Mae laughed. "You'd be likely to find yourself with an unwanted visitor in the middle of the night, and the townsfolk would no doubt take up a petition if they heard that the new doctor was sharing rooms with the girls at the saloon." She indicated the settee. "Sit down. I'll get us our food in a minute."

"I have a feeling," Vance said as she settled into the plush seat, stretched out her legs, and crossed her ankles, "that the townspeople don't need too much of an excuse to take up a petition."

"Met some of them already, have you?" Mae topped off their whiskey and sat next to Vance.

"Mmm-hmm. I paid some visits with Caleb today on his rounds. I can't tell you how many people were scandalized."

"I imagine you're used to that. Couldn't have been that much different where you came from."

"Philadelphia," Vance said, answering the unasked question. "And no, it wasn't, although the outrage tends to be more subtly expressed in that social setting."

"There's nothing quite like polite indignation, is there," Mae said with a trace of bitterness.

Vance set down her glass. "You sound like you've experienced it firsthand."

"My mother was a lady's maid in Baltimore. I was raised around the privileged." She waved her hand as if swatting away a troublesome insect. "I could play with their children, even take lessons with them, until we were of a certain age." Her smile was brittle. "When the young men--the sons of the wealthy--began to find me of interest, I was suddenly no longer welcome in the same circles."

"I'm sorry."

"No need to be. Let me get you some dinner." Mae rose abruptly and moved to the sideboard, where she uncovered the platter of cold chicken, bread, and cheese. She lifted the tray. "You must be hungry if you spent the day with..." To her surprise, she felt Vance at her side.

"What is it?"

"Let me take that for you."

Struck by the intensity in Vance's gaze, Mae extended the tray.

"Why, thank you."

Vance gripped the tray on one side and steadied the opposite edge against her chest and her left upper arm. As she carried it back to the sitting area and carefully set it on the low table between the chairs, she said, "I can load and fire a rifle as quickly as I could with two arms. I can also saddle my own horse and do most other things."

"You think I was serving you because you've got one arm?"

Mae gave her a look between exasperation and affection. "I'm used to serving men, who rarely lift a fing--"

"Although I can pass for a man, and have, I'll not have a woman do for me."

"Habit is all I meant," Mae said gently. Seated once more, she rested her chin in the palm of her hand. "I don't imagine you allow anyone to do for you." Her gaze fell on Vance's empty sleeve. "How did it happen?"

"No one ever asks," Vance said curiously, almost to herself, wondering how they had so quickly moved to such sensitive topics. It seemed that when she was with Mae, she revealed far more than she intended. With a conscious attempt to redirect the conversation, she said lightly, "I doubt you'd find the details of any interest and--"

"You should let me judge that." Mae leaned forward and prepared two plates, then handed one to Vance. "I know you were in the army.

Did anyone know you were a woman?"

"How did you know that?"

"Your trousers. They're army issue. I've seen enough army men to know." She nibbled at a bit of cheese. "And you do not look like the kind of woman who buys secondhand clothes. Or steals them."

Vance laughed. "There was a time or two, especially when the campaigns were long and far from home, when I was tempted to...

expropriate a new pair. But you're right, these are mine, and yes, I served in the Union Army for three years."

"All that time, and no one knew."

"Some did. I wasn't the only woman. I know of at least one officer whose wife joined at the same time he did and served in his outfit."

Although she wasn't hungry, Vance ate a little. "The services of every able-bodied person were needed, especially doctors. No one cared what was under my clothes." She smiled grimly. "Or what wasn't."

"What about your family? Surely, they were opposed."

"My father was against it."

Vance's face closed on some hard memory, and Mae knew instinctively she'd gone as far as she could that night to assuage her not-inconsiderable curiosity about the mysterious doctor. "The war didn't touch us that much--not like it did you back East. We knew about it and the soldiers have been straggling through town more and more since it's been over. So many of them--like they have no purpose anymore."

"I imagine you've been fighting your own wars out here."

Thinking of the arduous trek by foot and wagon when food and shelter were always scarce, the deaths from accidents and disease along the way, and the harsh and unforgiving land at the end of the journey, Mae nodded. "True enough. It does feel that way at times."

"How many girls work here?"

"Around about a dozen or so at any time. Some get lucky, find a man who doesn't care what they've been, and they move on. Some hope they still have a home somewhere back East to go to and they leave."

Mae shrugged. "Most stay because they've nowhere else to go."

"And you...look out for them."

"You could say that. I do what I can to see that they don't get hurt." She sighed and gave Vance a weary smile. "We live outside the law, what little of it there is here. No one will take our side against a man, no matter what the offense."

"But you protect them somehow."

With a delicate, well-manicured hand, Mae drew up the hem of her skirt to just above her shapely knee, revealing a small revolver secured with a thin strap above the top of her stocking. "I know how to use this, and I have."

A grin spread across Vance's face. "Fear is a powerful weapon."

"That it is." Mae rose, poured brandy, and returned. She handed one glass to Vance. "What was it like doctoring today?"

Vance considered her strange travels with Caleb to several outlying ranches as well as to the homes of some townspeople. "Funny, the people on the ranches seemed far less disturbed by me. Of course, most of the people we visited in town were ladies." Vance flicked her empty sleeve. "Not only is this shocking, but the rest of me is apparently just as bad."

