by Karen Wills
“Often on that journey, I heard wolves howling and elk bugling. I watched a grizzly bear and saw a sea of elk. We crossed meadows and creeks and traveled through a high pass. We followed the North Fork of the Flathead River on horseback. We dropped down to a place at the lower end of a lake, Lake McDonald. I have seen nothing more beautiful, even in China. Then we went on to a town in the valley.”
“Why do you tell me all this? I can’t follow you,” Nora rasped.
“Nora. There is land to be had on the North Fork of the Flathead River. We could become business partners. We could raise cattle, hunt, trap, fish, garden, and survive with few people to interfere. As a white woman, you could someday claim the land. I can provide in strength what we need to get started. It’s a place where your soul can come back to you. We could help each other and present ourselves as mistress and servant. The mountains are far from these troubles you have had. It would be a place to start over. A place with no illusions.”
“Land.” Nora tested the word on her tongue. A memory of green fields and garden plots penetrated her blank grief. “Could we grow vegetables?”
“Yes. Vegetables and flowers. Will you agree?”
She sighed. “Well, I can’t stay on here, I suppose. One place is the same as another. But you’ll be working with a ghost, my friend. The life has fair drained out of me.”
“Just put land in your name, Nora. Life will fill you again. We will do it.”
An interval of silence followed. Jim told her he would return and left to make inquiries about selling the ring.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After Jim left, Nora considered his idea. She struggled out of bed and tottered to the wash basin, shocked at her haggard reflection in the dresser mirror. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she muttered, splashing water so cold that color flushed her bloodless cheeks and throat. She staggered like a person on the rolling deck of a ship. She thought of the sea, then the Wicklow Mountains. She recalled her brother fishing in his little boat. All as scattered and lost as her own children.
But Jim Li had talked of land. Nora thought she’d become a dry, empty husk. But a thin string still vibrated. Land. Land gave life. It created home. Whatever this wild country Jim talked of was, it had to be better than lying down and dying in a house of prostitution. Nora pulled the nightgown over her head. She still ached, but that and her bleeding would end. She braided her hair in back with awkward fingers and dressed. She rolled up her sleeves and opened the shutters, looking down on the city.
Somewhere down there her only friend was making dangerous inquiries about the sale of a stolen diamond ring. The poor often had to bend the law. The fact of it was, she thought, survival knows no law. Nora squared her shoulders. Well, then. If she must go on, she’d do it right. When it came to bargaining, the Irish could still show the world a thing or two—especially where land was involved.
Nora started down the hallway, aware of doors creaking open as the girls verified that Nora Larkin walked among them once again. Lillie responded in a gruff voice to her tap on the door, but Nora entered without fear. She felt quite sure she would never feel fear, along with many other emotions, again.
“Lillie, I have a thing I need to sell. I don’t know where to take it.”
Lillie’s eyes narrowed as she looked up from her ledger. She exhaled through her nose. “What the hell kind of a thing?”
“It’s a piece of jewelry, a family heirloom that my husband brought from Ireland.” For a moment Nora wondered if Lillie would demand some sort of payment for her stay at the Palace. She avoided looking into her employer’s narrowed eyes.
“Take it to Sean Kehoe’s bank. Ask for Kehoe himself. He’ll buy it with his own cash.”
“Thanks, Lillie.” Nora decided to offer Lillie something after all. “I’ll pay you for my keep as soon as I have the money.” Nora turned and rested her hand on the door knob, a wash of exhaustion passing over her.
“Are you heading out?” Lillie asked, putting down her pen and stretching.
“I believe I’ll take Jim Li as a servant and go toward Flathead country. I hear it’s beautiful.”
“Watch out for mountain men. If you see Beartracks Benton or Pete Dumont, you greet them for Lillie McGraw. You’re stealing my Celestial, huh?”
“There’s more to him than you ever saw.” Nora added, “I thank you for the help you’ve given me.” Lillie stared at her for a moment, then nodded and returned to the neat columns in her books. Nora closed the door behind her.
