CHEEYA AND I RODE alone through the violet twilight. The strange half light of a winter dusk made the snow look deep blue and I could just make out the wooden railway tracks that carried stone from the quarry. By the time I reached Carson it was dark. Even before I reached the Plaza I could see an infernal glow lighting up the night sky.

As Cheeya and I got closer I saw flames and little black figures dancing around them like the imps of hell. The supporters of the Corporation Bill were tossing old boxes & barrels & suchlike and making a big bonfire right outside the Great Basin Hotel.

They were still building it up but I could already feel its heat at 100 feet remove. I swung off Cheeya & led him into the stables. The other horses in their stalls were restless, probably from the smoke. I closed the south- and west-facing windows, to block out the smell and the shouts of the crowd. I guessed all the stable hands had gone over to take part in the fun.

I needed to find Jace to warn him for the third & hopefully final time about Violetta. But Cheeya was my best friend and he came first. I took his saddle off & brushed him & covered him with a blanket & made sure he had mash & fresh water. He nuzzled me and butted me gently towards the stall door as if to say, “Skedaddle!”

I skedaddled, making sure the stable doors were shut behind me.

Coming closer to the fire I saw about 200 people in that 80-foot-wide road, many of them known to me. The town was blanketed with snow but that fire in the middle of Carson Street was so big that it had made a muddy circle that nearly filled up the street.

There is something about fire. It was entrancing and so was the music. A brass band had assembled & they struck up “Battle Cry of Freedom,” a song which always makes me want to march off to war. Standing there in front of the flames, my face was hot and my back felt cold.

Over by the brass band I saw a moving arc of blue fire. Someone had set up a trestle table as a bar in the thoroughfare outside the Magnolia Saloon & the bartender was making a Blue Blazer.

I thought, “This place is almost as wild & sinful as Virginia City.”

I tore myself away from the entrancing bonfire & music and hurried three blocks south to the St. Charles Hotel. I had to find Jace.

“Mr. Montgomery and Mrs. De Baskerville have checked out,” said the curly-haired night clerk.

My heart sank. I was too late!

“You can see their luggage is packed and ready to go.” He pointed towards some trunks and carpetbags stacked inside the front door.

Hallelujah! I was not too late.

“I believe they are taking the five o’clock stage tomorrow morning,” he said, in answer to my first question. “That is to say, late tonight.”

“No, I don’t think they are married yet,” he replied to my second query.

And finally, “They told me they were hoping to witness the Legislature vote in the Corporation Bill.”

Triple hallelujah! Jace was still unmarried and here in Carson.

I ran north along the nearly deserted backstreets, then wove through outbuildings to the rear entrance of the Great Basin Hotel. I expected to find easy access to the Legislature via those back stairs. But instead of it being deserted—as it usually was—there were about half a dozen men at the foot of the stairs, and all armed with revolvers and rifles.

Mustering as much confidence as I could, I started towards them.

“Hold it right there!” cried one of the men, a bearded prospector type. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I am a friend of the Corporation Bill,” I said. “I want to see a man called Jason Francis Montgomery. I have an important message for him. Is he in there?”

“He is in there,” said a man with a Colt’s Army. “We know Poker Face Jace all right. But who are you?”

Another man at the foot of the stairs said, “Why, look at his fringed trowsers and moccasins! I’ll bet he is one of them half-starved Paiutes on the rampage. Get him, boys!”

Too late, I realized I was still wearing my buckskin trowsers & moccasins & a hawk feather in my black slouch hat. I should have dressed up as Danny Ashim, Jewish Phonographic Reporter.

I did not linger to explain but turned tail & fled. Shouts pursued me and a few bullets whizzed past my ears.

I rounded the sandstone corner of the Great Basin Hotel and plunged into the crowd around the bonfire, dodging this way and that.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The shots were not fired by my pursuers, but by a man in a plug hat shooting into the sky for silence. The loud reports of those three shots from his Colt’s Army brought the brass band to an untidy halt.

I was scrouched down behind a woman’s hoopskirt, pretending to tie my shoe, which was really a moccasin. A shiny-haired man in plaid trowsers & a small plug hat stepped up onto an upturned turnip crate.

“My name is Hal Clayton!” he shouted. “Welcome to the Third House! As you may know, this year’s Territorial Legislature finishes in just over a week. Before it does, we are trying to get the First House to pass the Corporation Bill. We only need one councilman to abstain or change his vote and we will win.”

Everybody cheered.

“Keep an eye out for Councilman Hall!” he added. “Also known as ‘Greenback’ Hall on account of they bribed him with fifteen thousand dollars to vote against our bill.” The crowd booed. “He has not arrived yet and if he does we are finished.”

Everybody growled.

“P.K., is that you? You look so skinny!”

I looked up from “tying my moccasin.” Miss Carrie Pixley was looking down at me. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Hiding from my pursuers.”

“Nobody is pursuing you.”

“No men with rifles and revolvers?”

She stood on tiptoe and looked around. In the firelight I could see she was wearing a fur bolero jacket over a pine green corduroy dress. “Nope. Why were they pursuing you?”

“I was trying to get in there.” I stood up and nodded towards the windows of the Great Basin Hotel, lit from within by candles.

“Why?”

“I think Jace is in there. I have to warn him about Violetta De Baskerville. All the rumors are true. She marries men and then kills them for their money and/or toll road franchises.”

“Tell him tomorrow.”

“I can’t. As soon as tonight’s session ends, Jace and Violetta are going to get married and then leave town on the early morning stage to Sacramento. I tried the back entrance but I guess they thought I was a rampaging Paiute Indian,” I added. “They will be on the lookout for a kid.”

“Why don’t you tell him when he comes out?”

“They got half a dozen Justices of the Peace up there,” I said. “He might come out married.”

We both pondered this for a spell, she staring into the fire, me gazing up at the Great Basin Hotel.

“Ladder?” she said.

“Not tall enough,” said I. “And if they see me trying to get in the window they will lynch me for sure.”

Suddenly Carrie turned to me and grasped my shoulders. Tiny reflected bonfires in her brown eyes made them look sparkly and gold. “I got an idea!”

“What?”

“They might let you in if you was dressed as that poor, blind widow woman. Only a hardhearted devil would turn you away.”

I shook my head and gazed back up at the Great Basin Hotel. “I vowed never to wear that getup again.”

That was when I saw a familiar silhouette on one of the pulled-down blinds in one of the upstairs windows. It was a tall, broad-shouldered man with slim hips and a cigar. I knew it was Poker Face Jace. At that same moment, a boy in the Brass Band played a little tune on his fife that made the gooseflesh pop up & my vision get blurry & my heart grow big & my chest swell out. That little tune did more than a whole brass band to muster my courage & my resolve. I had to make a sacrifice and be brave. I had to do it for Jace, who had once saved my life and even risked a bullet in the heart on account of me.

Miss Carrie Pixley was right. It was time for me to don the hated Blind Widow Disguise and that danged pinching corset.

I turned to Carrie. “All right,” I said. “I will do it. Will you help me get disguised?”

“You bet!” she cried.