Mae snorted derisively. "You could be wearing the finest Paris fashions, but as long as you're doing the work of a man, you're going to cause talk. Are you good at it?"

"I don't know," Vance said quietly. "I was. Once." She met Mae's eyes and saw acceptance, before she had even confessed. "I haven't been able to do much of anything since I was shot."

"That's when you lost your arm."

"Yes." Vance cleared her throat, which had gone tight. "My skills are...perhaps somewhat lacking now."

"Your skills," Mae rejoined, both amused and adamant, "have got to be far better than most anyone else's in the territory. Doc Melbourne is about the only real doctor out here." She leaned forward, displaying an alluring amount of cleavage, and tapped a delicate finger on Vance's thigh. "So don't let anyone in town or otherwise make you feel like you shouldn't be doing what you know how to do."

Vance registered the subtle sway of Mae's breasts but it was the hand on her leg that shocked her, the touch so foreign she barely recognized it. The only people in memory who had touched her had been those changing her bandages. They had come once a day, bringing unspeakable pain through no fault of their own. She saw the endless rows of beds, standing open like graves, heard the plaintive cries of the dying, felt the pathos seep into her bones. She shivered and a trickle of cold sweat ran down her neck.

Mae moved closer still, dabbed the sweat from Vance's throat with a white lace handkerchief she withdrew from her bodice, and murmured, "You're not there now, wherever it is."

"It's inside me," Vance gasped, not even meaning to speak.

"Well then, we'll just have to see about getting it out." She sat back and spoke in a normal tone, knowing that the only way to chase away the terror was to get on with the living. "One of my girls is pregnant."

Vance blinked and narrowed her eyes. The room came into sharp focus. She knew that Mae had witnessed her lapse, but it didn't embarrass or humiliate her the way it usually did. Mae regarded her with no hint of pity or morbid interest. She drew a breath and felt the nightmare release her. "Pregnant?" At Mae's nod, she went on, "How old is the girl?"

"Fourteen or so. She doesn't rightly know. Her parents died from typhoid while traveling overland and the wagon master brought her this far and left her on her own." Mae shook her head. "I suppose he should be given credit for that. She would have brought a fair price in one of the mining camps."

"Christ." Vance stood and paced, stopping before crossing the invisible border into Mae's boudoir. "How far along?"

"I'm guessing seven months. She's only been here five. Someone got at her before she arrived." Mae stiffened, her smooth delicate features hardening. "There's others here as young as her, younger. But when I saw she was in that way, I kept the men away from her."

"How does she support herself?"

"I see that she's fed and has a room."

"You could wear yourself out trying to save them all, I imagine,"

Vance said softly from across the room.

"I imagine you would know," Mae murmured, her gaze traveling gently over Vance's pale face.

v "How anyone ever took her for a man, I'll never know," Annie said a touch breathlessly. "She has the most beautiful eyes, so kind."

"Put her in a uniform with a couple of layers of long johns underneath," Sissy said, "smudge a little dirt on her face to cover up that lily-white skin, and who's to say she wasn't what she claimed."

Mae listened to the idle chatter with half a mind. She stood huddled with a few others against the railing on the second floor, looking down through a cloud of cigar smoke into the saloon hall below. It was packed with men whose voices converged to create a blanket of sound that nearly drowned out all other conversation.

"People see what they expect to see," Mae murmured.

"She's a darn sight easier to look at than Doc Melbourne," Sissy acknowledged grudgingly. "I'd rather have her poking at me than him."

"Doc Melbourne's always been a gentleman," Annie replied primly.

"That's because you've got a soft spot for him," Sissy griped.

"So what if I do? I saw you giving Vance a smile or two."

Mae bristled inwardly at the gossip that ordinarily she wouldn't pay any mind to. Hearing the other women discuss Vance so casually made her irrationally annoyed, even though she understood their interest. Vance was not just a newcomer, which always garnered curiosity for a few days, she was a woman doing something these young girls had never even imagined possible. On top of that, she was intriguing--in her independence and her differentness. Of course they were going to talk about her. Even flirt with her a little bit. Seduction was their primary means of survival, and it came as naturally to them as it did to Mae. Vance, however, had seemed to be immune to even the most flagrant flirtations. Still, the way Sissy had flaunted her youthful attributes had rankled.

At Vance's request, Mae had accompanied her while she made her initial examinations of all the girls, questioning them gently about past pregnancies or female troubles they might have had, asking if they knew how to take care of themselves and prevent disease and impregnation.

Vance had been thorough and gentle and kind. She had neither judged nor attempted to change what they were. She had merely given them her attention and her caring. It was a wonder they all didn't fall in love with her, whether they were of a mind to lie with a woman or not.

"And so what if I did give her a little look." Sissy's voice interrupted Mae's musings. "You think men are the only ones who enjoy our company? You could do worse than having the town doctor take a shine to you. It might keep the cowboys off you for a while."

Startled, Annie looked at Mae. "You mean sometimes women might come to a place like this?"

"It's not unheard of," Mae snapped, giving Sissy a withering glance. "But just because a woman wears pants doesn't mean she likes to sleep with her own kind. Don't go jumping to conclusions."