Nora met Jim on Main Street. Passersby stared at the intense, gaunt woman and the tall Chinese man bending to listen to her. After a moment, Jim threw his duffel bag to the boardwalk and squatted beside it, hands searching inside until he pulled out the gleaming ring. They walked to the bank where Jim stood in one corner as Nora sought a meeting with the president.
The teller, thinning hair pomaded, glared at Jim, then knocked on a door, its black letters announcing it to be the bank president’s inner sanctum. The teller went in. When he reappeared, he motioned for only Nora to enter.
Bulky, canny-eyed Sean Kehoe stood and extended his hand. A long oak desk, varnished nearly to black, separated them. Nora leaned forward to take his soft fingers. “Nora Larkin,” he said. “I knew a man named Tade Larkin back in County Cork it was. A good man. Good miner.”
“He was my husband.” Nora’s smile was, for a moment, unforced.
“You don’t say. Was, you say?”
“My husband died in an explosion at the Neversweat in Butte.” Nora paused for a moment, trying to control her voice. “Tade died in the fire. His best friend was blinded. Others died or were hurt as well.”
“I heard of that one.” Kehoe shook his head, and gestured to one of the leather chairs in front of his desk before sitting back down. “There’s no denying the mines are treacherous. Are there little ones left behind as well? Have the boys taken care of you?”
“We have no little ones left,” Nora answered. “Our daughter died of diphtheria in the epidemic here.”
Collins nodded. “I’m sorry to hear of your misfortunes, Mrs. Larkin. You’ve had your share. Now, how can I be of service?”
Nora hesitated. She hadn’t bargained on Sean Kehoe knowing Tade. He’d never believe such a large, compelling ring had been worn or even owned by a working man. She inhaled. “A man who knew us wanted to help and gave me a valuable ring, but made me promise not to tell where it came from. He said there were those who’d think the worst. There was nothing improper going on, I assure you.” She kept her eyes direct on her listener’s even as she hated the need to lie and her ability to do it so easily. “So, I find myself needing to sell the ring. A friend told me you might transact business of this very nature.”
Sean Kehoe raised his eyebrows. Nora would figure out later that he only made such private purchases from whores and gamblers. He extended his hand. “Let me see it, my dear.” His tone had altered slightly, become more familiar. Nora felt a frisson of unease.
Kehoe took a jeweler’s glass from a small drawer in his desk, put it to his eye, and inspected the well-set jewel. He ran through figures under his breath. She guessed that he was thinking a young widow wouldn’t know its value. Still, men had always admired her looks, and she was the widow of a man from County Cork. She detected a surge of pity in the banker’s voice. “I’ll give you $1,500 for the ring.”
“I’m thinking I need $2,000,” Nora said, depending on his previous note of sympathy.
Kehoe laughed. “My dear woman, it’s a compelling object. I’m not sure why, but it is. However, you must see I’m being generous.”
Nora leaned forward. “Mr. Kehoe, I’ve lost everything. I’m going up to the Flathead River area to homestead. I need money. I believe the ring to be of high value.”
“Maybe not so high as you think when you can’t say the name of its source.” His mouth hardened.
Nora kept her gaze steady on Kehoe’s shrewd eyes. “How about $1,800, then?”
“You’ve bought yourself a most attractive ring, Mr. Kehoe. May good fortune follow it.” Nora mustered a shaky smile.
Kehoe reached to a safe beside his desk, twirled the combination, opened it, and counted out the bills. “It’s a great deal of cash for a woman alone to handle and protect.”
“I’ll travel with a trustworthy Chinese in my employ, so I’m not all that alone,” Nora replied. She stuffed the money into her satchel and stood, finally able to be truthful. “I’m that grateful to you for your kindness. It’s good to meet someone who knew Tade.”
Kehoe stood and extended his hand again. “A fine man. A real loss. Stop and see us if you ever get back from the country of the Flathead. You may not want to return, though. They say it’s a hard life, but close to paradise.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing paradise,” Nora said with a catch in her voice. “Nearly all the people I love are there.”
