Searching for Silverheels

by Jeannie Mobley

  I nodded and went back to the kitchen. The hotcakes were ready, and, as no one else seemed to be coming in for breakfast, Mother was rolling out the crusts for pies. I gathered the butter, jam, and syrup for Josie, but I wasn’t quick enough. When I returned to the front she had pounced again. She was standing at the tourists’ table, complaining about women only being remembered if they served men. Which led, of course, to her usual rant about the women’s vote. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise to suggest an excursion to the visitors. Not that they would have listened at that point. They were shoveling their food into their mouths, eager to get away. Without a glance my way, Robert dropped his money on the table, shot Josie a disgusted look, and offered his arm to his wife. She wiped her mouth daintily and rose to her feet. Only Frank met my eye and smiled when I called “have a nice day” after them as they left. Josie snorted and sat down at the old-timers’ table where I had set her hotcakes.

  “I don’t see why a woman’s worth has to be measured in her looks,” she said.

  “You wouldn’t, you old boot,” Orv muttered.

  “It wasn’t Silverheels’s looks—it was her kindness,” Russell pointed out.

  Josie snorted again, sounding like an old pack mule. “Ah yes, womanly virtues.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with womanly virtues, Josie,” Russell said.

  “Well if you ask me,” Josie said loudly, “it’s not much of a story.”

  “No one is asking you, you old crank. The girl likes to tell it and the city folks like to hear it, so let it be,” Harry said as he got stiffly to his feet. “Put it on my tab, Pearl,” he called. The others followed suit and soon the whole crowd had shuffled out into the street, leaving only Josie, frowning as she ate her hotcakes.

  I got my own breakfast and sat down at the counter beside Imogene.

  “I told you that city boy was handsome, didn’t I, Pearl?” Imogene said, glancing sidelong again at Willie. He still showed no sign of jealousy.

  He pushed his empty plate back on the counter and got to his feet. “I’m going fishing,” he announced. “Bye, Imogene. See you later, kid,” he said, ruffling my hair. Then he headed out the door. Off for a day in the sunshine while I washed dishes.

  Imogene sighed and watched him go. “Only a month until the Fourth of July picnic. When do you think Willie will get around to asking me to go with him?”

  I didn’t think he would, but there was no point in telling Imogene that. She was determined to catch him.

  “Is George Crawford going to ask you to the picnic, Pearl?”

  My heart sped up a little, but I only shrugged. Sure, I had spent hours dreaming of going to the picnic with George, dancing at a Christmas ball with George, strolling along the creek under a parasol with George. Not that anyone in Como ever had Christmas balls—or parasols for that matter. But that didn’t stop me from dreaming.

  “Come on, Pearl. You’ve got to start planning. You only have a month!”

  “I can’t plan anything until he asks me. It’s the boy’s job to ask the girl.”

  “You’ll never get George to ask you with that attitude,” Imogene said. “You don’t think boys know what to do on their own, do you? You have to let them know you’ll say yes before they’re willing to ask.”

  I pretended there was a spot on the counter and scrubbed hard at it so I didn’t have to look at her. “I’d rather wait for a boy to court me proper. I don’t want to be forward.”

  There was an indignant huff from across the room, and I reddened. I had forgotten about Josie. Of course she was eavesdropping on our conversation.

  “Honestly, until girls stop worrying themselves over boys and start thinking sensibly, we’ll never make any progress in this country. Start thinking about making something of yourselves, why don’t you?” she said.

  Imogene tossed her curls over her shoulder and stuck her nose in the air. “My pa says the only women who care about politics are the ones who can’t catch a man for themselves,” she said. Then she flounced out of the café, leaving me alone with Josie.

  I couldn’t believe Imogene could speak so rudely! I expected Josie to explode, but she didn’t. She just watched me over the edge of her cup, her black eyes cold and hard.

  “Your head’s full of drivel, girl. Waiting for a boy to court you and telling that mushy, cockamamie story to the tourists? Drivel and more drivel!”

  “I think Silverheels was very heroic,” I said.

