Clement Cardinal could bring them to Canada. He rode into town to find them eating breakfast in the mansion once owned by the Reeds. He’d shown up because the pilot light above the opera house had gone out. First time he’d ever seen that happen. He knew it meant something disruptive had occurred. What a relief when it turned out it was his friends who made it through the night. Did he ask what happened? No, he did not. What good are questions if the answers will only drag you in the middle of someone else’s trouble?
They were eating breakfast in the kitchen and offered him a cup of coffee. Sam lay in the parlor, sleeping on the couch. Grace didn’t want him out of eyesight.
They asked Mr. Cardinal if they would find, in Canada, a nation vastly different from the one they’d be leaving. Someplace better for them?
Mr. Cardinal quoted Canada’s interior minister, Frank Oliver, from memory. “ ‘The purpose in giving free land to homesteaders is that the land may be made productive, and giving homesteads to single women would tend directly against that idea.’ ”
If a woman wanted to homestead in the North-West, she’d better get a man to come along. That was Canada.
“Not to mention,” Mr. Cardinal added, “whose land do you think you’d be getting for free?”
He drained his coffee and wished them all well, walked out and mounted his horse. The Red River cart sat empty now; someone had swiped those last few furs he hadn’t been able to sell. No bother, he thought. Stranger things than a few missing furs happened out here on the plains. Much stranger.
Back in the kitchen, the Lone Women discussed the future. If not Canada, then where? Points west, like Washington or Oregon? California? They considered a dozen directions, but all had their flaws.
“Then let’s stay,” Adelaide said.
“Here?” Grace asked. “You let about twenty people leave the theater before Elizabeth got to work. I think it was the right thing to do, but they’ll be back with the law. How will we explain…any of this?”
“Montana is big,” Bertie said. “We get away from here, but stay in Montana. Where, though?”
Fiona leaned in, elbows on the table, smiling. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if one of us had spent the last few years visiting abandoned towns across the state?”