Free Rebecca Hagan Lee by Gossamer Page B

“you’re charged with misdemeanor crimes of disorderly conduct, assaulting a merchant, and petty larceny. How do you plead?”
    Elizabeth bit her bottom lip as she glanced down at the hem of her skirt. Although she was guilty of disorderly conduct and assaulting a merchant, she balked at being accused of petty larceny. She didn’t agree that failing to return a handkerchief given to her to use constituted stealing,but honesty compelled her to admit that James hadn’t said she could keep his handkerchief, had, in fact, only
loaned
it to her. And, Elizabeth reminded herself, she hadn’t kept the handkerchief because she needed it, she had kept it because she wanted a memento, a tangible reminder of James.
    “How do you plead, Miss Sadler?”
    She looked up at the judge and blushed with shame. “Guilty, your honor.”
    Judge Clermont stared down at the young woman before him. “The court finds you guilty as charged. That’ll be a minimum of fifty dollars or three days in jail and sixty days’ probation. And if I see you in my court again, young lady, I’ll sentence you to thirty days in jail. Pay the clerk on your way out.”
    Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open as the judge banged his gavel again and called the next case. She had been tried, found guilty, and sentenced, all in a matter of minutes. Her ordeal was over—except for two small details. She had yet to face the man who had accused her of stealing his handkerchief. And she didn’t have fifty dollars.
    “Come on, Sadler,” the matron tugged at Elizabeth’s arm. “You’re done. Pay the clerk and you’re free to go.”
    “Free to go?” Elizabeth repeated dumbly.
    “That’s right,” the matron assured her. “Once you pay your fifty-dollar fine, you’re free to go.”
    “What if I don’t have fifty dollars?” Elizabeth whispered.
    The matron studied Elizabeth’s stylish walking dress of brown silk edged with taffeta and her expensive leather boots in a matching shade of brown. “You don’t have fifty dollars?”
    Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t even have five.”
    “A lady like you? Are you sure?”
    Elizabeth nodded. “I only have a dollar and a few cents left. I counted it yesterday long before Sergeant Darnell and Officer Burrows arrested me.”
    The matron looked at her as if she hadn’t heard correctly.“But your dress cost more than what I make in half a year.”
    Elizabeth nodded once again. “Too bad I can’t sell it for cash. What will I do if I can’t come up with the fifty dollars?”
    “You heard the judge,” the matron said. “If you don’t pay the fifty dollars, you’ll have to serve three days in jail.”
    Elizabeth bit her lip to stop its quivering. “Then I guess I’m going back to jail.”
    The matron let go of Elizabeth’s arm long enough to reach for the little leather change purse attached to the belt of her skirt. “How much money do you have? Exactly?”
    “One dollar and seventy-eight cents,” Elizabeth answered. “But I only have seventy-eight cents with me.”
    “I have a dollar left from my pay,” the matron said. “And I can loan you some of that.”
    “Oh, no,” Elizabeth refused her offer. “I couldn’t take your hard-earned money.” She drew herself up to her full height, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin a notch higher, then said with a confidence she didn’t feel, “It’s only three days. I can survive three days in jail.”

    THREE DAYS, SEVENTY-TWO hours. It might as well have been an eternity. Seated on an edge of the only cot in the cell, Elizabeth pressed herself back against the bars and pulled her skirts close about her to keep them from coming in contact with the clothing of the women pacing the narrow confines of the holding pen. Elizabeth shuddered, wondering how she was going to survive another seventy-one hours in the company of the women sharing her cell. A cell. Elizabeth Sadler was confined to a cell in the San Francisco City Jail along with fifteen other