  “So a woman who stands up for her rights is a nuisance, while one who coddles a bunch of helpless men is a hero?”

  “I suppose you think Silverheels ought to have just let the miners die?” I said.

  “I think if the story’s true the way folks tell it, she was a mighty stupid girl.”

  “Kindness isn’t stupid,” I said under my breath. She gave a little “hrmf” and my face flushed as I realized she had heard me. I knew better than to talk back to my elders, and if there was one thing Josie was, it was elder.

  “I’ll tell you what I think. I think the real reason she stayed was that she figured those dying miners would tell her where they had hidden their gold. Maybe they did, and that’s why she lit out in the end. Why else would she risk everything and stay?”

  “Because those men needed her. They were her friends,” I said.

  “Were they?” she said, her eyes more challenging than ever. “Her friends?”

  “They loved her.”

  Josie drained her cup and got to her feet. “Then why, if they were her friends who loved her, didn’t a single one of them know her real name?”

  CHAPTER 3

  I stared at Josie, my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t think of a single answer. The truth was, I had never thought of it that way before. Josie’s lips stretched in a grin of victory. I snapped my mouth shut and gritted my teeth, angry that she had gotten the better of me. As I gathered dirty dishes from the other tables, my mind kept turning the question over. There had to be a logical explanation. I was sure the men had loved her, but if they had, wouldn’t they have known her name?

  I carried the dishes to the kitchen, where Mother had a kettle steaming on the back of the stove. Willie had brought in a bucket of cold water from the pump before he left, so I filled the sink with a mixture of the two and began washing dishes. When I returned to the front with a tray of clean coffee cups, Josie was gone, but her question and her infuriating smile of victory lingered behind her. As soon as I thought of that smile, anger jumbled my thoughts all over again. There had to be a good reason—an answer to her question. There just had to be!

  I wiped down the tables and swept the floor and was done for the morning. I would have an hour to myself before the lunch train rolled through. Though tourists weren’t coming to the mountains, the new zinc boom brought on by the war meant enough passengers on the trains to keep me rushed off my feet at lunchtime. Usually, I went outside, but today I climbed the back stairs to my bedroom above the café.

  I pulled the handful of dime novels and penny dreadfuls from my shelf and spread them across the bed. There were a few that told tales of fur trappers, explorers, or sea captains, and I set those aside. The rest were tales of beautiful heroines, threatened by cruel men or dangerous animals. In their darkest hour, they were always rescued by a brave and handsome hero, and they would swoon into his strong, protective arms. I imagined what George’s arms would feel like if I were to swoon into them. “Oh, George,” I would say. “Oh, Pearl.”

  The fantasy slipped away and I frowned. The heroes always knew their heroines’ names when they went to profess their undying love. Always.

  Still, that didn’t mean the miners didn’t love Silverheels. But what did it mean? I picked up my favorite book and paged through it. The heroine had been an orphan who had fled a cruel orphanage. Only at the end, after being rescued, she learned who she really was—an heiress stolen at birth from her loving parents. She herself had not known her real name.

  I set the book down, an idea fo
rming in my mind. A woman in trouble, on the run, would not reveal her true name, would she? A woman fleeing a cruel home or a dark past?

  My thoughts were interrupted by my mother calling me back downstairs. I found her in the kitchen, her sleeves rolled up and beads of sweat on her brow as she sliced loaves of bread for the dozens of sandwiches we would be serving the lunch crowd. Behind her, heat radiated off the stove, where a ham sat cooling, freshly out of the oven, and a pot of stew simmered.

  “Sorry, Pearl, but someone just came into the café, and I need to get these sandwiches made. Can you see to whoever it is?”

  I stepped through from the kitchen to the café and stopped short.

  “It’s about time!” Josie barked at once from a stool at the counter. “Where have you been, girl? Off mooning over some boy?” She grabbed a cup from the tray I’d brought in earlier and set it pointedly on the counter in front of her. I plastered a polite smile onto my face and picked up the coffeepot.

