Clementine Hawkins was one of the first regulars at my tearoom, even before it became McNair’s Hotel. I wasn’t surprised, given what Hoss said about the widow’s baking skills, but her gaze, bright and watchful as a sleuthing hedgehog, always made me nervous. Fortunately, she’d never actually seen me wearing saloon-girl garb, but the same couldn’t be said of the blonde lady she was introducing as the granddaughter of friends from her “theatre” days, now doing a second tour of the West as a member of an itinerant Shakespearean troupe. All I could hope was that I’d blended unrecognizeably into the woodwork the previous time I’d crossed paths with the person I’ll always think of as “the shell-game girl.”

I’d been in the back room at the Red Dog Saloon negotiating for a bottle of drinkable brandy–some would-be gunslinger had put a bullet smack through our own supply while he’d been trying to shoot out the lights–when she’d swept in. Before the saloonkeeper quite knew what was happening she’d taken three dollars off him and arranged to start pitting her skills against his clientele as soon as she’d changed her outfit. No more than five minutes later, she’d reappeared in a costume half-Indian Chief, half-flamingo, and all peacock. She’d launched into her public presentation of those three walnut shells and “one very small little pea” with practiced ease–not an ill-chosen word to bloat her routine–and the crowd had lined up like sheep for the shearing. By the time Ben Cartwright finally broke her winning streak, she’d given the Red Dog its best day’s take in months, even after pocketing her own share of the proceeds. It was a shame that the fisticuffs which immediately erupted outside, with Ben doing his best to prove his sons weren’t a patch on their old man when it came to bare-knuckle boxing, more or less put an end to the indoor entertainment. The next day she was gone, but her memory lingered, and not just because she’d been pretty and clever. For all her professional polish she’d had an almost innocent charm; her laughter on being outmaneuvered by Ben hadn’t masked the least prickle of resentment, and her surprise when he left his five-dollar stake on the bar after winning “such a nice piece of glass” had been as genuine as her present amusement on hearing a full explanation of affairs from her hostess.

Only now did I learn that she’d done the whole thing on a dare, for a moment’s relaxation during an exhausting stage tour in which she’d alternated performances of Juliet and Desdemona, keeping Lady MacBeth in reserve for the Saturday matinees. Even after discovering she’d won and lost a fifty-thousand dollar emerald while playing at being a saloon-girl, it seemed her only regret was not having known how close at hand Clementine Hawkins, that old family friend, had been without her knowing it.

It should have been a cheerful reunion, but despite all our polite smiles it wasn’t. I couldn’t help noticing she’d grown a bit long in the tooth to play Juliet or Desdemona now, though I’d have wagered a drayload of beer to a plugged nickel that her Lady MacBeth was now twice as worth the seeing as the other two roles had ever been. The trouble was, Lady MacBeth didn’t count for anything in her eyes if she could sit here taking tea a stone’s throw from her posters outside the Opera House, and have nobody recognize her, or care who she was. It had been not innocence, but the blithe confidence of youth that charmed us all those years ago–and with her youth had gone her confidence, leaving uncertainty to draw crow’s-feet on her weary face. I knew that, just as I could see that Clementine Hawkins knew it, and I could also tell the widow had no idea how to encourage her no-longer-so-young friend.

I was about to let my other duties draw me away when Ben Cartwright, his two sons in tow, strode across the room. Clementine and I both sighed, she at the sight of the one man she felt worthy to replace her dear departed ‘Arry, I for the absence of his eldest son, supposedly in Boston now. It might as well have been the moon….

Our companion had brightened up, an automatic reaction to the sight of anything male, I suspected. She was collecting herself like a horse about to launch itself at a dangerous jump as the Cartwrights approached.

Ben’s eye landed on Clementine’s guest, flickered up in the direction of the Opera House, and settled on her again. “My goodness, what an honor it is to meet you, Miss–oh, my. We have met before, haven’t we?”

He’d broken off halfway through for a moment, and an even broader, warmer smile overspread his face as he finished his greeting. She looked puzzled for a moment and then let out a delighted laugh. “Why, it’s the gentleman who knows how the game is played!” she exclaimed, just softly enough no one at the other tables could overhear.

Ben laid a hand over each of hers, leaned forward to plant a fatherly kiss on her forehead, and chuckled, “What’s more, I still pick the one in the middle.” A moment later he was out the door, with Hoss and Joe trotting to keep up.

“That’s dear Benjamin for you,” Clementine Hawkins said with a dreamy sigh and a propriatary smirk. But the shell-game girl glowed like she’d just tasted water from the Fountain of Youth.