Lone Women

While his wife is at the opera house, Mr. Reed is drinking and playing cards at the Blind Pig, a tavern that Bertie Brown owns and operates out of her own home. It is also where she brews her famous alcohol, Bertie’s Brew. Mr. Reed is a regular customer and is already quite drunk. He wants to play cards with Bertie Brown and her friend, Fiona Wong. He asks Bertie to call Fiona back to the table, referring to her using a racial slur for Chinese people. Bertie steps in to defend Fiona and correct Mr. Reed, though Fiona dismisses her concerns and sits down at the table to play. As their card game winds down, Mr. Reed realizes that his driver will be arriving soon. He asks the two women if they would like to go for a ride in his newly purchased car. The two accept his invitation, and it is revealed that Mr. Reed’s driver is young Joab Mudge.

This chapter flashes back in time and relates a different perspective on the night that Joab and his older brother Delmus fled from the terrifying scene at Adelaide’s house. The narrative states that two ride all night until they make it to Big Sandy by following the light in the steeple of the opera house. They collapse upon arriving and are saved by diner owner George Shibata, who sees them and alerts the authorities. After the brothers recover from their ordeal, Delmus attempts to tell the townsfolk the truth: that they were fleeing from a terrible monster. Joab, however, spins the story and explains that his family was attacked by wild animals, and that his mother and older brothers died protecting them. Their story is shared throughout the town, and when Mr. Jack Reed learns about the boys, he offers them the opportunity to work for him. Because Delmus has trouble readjusting to “reality” after the attack, he is given work as a stable hand. Joab, becomes Mr. Reed’s driver, a job that he enjoys far more than the acts of theft and murder that his family used to be embroiled in.

The narrative returns to the present moment. Adelaide and Sam are eating at George Shibata’s restaurant, the Grill Cafe, after leaving Mrs. Reed’s event at the opera house. Sam reflects on Mrs. Reed’s statements and shares with Adelaide that he “keeps secrets.” When Adelaide assures Sam that she keeps plenty of secrets of her own, Sam confesses that Grace killed Sam’s father. Sam wanted to share the burden of this secret with someone and has decided that he trusts Adelaide the most. Thinking of the ghostly male figure that she saw, Adelaide asks Sam where Grace killed his father. Sam knowingly asks if Adelaide saw him on the property and admits to seeing his ghost as well. Their conversation is cut short when Grace finally joins them. She explains that Finn Kirby confronted her and told her that Matthew lost the ability to use his right arm following an incident on or near Adelaide’s property. Adelaide considers the depth of the secret that Sam just shared with her and decides to trust the Prices with her own secret about the monster she brought with her to Montana.

This chapter is written from the perspective of the creature that escaped from Adelaide’s steamer trunk. It reflects that the only thing it has eaten since its escape were the Mudge boys and their two horses. It is hungry, but it cannot find any food because prairie dogs are too small and fast to catch. The creature also thinks about how the two boys on the horses were planning to harm Adelaide, but it then tries to banish all thoughts of Adelaide from its mind. It decides to search for more horses to eat, since they are easy to spot and to catch.

Delmus Mudge is in Mr. Reed’s stables, avoiding work for the night and drowning his residual trauma in alcohol. He reflects on his role in the Mudge family, which was to be patient and meticulous enough to choose the marks and judge when it was safe for the family to strike. The narrative reveals that he chose Adelaide as a mark during the train ride from Seattle to Montana. Now, Delmus passes out from drunkenness in the stable loft but is awakened by the agitated sounds of the horses. Realizing that the creature is prowling through the stable, Delmus decides to go down and confront it. He slips on the ladder and falls to the bottom, breaking his collarbone. The creature hears him fall and approaches. Delmus begs for his life, promising to be true and honest from this point forward if he is spared. The next thing he realizes, the creature has left and all the horses are gone. He walks outside and collapses on the ground in pain.

Joab drives up with Mr. Reed, Bertie, and Fiona in the car, and they see the aftermath of the events in the stable. At first, Mr. Reed decides to leave Delmus on the ground in the cold while he searches for his horses instead. However, Fiona jumps to Delmus’s defense and insists that they go to his aid. Bertie is fearful that Fiona’s confrontation will cause problems, so she begins to draw her gun as a precaution. Fortunately, Mr. Reed agrees to tend to Delmus.

