by Marian Wells
For a moment she waited, then moved her shoulders impatiently—wanting to hear, yet fearful of all the unsaid things. Why won’t you talk about my mother? Why do my questions make you uneasy? Why do I feel it’s wrong to ask the questions I wonder about most?
The sun was starting to slip behind the jagged peaks to the west as Eli took his team into the streets of Denver City. Although the clamor of the town was beginning to intrude, Amy didn’t notice. She was caught, unable to tear herself away from the view in front of her.
The setting sun outlined the snowcapped peaks with a crown of light and tempered them with peach-hued clouds. Amy watched as the light burst its cloud barriers and became bars of gold slanting down through the mountain gorge.
She shivered with a strange joy as she watched distant winds sweep the clouds. Now they rolled, spilling across the topmost silvered slopes. At the same time the clouds picked up new lights, changing from apricot to rose to lavender.
When Eli hauled in on the reins, Amy turned from the mountains. She blinked and leaned forward on her elbows. “Aunt Maude, look at those clouds! Makes me think life here at the foot of the Rockies has a Midas touch. You know, King Midas—gold!” Her heart quickened with the fairy tale promise. But she buried the thought inside: Just maybe there is something exciting and mysterious about Pikes Peak country. She took a deep shaky breath and glanced at the mountains again.
The wagon stopped. Leaning across the seat, she watched Eli climb out and head for a large structure made of pale logs. He gingerly picked his way to the veranda as Amy murmured, “That building looks like a ship floating on a sea of mud.”
The wide veranda held a row of rail sitters. With unblinking eyes they studied her and Aunt Maude, who was just now stirring and looking around. One shifted a pipe in his mouth and readjusted his muddy boots. “Female,” he said briefly, “but it’s jest a tad.”
Amy peered down the street stretching along the bank of the creek. Where the trees had been hacked out, a building had been erected in their place.
She found she could identify the log buildings. One was obviously a livery stable. The next, tall and rambling, must be a hotel. She watched a woman in a hoop skirt and scoop bonnet being handed from a carriage to the steps.
Beyond the hotel a covey of small cabins huddled, a mixture of sizes and shapes, but all of the same light log.
Aunt Maude fastened her hair more securely and pointed with her chin. “That place is a general store. I saw a man come out with shovel, and the fella behind was carrying a sack of flour. So at least we eat.”
“Doesn’t it smell nice?” Amy asked dreamily. “The fresh wet smell of the rain, the wood smoke and the sage and pine. Aunt Maude, I’m beginnng to think I’d like to live here forever. Maybe Father will stay in Denver City instead of going to the mountains.”
Eli came out of the building. He was wearing a broad smile, and Maude frowned as he said, “The fellow inside pointed me in the direction of a vacant cabin. Says it’s pretty snug. The owner got discouraged and just walked out on it, so it’s ours for now. He also told me how to get in touch with the missionaries. Seems there’s quite a group here.”
The cabin was a steep climb up the next street. Aunt Maude clung to the seat and said, “At least we’re spared the mud they have down below.”
Amy and Aunt Maude were still gingerly stepping through the damp white clay when Eli came back to the wagon for another load. “What a view!” He picked up the table and turned. “Come see.”
Amy went to the stoop and turned to look. On this street the little cabins were set at odd angles, without design or pattern, either to their dooryards or corrals. The road they traveled wound between the buildings and edged down the hill toward the business section of town.
“How come most of the cabins up here are empty?” she asked. “Those down below look full of people.” The rambling log buildings along the creek vibrated with sound and activity.
When Aunt Maude stopped beside her, she added, “We can see the whole of the main street, as well as Cherry Creek and the Platte River.”
Aunt Maude turned into the cabin. “The mountains are pretty tonight. Cabins? I don’t know why the cabins are empty; I’d rather live up here, anyway—there’s a view.”
Inside, Aunt Maude inspected the bunks built into the side of the cabin. Her voice was brisk and determined. “We’ll need new ticks. I’ll not have those things in the house tonight.”
