A Shelter of Hope by Tracie Peterson

sense to rush the elements. I saw signs in the clouds that speak of another good snow. That’s one of the reasons I’m moving down out of the mountains before the weather turns sour.”
    “So you’re really gonna do it?” Butterfield asked.
    “I’m here, ain’t I?”
    “Heard tell you sold off your kid,” Jervis said, throwing himself down on a roughly hewn stool.
    “Sold it all off,” Louis said, balancing the rifle across his lap. He liked the security of its weight. The barrel was wrapped in a piece of beaded, fringed buckskin casing. The design of the piece showed intricate artistry, but there wasn’t a man in Uniontown who didn’t realize Louis would just as soon blow a hole out the end of the casing as to take the time to release the rifle should any man challenge his authority.
    Gus lumbered in with the bench balanced on one shoulder, and behind him Harley Burkett, the dry goods owner, followed with another two chairs.
    “Heard Gus say there’s gonna be quite a game,” Harley said. “Didn’t rightly figure on missin’ out.”
    “Come on in,” Louis told the man. “The more of you there is, the more money I can win. But I ain’t wastin’ too much time. There’ll be another snow inside of a day or my name ain’t Louis Dumas.”
    “Louis was just tellin’ how he sold off his land and traps,” Butterfield said, scooting his chair over to make room for Harley.
    “Sold his kid, too,” Gus added, positioning the bench. “Wished I’d had enough money to buy her from ya. That Simone is a looker for sure.”
    “You sold her to Davis?” Harley questioned, as though Louis had lost his mind. “What about your friends, man?”
    Louis shrugged. “Ain’t a one of you that ever came to me posin’ such a question.”
    “For fear you would have kilt one of us,” Jervis interjected. “We all saw the way you decked old Flatnose last time she was in town and he dared to try to talk to her.”
    “Talkin’ wasn’t what Flatnose had in mind,” Louis replied matter-of-factly. This brought a hearty round of laughter from the table, which by now was filling up with additional men.
    “With a looker like your daughter,” Gus dared to say what every other man was thinking, “talkin’ wouldn’t have been my first choice, either.”
    Louis had never felt any real concern for Simone’s reputation or purity. What he had resented from the men at this table was the threat they had posed to his own security. To lose Simone to one of them would have meant losing his housekeeper, cook, laundress, pelt-skinner, and anything else Louis needed from his well-trained daughter. Now that he had plans to take himself to Colorado, Simone seemed to be a liability more than an asset.
    “Davis probably didn’t pay half what some folks might have been willing to give you,” Butterfield chimed in, while Harley took it upon himself to shuffle the cards.
    “Yeah, for one as purty as Simone and with the fact that she was still not knowin’ a man and all,” Gus said, “you probably could’ve got a real fortune for her.”
    “Sure,” Jervis added, nodding. “Could’ve taken her with you to the mining town and sold her there.”
    “Could’ve sold her a buncha times,” another man said seriously. “I mean, look at Ada … and she ain’t near the looker your daughter is.”
    Louis let the men ramble on without saying much. In truth, their words disturbed him greatly. He hadn’t thought about the possibilities of Simone being of value to him outside of working around the house. It had never once dawned on him to sell her to his friends for their ongoing pleasure. In truth, before Jervis had mentioned her value as entertainment in the mining communities, Louis had never allowed his imagination to wander in that direction. He supposed it was because of the bitter memories he harbored of his mother. His father had put her to work selling her favors for whatever money it earned him, and Louis couldn’t know for