"I'd take care of you. You know that."
"Please, Sam. Don't start that."
She sat down at the far end of the sofa to avoid looking into the thick lenses. She didn't want to hurt his feelings. He was forty—an old forty—and she was twenty-three. He was a dull, ugly little man; a twenty-dollar-a-week bookkeeper when Duke had picked him up. But he was smart about accounts and legal documents. And he was loyal. He protected her from any shenanigans Mr. Jay might have in mind.
Mr. Jay and Duke had been partners of a sort, although this had been a tightly kept secret. The townsite papers were in Duke's name; but it had been Mr. Jay's money that had built the town and he had put himself firmly in control by tying Duke up with notes and contracts and such. Duke had found himself a mere front—just as she was now, passing Mr. Jay's decisions on to the council as if they were her own. She, Sam, and Mr. Madrid, and possibly Mr. Pinky Bronklin, were the only ones who knew this.
Mr. Jay's determination was sometimes frightening. He meant to take over Ben Vickers' contract, and he wanted as wild and dirty a town as possible in order to slow down the work. Some of Vickers' key men had been drugged or beaten. Without coming right out and saying so, Sam had made it clear that Mr. Jay had arranged these incidents. Oh, it was all a pretty rotten business, but there was a chance to make money here, a chance a woman didn't often get. She thought of that boarding house in Tacoma and shuddered. She would die before she went back there.
All the income from rents, leases, and the sale of real estate was going to pay off Duke's debt to Mr. Jay. The only thing in the clear was a three-quarter interest in the Pink Lady, which was in Persia's name and not part of Duke's estate. Since the town paid her living expenses out of tax money, she was able to put aside this income from the saloon each month. It was a tidy little sum but not enough to make a person rich—not in the year or so of existence the town had left.
Her great hope was that Mr. Jay would take over the tunnel contract soon. He could then come out in the open and he would buy the township proprietorship from Duke's estate, writing off the debts and putting up a tidy bit of cash besides. He would also buy the Pink Lady. And thanks to Sam Lester, Persia had this agreement in writing.
Sam set down his glass and refilled it. "You're honest enough with me, Persia. I'm grateful for that."
Before he could go on, she switched the subject back to Tesno. "Sam, how are they going to get rid of him?"
"There's nothing we can do about it."