  “Has that been sitting there since breakfast?” she said, narrowing her eyes at the pot. Of course it had, since I hadn’t yet come down to brew a fresh pot for lunch.

  “I’m not paying my hard-earned money for the stale slop you couldn’t foist off on someone else.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I turned away from her to go dump the pot and refill it, but stopped when she clanged her cup against the counter.

  “Well, don’t waste it, girl. I’ll take what you’ve got there while I wait for the fresh pot to perk. But I expect it on the house.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying something I shouldn’t. She was a customer and my elder, and talking back to her would only get me in trouble. I poured her a cup of coffee, making sure the sugar bowl was on hand, and I turned again to take the pot into the kitchen to make fresh.

  “Aren’t you going to take my order? How long do you mean to make me wait, girl?”

  “My name is Pearl,” I said, my smile now gone.

  Her eyes sparked with challenge. “It is, is it?”

  “What would you like to eat, Mrs. Gilbert?” I asked.

  “Apple pie. And make sure it’s hot. And melt some cheese over it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Maybe I could find a slice with worms in the apples.

  “And don’t forget the coffee. Fresh!”

  Ignoring this last, I retreated to the kitchen.

  Mother had slices of bread laid out across the big work table and was slicing the ham, so I refilled the coffeepot and set it on the stove. Then I took down the first of the apple pies from the baking rack near the open back door, and I cut into it. The sweet smell of apples and cinnamon floated to my nose as I lifted the first fat wedge out onto a plate. I smiled. Josie might complain about everything else, but she wouldn’t complain about this pie. No one complained about my mother’s apple pie.

  “Who is it?” Mother asked, not looking up from her work.

  “Jo—Mrs. Gilbert,” I said, remembering my manners just in time.

  “And she wants pie? Before lunch?”

  “With a slice of cheese. And fresh coffee,” I said. I was glad she hadn’t ordered a full lunch. The less she ordered the sooner she’d be gone, and I wanted her out of the café before the lunch rush. It was hard enough serving the crowd off the train without Josie underfoot, ranting about her cause. The train only stopped for an hour, so our customers demanded quick service.

  My mother’s brow wrinkled. “She probably doesn’t have enough money for lunch.” Mother had been laying slabs of ham on top of the rows of bread slices. Now she pressed another slice of bread on top of one and put the finished sandwich on a plate. She held the plate out to me.

  “Here, Pearl. Take her this and tell her it’s on the house.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Hmm,” Mother said. “You’re right. It will hurt her pride if she thinks it’s charity.” She glanced at the pie and smiled. “I know. Tell her we’re out of cheese, and we hope the free sandwich makes up for it.”

  “But we’re not out of cheese,” I said, pointing to the big gold wheel under a cloth on the shelf.

  “Never mind, Pearl. I’ll not have that poor old woman going without a decent lunch just because she doesn’t have money and is too proud to ask for help. Neighbors do for neighbors. You know that.”

  I sighed, taking the pie in one hand and the sandwich in the other and returned to the front, where Josie was sitting at the counter, drumming her fingers impatiently and watching for my return. At once her eyes landed on the naked pie.

  “Where’s my cheese, girl? Did you listen to a thing I said?”

  “Mother said to tell you we are out of cheese, so she wants you to have this sandwich on the house.”

  “It all should be on the house if you can’t even get my order right. What kind of café runs out of cheese?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek again, even harder than before, and turned back to the kitchen to retrieve the coffeepot. It wasn’t ready, so I offered to help my mother, hoping to stay in the kitchen. She sent me to the front to lay out napkins and silverware on the tables in preparation for lunch. I refused to even look in Josie’s direction, but it didn’t matter. She swallowed her mouthful of ham and bread and said, “So, this boy you were mooning over, do you figure he knows your name?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said, then paused in my work. “I mean, I wasn’t mooning over a boy.”

  “No? Not even the handsome George Crawford?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said again, though I could feel the prickle of a blush starting in the tips of my ears as the image of George holding me in his arms came back into my mind.