Amy straightened the benches and asked, “Where do we get water?”
“I doubt out of Cherry Creek; looks pretty muddy to me. I’ll go ask.” Eli dumped another load and headed for the door.
“Do more’n ask, sir,” Aunt Maude said scooping up the water pails and following him. “I saw the likes of the fellows lining the rail down there. I’ll not be giving them the least chance to have a thought about our Amy.” She pushed the buckets at him. “While we’re here, you get the water.”
Amy watched her father stride down the hill with the buckets swinging. “Aunt Maude, he’ll be talking until nightfall.”
“That’s just fine. It’ll give us a chance to be having our own little talk. Amy, this isn’t Lawrence, and I don’t want you to be forgetting it for a minute. Back home life was a mite smoother. Refined. There were schools and clean sheets on the lines, garden patches and good solid families.
“I’ve been watching since we started out on this journey. It’s like nothing else I’ve seen. Coarse, dirty men with foul mouths and all eyes. I’ve been around enough to know there’s no trusting that kind. You stay close to your father or me all the time. I heard that piano playing down there. At six in the afternoon, with music coming out of one of those places, there’s nothing good going on.”
“Aunt Maude. I know what you’re hinting. I know the men are rough. I’ve no intention of letting them lead me astray. So please don’t worry.”
“I do worry.” Her eyes brooded over every detail of Amy’s face. “You’re such an innocent, you wouldn’t know a big bad wolf ’til he bit you.”
Amy returned to sorting and folding the jumble of clothing on the table. “What I want isn’t anything like what you are thinking. I want—” She caught sight of the dimming grandeur of the mountains. “Beauty. I want to reach out and capture beauty, something I can keep all for myself.”
“Beauty? What’s beauty?” Aunt Maude was looking around the cabin in the most suspicious manner.
“I don’t know.” Amy pressed her hand against her throat. “I only know the wanting hurts right here. I intend to find out.”
“But what makes you think it’s good?” For a moment they stood looking at each other. Aunt Maude’s eyes were curious and strangely timid.
That expression held Amy. “It’ll be good. If it’s beauty, it’ll be good. Look at the mountains.”
Chapter 2
After nearly a month of living in Denver City, Amy was still trying to adjust to Pikes Peak land. It was strange, this land that stretched pancake-flat eastward, while westward it reared straight up.
Back home, every morning, the sun rose from the depths of the river and trees, and at evening time it sank into the cornfields. In this little town called Denver City, the sun seemed to rise like an egg yolk rolling across the flat plains.
Each morning Amy watched it skittering along, contoured with the ground until suddenly it leaped free. But in the evening when it dropped behind the mountains, it was all majesty, and Amy knew she would never tire of the glory of it.
As the days moved by, sandwiched between the rising and setting of the sun, events began adding variety to life. The Sabbath meetings were held at the cabin of G. W. Fisher. Fisher was one of the important persons in Denver City, the first missionary from the Methodist Episcopal Church to preach in Denver City.
That first Sunday after the Randolphs arrived in Denver City, they attended worship service at the Fishers’.
Listening to the missionaries, Amy was astonished to discover how different
life was here on the frontier. She found it didn’t seem to matter to anyone that the first sermon in Denver City had been delivered in a saloon.
That is, it didn’t matter to anyone except Aunt Maude. Sitting in the Fishers’ yard, in the meager shade of a mountain cedar, the missionaries tried to reason with Aunt Maude. As the men talked, Amy watched the play of expression on her aunt’s face. She was outraged and astonished.
Amy was intrigued and delighted. She watched the men grow red in the face with the effort of convincing Aunt Maude, while her aunt grew red with indignation. Amy kept silent: she knew better than to let her feelings out around Aunt Maude.
Finally the knot of men around Aunt Maude moved away, and everyone found a seat on the cottonwood logs. Soon the worship service began.
Amy watched the missionary leading the singing. The sun struck his face, making it seem light and carefree. The wind tousled his hair and his coarse shirt billowed in the wind.