Adelaide shares her history with Grace and Sam, explaining the origins of the creature from her steamer trunk. However, Adelaide suspects Sam is the only one to truly listen and believe her. She returns home to her cabin unaccompanied, as Grace and Sam are staying in town while Grace continues to recover from her gunshot wound. The next morning, Adelaide awakens to visitors at her cabin: Bertie and Fiona. Bertie tells her that she has come to tend to Adelaide’s unruly, unkempt hair, and Adelaide is relieved to have another Black woman to help her with her appearance. Reminded of similar tender moments with her mother, Adelaide has to refrain from touching Bertie’s leg. Fiona notices their kinship and affection and grows jealous. She complains that she will be late and gets up to leave, but Bertie placates her. After finishing Adelaide’s hair, Bertie and Fiona saddle their horses to go into town. Adelaide asks to accompany them, not realizing that there is an uncomfortable tension between the two women.

Upon arriving in Big Sandy, Bertie and Fiona make their way to the town’s hotel to collect the dirty linens, which Fiona is paid to launder. Adelaide starts to follow them but stops when she notices Mrs. Reed standing outside a nearby building. Mrs. Reed is speaking to a gathering crowd and introduces a woman named Mrs. Sterling, who owns the new power laundry in town. Mrs. Reed makes it a point to praise Mrs. Sterling’s new business and to announce her plans to take all of her laundry to Mrs. Sterling. In thinly veiled racist comment, she also pointedly notes that the town’s hotel is not currently sending their linens to be laundered with Mrs. Sterling; she implies that by employing Fiona Wong, the hotel is making a mistake. Adelaide watches her friends Bertie and Fiona leave the hotel with the dirty laundry and almost decides to follow them, but in that moment, Mrs. Reed bids Mrs. Sterling to open the doors of her new power laundry. Adelaide is drawn by the chance to be accepted by the larger crowd and decides to attempt to enter the building. She is fearful that she will be turned away due to her race, but Mrs. Reed welcomes her happily.

Meanwhile, Joab and Mr. Reed inspect the damage to Mr. Reed’s horse barn. Mr. Reed concludes that it must have been “wolfers” that broke in and stole his horses. Wolfers are rough individuals who survive through thievery and other criminal behavior. Joab is familiar with them because he and his family were staying in a wolfer encampment while they stole horses from the nearby homesteaders. Mr. Reed decides to find the culprits and enlists the help of two of his friends, McNamara and Marlow, who own the general store. As Mr. Reed and Joab drive to pick them up, Joab wonders whether he should direct Mr. Reed to the wolfer settlement in order to gain his favor. He decides to take the risk of telling the three men how to find the wolfer town in the mountains. When pressed about how he knows the location, Joab lies and tells them that the wolfers were really the ones who killed his family. He claims to have made up the story about wild animals because the wolfers threatened to kill him otherwise. Mr. Reed, McNamara, and Marlow are convinced by Joab’s story and feel great sympathy for him, so they commit to driving out to the mountains to find this town. Joab is secretly hopeful that while they are driving, he will either find or remember the location of Adelaide’s cabin so that he can enact revenge upon her.

Once Fiona and Bertie return to the Blind Pig, Fiona starts the hotel’s laundry. The two do not speak, and Fiona is upset by the remarks that Mrs. Reed made about her doing the hotel’s laundry. She fears that the hotel will stop employing her now that Mrs. Sterling has opened her new power laundry. She begins to cry, and Bertie comes into the room to comfort her. Bertie pulls Fiona to her feet, and they enter their shared bedroom. Bertie undresses Fiona and begins to kiss her thighs. As they move to the bed and begin to make love, Fiona momentarily forgets the sadness she felt at Mrs. Reed’s remarks.

This chapter is told from the creature’s perspective. It falls asleep after devouring Mr. Reed’s horses and begins to dream. In the first dream, it is lying on the floor of the barn in which it was once chained. In the second dream, a girl, who is implied to be Adelaide, comes to visit the creature and offers to read or sing to it. The creature awakens in anguish because the second dream was actually a memory of the past.