  “Well then,” she said, sounding satisfied, “maybe you aren’t as big a fool as I thought you were.”

  I gritted my teeth, clanging the silverware down on the tables as I made my way around the room. I might have held my tongue until I could escape, if Josie hadn’t given a gloating little chuckle. That was too much. She had complained about the food and service, and then complained again when my mother had found a gracious way to feed her. Now, on top of all that, she was heaping insults on me, for no reason at all. I still might have ignored it, if her insults had been directed at me alone, but I wasn’t going to hear a word against George.

  “George Crawford is a nice boy and a gentleman,” I said. I didn’t add handsome, charming, and the best catch in Park County. At least not out loud.

  She snorted. “George Crawford is a slick-talking charmer, like every other male that thinks too much of himself. If it had been him back in 1861 it wouldn’t have mattered whether or not he knew Silverheels’s name. He’s the sort who’d only see fit to name a mountain after himself anyway. Where’s that fresh coffee?”

  I retrieved the coffeepot and poured her a fresh cup, all the while trying to screw up my courage. At last, I just blurted out what I wanted to say without looking at her. I knew I’d never keep up my nerve if our eyes met.

  “I think the miners didn’t know Silverheels’s real name because she couldn’t tell anyone. Because she had run away.”

  There was a moment of silence before Josie spoke. “On the lam, huh? What did she do, rob the stage to Denver?”

  “Of course not!” I snapped, offended both by the suggestion and the tone of mockery in her voice. I rushed on with my idea before she could say something else ridiculous. I had come up with an explanation that was such a perfect solution, I was sure it had to be right.

  “She probably had a cruel father who sold her in marriage to a horrible old man she didn’t love. She wanted to be a dancer—a ballet dancer—on the finest stages in Paris. But her father wouldn’t hear of it, so he found a rich old miser for her to marry.” I was warming to my story now as it unfolded in all its tragic beauty in my mind.

  “She told her father she would rather die than marry the brute, but her father locked her in her room, vowing to keep her there until the wedding day. Just when she was giving up hope, a kindly maid took pity on her,
and when her father was asleep, the girl let Gerta out of her room.”

  “Gerta?” Josie said.

  I shrugged. I liked the name. “She snuck quietly out of the house and hurried to the train station, where she got a ticket to come west.” As if helping me tell my tale, the train whistle blew, and across the street the lunch train came into the station, its wheels screeching on the rails as it braked. I continued, speaking quickly. I didn’t have much time to finish before the lunch crowd arrived.

  “She bought a ticket as far from home as she could get, but she could never use her real name again. She knew her father was looking for her and would stop at nothing to get her back!” I felt triumphant as I finished my tale. I liked how the story sounded, tragic and beautiful. I was proud of the details I had created—an old rich suitor and a kindly maid. It was a perfect beginning for the legend I had known all my life. I felt so good about the story that I ventured a glance up into Josie’s wrinkled old face and saw a strange expression there.

  Could it be that my story had touched her bitter old heart? Had I reminded her of the joy and beauty of life and the tragic fragility of a young girl’s dreams?

  Her lips contorted and for a moment I thought she was about to cry. Instead, she burst out laughing.

  CHAPTER 4

  It’s not funny!” I snapped. Then the bell on the door clattered and hungry travelers burst into the café. Within minutes every chair was taken, and I was in a scramble serving up sandwiches and stew and cups of coffee. Josie, in the meantime, sauntered around the café, handing out leaflets and extolling the virtues of her cause to anyone who would listen. It didn’t make my job any easier. She was in the way, and she was putting folks in a bad mood that they took out on me. I ignored her as best I could and tried to soothe the customers with smiles and quick service, but inside I was seething.

  At last the stationmaster, Mr. Orenbach, came into the café, clanging his handbell to announce the train would depart soon. There was a flurry of last-minute orders. Josie hurried out the door and across the street to the platform to catch any travelers who hadn’t come into the café. The whistle blew its five-minute warning and the café emptied as quickly as it had filled, piles of dirty dishes and more than a few wadded-up Votes for Women! handbills left behind.