Back in the lobby, she nodded to Jim Li, who followed her out to the corner where she turned. “Sean Kehoe paid me $1,750. We have our stake.”
Jim bowed. “Very impressive. Your bargaining power is in robust health. Now we need to get a wagon and supplies. We’ll make a list.”
They walked up to the Palace, settling in the kitchen, heads together to the cook’s consternation. The first need was for a wagon and horses. Horses were going for about $100 apiece. They could get a wagon used, but even so, over a quarter of the ring money, as Nora thought of it, would be gone. They decided to make the whole trip by wagon, no train fares and shipping costs for them.
Then they penned a long list: axes, a hammer, knives, nails, a hatchet, cooking pans, a tin wash bowl, dippers, buckets, silverware, plates, and two tarps for each to sleep under on the journey. For domestic comfort once there, they added needles, thread, material, and scissors. For the garden they needed carrot and cabbage seeds, apple tree seedlings, onion sets, seed potatoes, rhubarb roots, a rake, a hoe, a shovel, a pitchfork, barrels. Finally, they wrote down mousetraps, an 1873 Winchester rifle, and an 1873 Remington Whitmore shotgun, plenty of ammunition, lanterns, baling twine, a cross-cut saw, rope, matches, wash tubs, a cook stove, and over one hundred traps. Clothes included heavy shoes and jackets, heavy skirts and trousers, then blankets. They would also buy flour and sugar, coffee beans and a coffee grinder, salt and pepper, and dried apples.
One week after the ring’s sale, Jim Li drove the loaded wagon up to the Purple Palace. Before Nora climbed up to the seat, she paid Lillie in full—$1.00 per day for her keep while ill and useless. The two women said an awkward goodbye, both aware that Nora never really belonged in Lillie’s house. Nora remembered that Lillie, too, had given up a child, but if anything it made her question herself. She really wasn’t above any of the upstairs girls.
The girls in Lillie’s employ waved Nora and Jim on their way with a mixture of head-shaking at the risky venture and envy at Nora’s pluck. The man at her side seemed to have no place in their estimates of her chance for success.
Sean Kehoe pulled back the lace curtain from an upper-story window and spoke to the naked, pouting girl on the bed behind him. “She’ll make it. She’s like me. She does what she has to do, and she finds the ones who can help her do it. A true daughter of the Emerald Isle.” At that he dropped the curtain, along with his musings on the Widow Larkin, and resumed his pursuit of carnal pleasures.
As the wagon moved in crisp spring air, Nora said, “I want to go to confession before we leave for the wilderness.”
Jim gave a wordless bow, almost an American nod, and turned the horses toward the nearest Catholic church. Nora focused on how to describe her behavior to an unknown priest, while Jim said he’d review the provisions and any essential things they might have forgotten. He pulled the horses, Wink and Cotton, up to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and assisted Nora to the walk.
“I won’t be long,” she said.
“Take the time you need,” Jim answered. “I am glad you seek spiritual comfort.”
Nora entered through heavy doors. Inside, she dipped her hand into the holy water and performed the ancient gesture. Shafts of light crisscrossed in stained-glass colors. The scent of candlewax and the polished-wood smell of rows of unoccupied pews triggered memories that pulled Nora back to Butte and then Ireland.
A plump little priest wearing a black cossack trotted out of the sacristy’s gloom to greet her with a comforting, familiar brogue. “A good day to you, young woman. I’m Father Shaw.” In the indoor light, Nora supposed she did look young and uncertain.
“Father, I’m leaving to homestead in the North. Will you hear my confession?”
“Of course, child.”
Nora knew Father Shaw must have heard many stories in his function as confessor. Most involved domestic conflicts, sexual infidelities, drinking, stealing, and violence. He would expect nothing much different from an angular young Irish woman. He settled into his leather chair, which creaked as he slid back the little door and linen curtain that covered a trellised screen separating the two in the confessional. Nora saw him turn his stole to its purple side and pull a warm cloak over his knees.
