me. “Ow!” She was still rubbing the crown of her head where she had banged it on the queen’s-ware washbowl.

Then she did something surprising. She began to giggle.

“What are you laughing at?” I asked.

“Your getup,” she said. “When I saw you go inside, I thought you were my Beloved’s lady friend. But you are just a boy in high-heeled shoes and your ‘undress uniform.’”

“What is ‘undress uniform’?”

“That is what my Beloved calls long underwear. He is so clever.”

I sighed. “Another Romantic Job. What is it about this place?” I held out my hand and helped her to her feet. “Who is your Beloved?” I asked. “Why did you think to find him here?”

She sat on the edge of my bed. “My Beloved is a newspaper reporter named Sam Clemens.”

“Sam Clemens?” I said. “Ain’t he a mite old for you?” I sat on my chair & bent over to undo the buttons on my shoes.

“He is only twenty-six,” she said, “and I will be fifteen in just about a year, so there is hardly ten years between us. My pa is eight years older than my ma so I reckon it is all right. I admit he is lazy, and a prankster to boot, but he is so handsome,” she sighed, “with his auburn hair and flashing blue-green eyes and slim figure. He and his brother Orion were staying in this room last year,” she added. “When I saw you come in here I thought you were Sam’s new Lady Friend.”

“You can see for yourself that I am not his new Lady Friend.”

“I am mightily relieved,” said Carrie Pixley, “for I intend to marry him.”

“Does he know about your plans to marry him?” I asked, kicking off the shoe I had just unbuttoned.

“Not yet,” she said. “But I know he likes me. He calls me ‘Miss P. of the Long Curls’. Once he asked me what sort of man I fancied. I teased him by saying I liked men with raven-black hair and broad shoulders. He turned pink and stamped off in a huff. ”

I stopped unbuttoning my second shoe and looked at her.

“Also,” I said, “twenty-six take away fourteen is twelve, not ten.”

“Oh, poo,” she said, twirling one of her long curls around her finger. “But who are you and why were you personating a lady?”

“My name is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye. I am here in Carson on a job.” I returned to the other shoe. The buttons were real fiddly.

“What is a Private Eye?”

“It is a kind of detective who shadows people and solves crimes,” I said.

“Has there been a crime?”

“No, I am here to shadow somebody.”

“‘Shadow’?”

“That means to follow them without them knowing they are being followed.”

“Is that why you were in disguise?”

“Yup.” I kicked off the second shoe.

“Who are you shadowing?” asked Miss Carrie Pixley, twirling a fresh ringlet.

“A Mississippi gambler called Poker Face Jace,” I said. “Do you know him?”

She shook her head.

I said, “A lady in Virginia City hired me to find out if he is True to her or Playing her False.”

“Just like me!” said Carrie Pixley. “I think Sam is Playing me False, too. I believe he is sweet on someone else. He used to pay attention to me and now he don’t.”

“Also,” I said, “my friend might be in danger.”

There was a tap on the door.

Before I could do anything, Miss Carrie Pixley had scrambled under the bed. And not a moment too soon.

“To whom were you talking, at all?” said Mrs. Murphy, coming into the room with my clean chamber pot. “I do not allow female visitors in my boardinghouse. Young as you are, if I find one I will evict you.”

“It is only me,” I lied. I could see part of Miss Carrie Pixley’s black boot sticking out from under the bed.

She put down the chamber pot. “I thought I heard voices.”

“You probably heard me practicing my Blind Widow Woman voice,” I said. “What do you think?” Here I put on the breathy voice of Mrs. Consuela Clever, “I am a blind widow woman from Dayton,” I said. “I like this room.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mrs. Murphy. She pointed to my hoops, skirt and corset where they lay in a pile in the middle of the floor. “You must not leave your fine new clothes lying about. Here, let me hang them up for you.”

I glanced over at the bed. Carrie Pixley’s foot had disappeared. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“How was your disguise, at all?” asked Mrs. Murphy over her shoulder.

“Bully,” I said. “I even fooled Sam Clemens up close and he knows me.”

From under the bed came a muffled noise.

I froze.

Would Mrs. Murphy discover Carrie? Would I be evicted, young as I was?