A mighty fortress is our God. For a moment Amy’s heart lifted in a wild, strange joy. It made her one with the blue jay perched above the song leader’s head. She wanted desperately to tell Aunt Maude she hoped they would never build a church house. But that wouldn’t do. Aunt Maude’s lips would tighten even more.
The miners from down the hill came to take seats on the log. She looked at the blue jay again. Just maybe her feelings about beauty were real and important.
Someday she might be able to talk about these things to them—Father and Aunt Maude. Maybe she could say them in such a way she would be proud to own the thoughts. Was God in beauty? She looked at Aunt Maude, desperately wishing her aunt would accept the differences out here.
Later that day Amy heard more details of that first barroom sermon. The missionaries said the fellow tending bar had hushed the clatter, while the customers pulled off their hats and listened respectfully. She tried to fit that picture to the church in Kansas. In Kansas, no good churchman would be found in a saloon for any reason!
Amy was learning, too; that on the frontier the important people didn’t look any different from the miners. All the men wore ragged dungarees and slouch hats—they looked, spoke, and acted alike.
She concluded this after she met Colonel Gilpin and the sheriff of Denver City. Sheriff Tom Pollock had a rumpled mane of red hair and muddy, scuffed boots. He looked tough, like the miners did.
But the sameness of the men didn’t apply to the women. Mrs. Fisher looked like Aunt Maude. Some of the ladies going into the hotel down the hill looked like Aunt Maude and Mrs. Fisher. But the rest of them looked like the pretty ladies going into the dance halls and saloons.
And only the women like Aunt Maude and Mrs. Fisher were introduced to Amy. She tried to keep her curious eyes off the ladies in the pretty frocks. So these are the dance-hall girls we whispered about back home.
Denver City had been settled for a year, and log saloons, hotels, and shops were rising as fast as the trees could be felled. The Methodist Episcopal Church continued to meet for worship at the Fisher home.
By June the Sabbath meetings were taking on a new flavor. Organization of the conference was uppermost in everyone’s mind.
At the conclusion of worship, Amy and Aunt Maude helped prepare a simple meal for the missionaries who had come in from their circuits. After the men ate, the womenfolk sat at the far end of the one room and listened.
While flies buzzed in and out of the dim cabin, Amy watched the men. Their shoulders were moving with excitement as they nodded their heads in approval. In the end, when the missionaries got to their feet, their smiles and clasped hands made her wish for the years when she could accept, before her nagging doubts and troubling questions came to haunt her.
For a moment she smiled. In the past she had sat on Father’s lap and listened to the murmur of voices until she fell asleep. Childish. Little girl desires. She shrugged impatiently. Now, each year seemed to drive the wedge deeper between her and the church. Pushing away the thoughts, Amy listened to the conversation.
Brother Fisher and Brother Kelly were appointed presiding elders of the Pikes Peak area. Brother Fisher waved the letter from the Nebraska-Kansas Conference. He explained, “It won’t be long before we become a full-fledged conference. Until then we want to work with all of our hearts. Remember, it’s work for the Master.”
Brother Kelly was wiping his eyes, exclaiming, “Bless God, this is really living!”
Amy looked at him curiously, wondering what he meant. Brother Fisher continued, “It is going to be difficult and lonely, but exciting. I’ve never been on the ground floor work of building a new conference. As quickly as we can organize, the Nebraska-Kansas Conference will be sending men to labor here.”
Amy was thinking of that scene the next day as she wandered up the road to the dirt bank jutting over Cherry Creek and the sprawl of log cabins along the bank. “Makes a person feel like an outsider when they can’t get in on the excitement,” she sighed. She sat down on the shady side of the bank. “Got to be going on ninety to be excited like they are.”
Her gloom deepened as she looked at the rooftops beneath her. Somewhere in that mass there was reported to be an Episcopal pastor with a wife and daughter. “But how do you go about finding someone when Aunt Maude glares and shifts her eyebrows when a body mentions getting out of her sight?”
