CARRIE AND I HURRIED through the ever-growing crowd to Mrs. Murphy’s. As I was opening the door, a dirty white critter scampered inside before us. It was Sazerac, no doubt alarmed by the bangs of revolvers and the pops of firecrackers. His tail had been transformed from a jaunty capital O to an all-wool capital J placed firmly between his legs. He skittered down the hall ahead of us but nipped into my bedroom when I opened the door. Another gigantic boom—it sounded like someone firing an anvil—sent him whimpering under my bed.

“Poor Sazzy!” I said, tossing him a piece of jerky. “I don’t like those loud noises either.”

With Carrie’s help I got into my Blind Widow Woman Disguise. As I put on my false bosoms, I was reminded that I had started to grow some of my own. Luckily Carrie was over by the wardrobe smoothing out my crinolines and did not notice the two small bumps on my chest.

As I was putting on my bonnet, Carrie said, “Wait! Only little girls wear their hair down. Grown-up ladies pin it up, you know, even under a bonnet.”

“I do not have any pins,” I said.

“You got any pencils?” she asked.

I opened a drawer in the vanity table & pulled out a handful of Detective Pencils. Using just three, Carrie pinned up the ringlets of my wig and then put on the bonnet to secure them.

“There!” she cried. “You look much older than you did before. Maybe twenty or even twenty-three.”

“It looks bully,” I admitted.

From outside came a muffled bang. I heard poor Sazzy whimper beneath the bed.

“Do not fret, Sazzy,” I said. “It will be over soon.”

“Do not listen to him, Sazzy,” said Carrie. “This will go on for hours.” She had twisted her own long locks, and was holding them atop her head admiring herself in the mirror.

“You should pin up your hair, too,” I said, as I tied the ribbon of my black poke bonnet under my chin. “It makes you look about sixteen. Maybe even seventeen.”

“But Sam always calls me Miss P. of the Long Curls,” she said. “He likes my long hair.”

I said, “He has not taken much notice of your long hair so far this past month. And you just said only little girls wear their hair down.” (My pinching corset was already making me crabby.)

“True,” said Carrie to her own reflection. She pursed her lips & still holding her hair up she turned first this way & then that.

Finally she made her decision. “I’ll do it!” she cried, and with a few cleverly placed Detective Pencils she transformed her long curly hair into a fashionable “rotonde” or “fastness” or some such term. I made a mental note to learn to be specific about ladies’ hairstyles.

“Maybe I should put on a corset and hoopskirt, too,” she said.

“No time,” I said. “You have to guide a poor, blind widow to the nighttime session of the Legislature.”

“Very well, then,” she said, and with a lingering glance at herself in the mirror she followed me out of the room.

Once outside in the dark winter night, Carrie led me by the left hand while I used my right to tap with the cane. I usually do not like to be touched but I was wearing Mrs. Murphy’s black leather gloves so that made it bearable.

The bonfire was even bigger than before and people were still making speeches, but as Carrie and I came close people turned to look at us.

“Look! It is that famous Widow!” said a woman.

“The Pistol-packing one?” said another.

“No. The blind one. See her stick?”

“I heard she packs a pistol, too,” said a third woman.

“Hush! She is blind, not deaf!”

And a man cried, “Move out of her way! She’s going to the House!”

“See?” whispered Carrie. “Your Blind Widow Disguise is working.”

The crowd parted before me and I had almost reached the sidewalk when two men came away from either side of the double doors of the Great Basin Hotel & jumped down onto the muddy thoroughfare & planted themselves in my way. Their firelit faces looked green through my blue spectacles. They wore stovepipe hats & bushy muttonchop whiskers & they carried Henry rifles.

“You cannot go in there,” one of the men said. “They are taking the vote.”

I looked up at the windows of the upper floor. Even through my blue spectacles, I could see Jace’s cigar-smoking shadow there on the blind.

“Please!” I said in my breathiest voice. “I need to go in there.”

“You cannot prevent a poor blind widow woman,” drawled a familiar voice, “for lo! She has come to pray and intercede. Stand aside!”

It was Mr. Sam Clemens, my reporter friend, and Miss Carrie Pixley’s Beloved. He had come to my rescue without knowing it was me.

“Why, Sam,” said one of them, “if you can vouch for her, then that is all right.” The men in the stovepipe hats stepped back up onto the sidewalk & opened the double doors of the Great Basin Hotel.

“None of you can impede us,” proclaimed Sam, taking my right arm & helping me up onto the sidewalk. “Nothing can deter me. I will stay with you no matter what comes. No matter what nefarious scheme they devise to distract me, it will not stand! Miss Pixley? Is that you? Why, with your hair up you look so mature!” The fumes from his breath suggested that he had been at the cobbler’s punch.

“Why, thank you, Mr. Clemens,” she said in her grown-up tone of voice.

He said, “Is it not past your bedtime, child?”

Miss Carrie Pixley jerked me to a halt at the very threshold, so that she could stamp her foot on the sandstone sidewalk. “I am not a child!” she said. “I am almost fourteen years old! I am nearly old enough to be married and some suitors have already come courting.”

“Suitors?” drawled Sam. “Little Miss P. of the Long Curls has got suitors? Why, nobody told me the race was on. I have not even got my bets in.”

Despite his claim that nothing would deter him, he dropped my arm and gave her a little bow. “Do you also desire to mount up to the chamber in order to pray and intercede?”

“Why, no,” she said, and even through my blue spectacles I could see her dimples. “I would much rather try a glass of that fruit cobbler you love so much and listen to that fine brass band.”

“The fruit cobbler,” he slurred, “is medicine for my cold, and strong stuff it is, too. I will buy you a champagne cocktail.” He offered her his faithless arm.

“Oh, Sam!” she cried, taking his proffered elbow. “I would love that of all things.”

And without a backward glance they abandoned me, a poor, blind widow woman.

It did not matter. I tapped forward and the top-hatted men shut the double-doors behind me.

I was in.

I could smell the scent of Jace’s cigar drifting down. He might renounce me forever, but I had to tell him the truth about the deadly & heartless Black Widow, Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville.

I pretended to tap my way forward, in case the men were looking at me through the glass windows of those double doors. I reckon they were not looking, for when Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville emerged from the side door of the Magnolia Saloon and said, “Do not mount those stairs, or I will fill you full of balls,” they made no move to help me.