Anna awoke with a yelp of terror and sat bolt upright on her cot. Mrs. Bates, who had shared Elizabeth’s mattress, automatically reached out a comforting hand even though she was only half-awake herself.
“Oh, oh, oh, I thought it was just a nightmare,” Anna said, hugging herself and rocking back and forth.
“I’m afraid not,” Mrs. Bates said. “And we must make the best of it. Think of the stories you’ll tell your children one day, Anna. They will be amazed to learn how brave you were.”
“I’m not brave at all!”
“Then pretend to be,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t let them see you’re afraid, or it’ll be that much worse for you.”
Mrs. Bates stared at her in amazement, but Elizabeth just pushed herself to her feet and tried to shake the wrinkles out of her skirt. In the light of day, their prison looked even worse. The cells were black with years of dirt, and the guards had told them they were in the men’s punishment cells.
Not exactly what Elizabeth had signed on for.
“Mrs. Nolan!” a guard called.
“I’m here!” The elderly woman who had told off the judge yesterday came to her cell door.
He unlocked it and pulled her out.
“Where are you taking me? Are we being released?”
The guard simply locked the door, grabbed her arm and started pulling her along with him.
“Where are you taking me?” she cried again, but the guard didn’t even glance at her. All the other women had rushed to the bars of their cells, and they called out encouragement in the moments before she and the guard disappeared from sight.
“Where are they taking her?” Anna asked.
“They’re probably going to let her go,” Mrs. Bates said. “As a mercy, because of her age, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Bates wasn’t a good liar, but she was good enough to fool Anna. Or maybe Anna just wanted to believe her.
But Mrs. Nolan was only the first. One by one, each woman was summoned by a guard and escorted out. None of them came back.
About half a dozen had gone when Anna started crying. Elizabeth wanted to shake her.
Mrs. Bates sat down on the cot beside her. “Now, now, there’s nothing to cry about.”
“What’s happening to them?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“They’re either releasing them or moving them to the women’s section,” Elizabeth said.
Anna looked up in surprise. “How do you know?”
Elizabeth wanted to say that even a worm like Whittaker wouldn’t dare keep a bunch of respectable females locked up in the men’s section with male guards to ogle them for more than one night, but she couldn’t appear too knowledgeable about jailhouse life. “It only stands to reason. What else could they do, sell them into slavery?”
Mrs. Bates said, “Miss Miles is right, dear. It only stands to reason.”
“Elizabeth Miles,” the guard called.
Elizabeth sighed. “Here.”
It was one of the brutish guards from last night. He grinned, showing blackened teeth, as he unlocked the door. Elizabeth gave him her best glare and shook off his hand when he would have grabbed her. Annoyed, he gave her a little shove with his stick, but she’d been expecting it and hardly even stumbled. Head high, she strode past the other cells and through the door into the yard.
“Ain’t you gonna ask where we’re going?” the ape taunted.
She shot him another glare, the one she’d practiced in the mirror until the Old Man said she had it right. “No.”
He looked like he wanted to crack her over the head with his stick, but he apparently thought better of it. Beating a woman last night during the confusion might be excused, but doing so in the light of day with possible witnesses might not be so wise. For all he knew, she was the daughter of a millionaire. She could certainly glare like one, as she well knew.
She’d been walking toward the building where they’d waited last night. When she reached the door, she stopped expectantly, and the ape actually opened it for her. One small victory, she thought.
Several clerks sat at the two desks in the large room, and one of them asked her name and checked her off a list. The ape left with the name of the next woman, and the clerk took her to an office down the hall a ways. Warden Whittaker sat behind a big, bare desk looking like a toad wearing a cheap suit. He didn’t get up.
The clerk pointed at the straight-backed chair sitting square in front of Whittaker’s desk. Elizabeth sat, folding her hands primly in her lap, and waited. The clerk handed the warden a sheet of paper and left.
Whittaker studied the paper for a long moment, while Elizabeth studied him. A small man who wasn’t aging well, he seemed shrunken inside his clothes. A big black birthmark covered his temple, like a spider that had settled there to read over his shoulder. She bit back a smile. He didn’t look like a man who would take kindly to being laughed at.
“You’re a long way from home, Miss Miles.”
“Women come from all over the country to support the cause.”
“Pretty girl like you, don’t you have a husband to keep you at home?”
If she was going to be stuck here for three months, she shouldn’t make an enemy of the warden on the first day, so she swallowed the reply she wanted to make: that she didn’t need any worthless man to run her life. “No, I don’t.”
Whittaker sighed, obviously frustrated with the suffragettes. “Your fine is only twenty-five dollars. If you pay it, you can walk out of here right now and catch a train for”—he glanced down at the paper again—“South Dakota this afternoon.”
“Paying the fine would be an admission of guilt, and I’ve done nothing wrong, Mr. Whittaker.” Thank goodness she’d listened to Mrs. Bates. “Did the other women pay their fines?”
“Yes, every one of them,” he snapped. “I’m sending a wagonload out to the train station this minute, and you can be on it.”
Mr. Whittaker blinked a lot when he lied. Most people did.
“Thank you for the offer, but I think I’ll stay.”
“Rogers!” he called, slapping the paper down onto the desk.
The clerk stepped in.
“Take her away.”
Elizabeth rose and followed the clerk. Only then did she realize her hands were shaking. But she didn’t have anything to be afraid of now. She was going to stay in jail.
• • •
A long walk with a female guard brought Elizabeth to the dining hall. Any hope they might be feeding the prisoners here died a swift death. No food in sight, and the matron who had taken such delight in ignoring them last night was doing some kind of paperwork for each of them.