Relaxing against the cedar, feeling the sun warm on her face, she began to forget her mood. The earth smell was good—sharp and fresh, with the tangy scent of sage and cedar. It was only four in the afternoon, but the line of little log houses below her seemed overrun with people shouting and laughing. Amy leaned over to watch, yearning after them.
She tried to spot the saloon where Father and Brother Fisher had gone last week to preach.
Imagine, all those men with that drink they were calling Taos Lightning standing there and listening politely! Amy shook her head. “Those fellows know better than to be squandering their money and time with the card games. Father said so. I wonder what it is that makes—”
Suddenly there was a thunder of sound and a scream—a very feminine scream. Amy dropped to her knees, trembling. Crawling to the edge of the bank she leaned forward. The door on one of the cabins burst open and the screams and shouts grew louder.
A rush of people poured into the street. The shouts became a clamor of disjointed words. “Fool! I call you out—pistols or knives. Cheat! Horse thief!”
For a moment Amy grinned, then she caught her breath. The setting sun touched gleaming metal. Slowly the spectators backed off the street. Below her two men tensed, bent forward. While their heels dug into the dust, they circled each other in the middle of the street.
Another scream pierced the air. There was barely a flicker of emotion on the ashen faces glaring at each other. Far up the street Amy saw a flash of red billowing skirts.
At the moment her attention was diverted, the crack came. Smoke drifted from the pointing guns.
Pushing her hand against her mouth, Amy watched the men slowly change positions. The one facing Amy straightened and gripped his bloody shoulder. The other man quietly slipped onto his face in the dust.
Amy stayed crouched over the bank, watching the street. But it wasn’t curiosity holding her motionless. A strange numbness made it impossible to believe the scene was real.
The woman in red finally moved. Slowly she walked forward, hesitated, then flung herself into the road beside the limp man. Miners trickled out of the buildings to circle the man clutching his shoulder.
To Amy it was like watching the final act of the school play. While the group around the injured gunman moved away without a backward glance, another group hoisted the limp body and staggered down the street. The woman in red slowly got to her feet and followed.
Amy found she was clenching her fists against her throat until she could scarcely breathe. She stumbled as she stood and ran toward the cabin. Nearly there, she slowed, tried to calm herself. The sun was sliding behind the mountain. The wash of shadow s
eemed cold and unfriendly.
The scene was impossible to explain until she could understand it. She closed her mind around the event, clutching one more secret to add to the things lodged in her heart. Secrets, she told herself, like bricks stacked one on the other, build a wall. Sometimes I think I can’t see over it.
On the step outside the cabin, she hesitated, thinking of the other bricks. Mother. In dismay she thought, I can’t feel that way. It was too long ago to count. Even as she tried to accept the thought, she was wondering, Why won’t they talk about my mother?
Aunt Maude was a brick. Father too. Especially when he shut everybody out. But sometimes the walls made it easier to live.
By the following day exciting news crowded out that ugly scene. They learned Father was being sent up the mountain to a place called Central City on the Gregory diggings. Amy listened with excitement. Aunt Maude listened and moaned. Father explained. “The trip isn’t that bad. I hear the road up through Golden Gate Canyon isn’t good, but it isn’t dangerous. We’ll make it in a day.”
Amy asked, “Tell us about the town.”
“I know little. Right now it’s a shack city. Lots of miners up there—fifteen thousand, I heard. They tell me the area was opened up this spring. There’s good color showing. Men are panning along the creek and on up the gulch.”
She started to ask and he guessed her question. He said, “No school, no females except two old ladies. But Amy, it won’t be that way for long if the gold is that good.”
That evening supper was early. Aunt Maude explained. “Your father has a meeting. I want to go along and find out all I can about Central City. You come or go to bed.”
“It’ll be late,” Father added, “Might as well just stay here.” She nodded.
After they left, Amy washed dishes and hung towels to dry. Standing by the bushes that lined the bluff overlooking the main street, she watched the night shadows moving up the streets. The first glow of light came from the windows of the hotel, the line of saloons, and the dance halls. The night seemed unusually quiet. Horses and wagons were darker shadows, accompanied by the gentle creak and clink of harness and wheel.