Lowering herself to the kneeler, she caught the essence of tobacco as he exhaled. A lingering scent of horsehair upholstery mingled with the musty odor of many Catholics who sought absolution in the close cubicle. She folded her hands and watched Father Shaw through the lattice as he made the sign of the cross and said, “God bless you.”
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Nora began. “It has been eleven months since my last confession. I stole once.”
The priest frowned. “What did you steal?”
“I had no money and my child, my little girl, had been taken with the diphtheria. I couldn’t just leave her there under a mound of dirt like they’d bury an animal. I stole a building stone, and then let a Chinese man carry it to the graveyard. I borrowed some tools, and he cut her name for me. I didn’t actually ask for the tools, but I did return them. It was a Sunday, and for certain I don’t believe they were ever missed.” Nora hesitated.
“Where did you find the stone?” The voice beyond the little partition sounded gentle.
“At a church building site. That was wrong, I know. But I was out of work and pregnant. My husband is dead, but the baby wasn’t his. Father O’Toole in Butte heard my confession about the fornication. Anyway, I had no money. There’s another thing. The Chinese man suggested I work as a housekeeper.”
“There is no shame in such an occupation, my child.”
Nora watched the priest carefully, but went on. “No, Father, not the occupation, but the place itself. I worked for a madam, keeping track of the fancy girls in one of her houses. Not that they’re so fancy when you really get to know them.” For some reason, now that she had begun to speak, Nora found it difficult to stop. She was amazed at herself for chattering in the confessional.
“You didn’t—” The voice rose in pitch.
“No. Never, Father. I was close to my time and I wouldn’t anyway. I made sure the girls didn’t leave the house drunk. I tried to give the young ones advice, and I ran the kitchen and the saloon help.” She dropped her voice with this last.
“You took pay for this?” The voice cracked.
“Aye. And room and board.”
The priest sighed. “Is there anything more, child?”
“Aye. The house caught fire and my baby’s father happened to be gambling there when it happened. Another gambler shot him dead, and the Chinese took a magical-looking diamond ring off his very finger and we sold it to a rich man to pay for our trip. I’d never asked the great cheating gambler for any help, and I believe the money from the ring was due me.”
“Why did you never ask the man for help?” Father Shaw leaned forward, his voice betraying genuine interest at this point. In addition to the masculine smell of tobacco
, Nora caught an underlying whiff of whiskey.
“Oh. He had a family I didn’t know about until after we’d done what brought the baby. I’d taken him for a lodger in Butte. I should have known better, him a gambler and all. Anyway, he took off when he learned his missus placed personal ads in the paper looking for him. They had children.”
Father Shaw sat forward, bushy eyebrows almost meeting as he concentrated. “Let me see, child. You stole a marker with the help of a Chinese man. This same Chinese found you your job at a bawdy house, and then he stole a ring off your married lover’s dead hand so you could leave for the North Country together? You and this Chinaman?”
“The Chinaman is a friend only, Father. We look out for each other. You know how they treat them here. He’s half white anyhow. His father’s a Presbyterian missionary.”
Father Shaw smiled for the first time. “Ah, Presbyterian, is it? Well, that would explain a great deal about the boy, would it not?”
Nora, who hadn’t seen humor in anything for weeks, gave the lattice a sharp look. “Well, I’m sure that might be it. But he’s a good man. He did everything to help me survive. I believe he’s a survivor, Father, and there’s something to be said for that, isn’t there?”
Father Shaw’s face grew solemn. “Yes, but to survive as a good Catholic you must examine what you’ve done. Where is your baby?”
“I gave him up to friends not blessed in their marriage. I didn’t love his father, and I had no means to care for him. Well, I didn’t know then about the ring, but it’s for the best. He’ll have a good, normal life with Bridget and Michael. Two married parents. Good Catholics. Perhaps they’ll take in others, or perhaps have more born to them.” Nora’s voice wavered and dropped. “My life now seems so uncertain. The doctor told me I can never have another child. . . .”