Adelaide is riding back home from her trip into town when she realizes that the ghost of her mother has appeared beside her again. Eleanor chastises Adelaide for revealing her family’s secrets to Grace and Sam, as well as for abandoning her caretaking responsibilities. Adelaide dismisses her mother’s remarks, and Eleanor shares that the creature escaped once before and killed livestock throughout their farm community. She and Adelaide’s father were able to recapture it before it harmed any people. Eleanor warns Adelaide that if she doesn’t bring the creature back, her community will discover where it came from and seek vengeance against her for any damage it does.

Joab, Mr. Reed, McNamara, and Marlow drive out to Rocky Point, the home of the “wolfers” whom they now believe to have stolen Mr. Reed’s horses and murdered Joab’s family. When they arrive, they discover a ramshackle collection of shacks and three haggard-looking horse thieves. As Reed, McNamara, and Marlow line the men up and unpack several lengths of rope, Joab realizes that they intend to hang these men. One of the wolfers recognizes Joab and starts to reveal Joab’s true identity, but before he can finish, Joab shoots and kills him. Mr. Reed tells Joab, “This is not the way” (176). He explains that he is not angry that Joab killed the man, but that in the future, hanging is the better method “because it’s free” (176). The group hangs the remaining two men from a nearby tree and tells Joab that he is now a member of their group, which is known in town as the “Vigilance Committee,” even though they privately refer to themselves as “The Stranglers.”

Grace and Sam visit Mrs. Reed before they return to their homestead. Grace has arranged this appointment because she would like Mrs. Reed’s help in opening a proper schoolhouse, given that the townsfolk are reluctant to send their children to the one on her property. Having seen the support that Mrs. Reed was able to raise for Mrs. Sterling’s laundry, Grace is hopeful that Mrs. Reed will provide her with similar support. However, Mrs. Reed is more interested in talking with Sam, who is reading his newspaper clippings. When she asks Sam to share a strange fact that he has learned, he says, “Mrs. Henry brought a monster to Montana” (180).

Believing this to be evidence of Sam’s childish imagination, Mrs. Reed turns her attention back to Grace and agrees to help Grace with her problem if Grace provides something in return. Namely, she needs Grace to address the town’s misapprehensions about Sam and his “presentation.” In response, Grace strikes Mrs. Reed hard across the face and announces to Sam that they are leaving. Mrs. Reed urges her to reconsider her offer, and Grace replies by mentioning the rumors that Mrs. Reed once had a child, and if that is the case, she urges her to consider Grace’s position as a mother. Adelaide proclaims that she will do anything to protect Sam’s safety and happiness.

The creature narrates its flight high into the foothills that surround the town. It is seeking a place to hide and locates a cave as high in the mountains as possible. It hopes that it will never be found again, least of all by Adelaide.

Winter descends upon Big Sandy with the first heavy snowstorm of the season. The changing season also brings misfortune to the community when several mysterious deaths and disappearances are reported. The town begins to feel that something strange is happening beyond the usual difficult weather and bad luck.

One day, Adelaide and Fiona ride to a nearby abandoned mining town in search of the grave of Fiona’s father. Fiona informs Adelaide that her father ran a laundry in Helena but was run out of town by the white community, particularly the women. She and Adelaide connect over the shared prejudice and discrimination that their families have experienced while trying to make their own way in the American West. Just outside the town, they ride past several large charcoal kilns. Upon entering the mostly abandoned town, they tie their horses up outside of one of the only remaining buildings: a tavern. Adelaide brings a gun into the building, and they find a group of men sitting around a table, though none of them are drinking. Fiona announces her mission, and the men eventually point her toward a cemetery just up the road.

Adelaide and Fiona explore the overgrown and mostly unmarked graves. Adelaide asks for the name of Fiona’s father, but Fiona tells her that his name won’t matter. Her father traveled from mining camp to mining camp working as a cook, and the miners referred to him as either “Joe” or “John Chinaman.” Each mining camp referred to any Chinese workers by these names, making it impossible to differentiate between them. As the two women examine the graveyard, the men from the tavern appear and begin to approach them, so Fiona and Adelaide ride away as fast as they can. They pass the charcoal kilns again, and this time they each believe they hear voices coming from inside the kilns. They ride back toward Big Sandy in silence, with Adelaide reflecting on Fiona’s devotion to a father she barely knew. She decides to tell Fiona the truth about her circumstances and history. Adelaide announces that she did not come to Montana as a “lone woman”; she brought her sister with her.