Searching for Silverheels

by Jeannie Mobley

  So why did it all feel so wrong? I didn’t like feeling so helpless, and his strong arm felt constraining around me. He hadn’t even asked my permission, just grabbed me and pressed his lips to mine. I tried to melt into his arms and kiss him back like all the ladies did in my books, but instead I was fighting the urge to pull free. As the kiss ended, Josie’s words sprang to my mind—handsome men took advantage of girls who didn’t stand up for themselves. Girls like me.

  Once again, Josie had spoiled the perfect moment. She had poisoned my mind to romance. I couldn’t let her take this away from me, so I took a deep breath and I pushed my lips back up toward George’s, determined that the second kiss would make up for the first. George looked surprised, then pleased, as he obliged me with another kiss and smothering embrace. It felt worse than the first. I pulled back.

  “We should make sure Imogene is all right,” I said. Not waiting for an answer, I led the way back against the wind and driving rain.

  We found Imogene crouched behind the fallen table. George threw the sheet over the table to form a damp tent for us, and we all huddled inside.

  “Where is Willie?” I asked when we were settled.

  Imogene rolled her eyes. “He ran off to make sure your mother was okay, and never came back. I don’t see why he needed to do that when your father is here.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’s somewhere much less cozy than here, and it serves him right,” George said. “Besides, I don’t think we’d have room for one more in our little fort.”

  Imogene giggled. “Fort Kissing Booth,” she said.

  George laughed, then leaned over and kissed Imogene’s cheek, right in front of me. It stung my heart, but I knew it was my fault. If I hadn’t pulled away from him earlier, he wouldn’t be turning to Imogene now.

  “That will be a nickel,” she said with another giggle. He reached into his pocket and produced the nickel and a pair of dice. “Craps, anyone?” he said with a naughty grin.

  “I don’t have any money,” I said.

  “Then we can play for other stakes,” George said. “This is Fort Kissing Booth.”

  “We can use the nickels from the jar, as long as we give them back afterward,” I said quickly. I lifted the corner of the sheet and gathered the nickels with shaking fingers.

  The torrent lasted a full fifteen minutes, followed by another fifteen of steady rain. We played our game throughout. George and Imogene were perfectly at ease, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the disappointment of my first kiss. At last we realized that we no longer heard raindrops pattering on the sheet or the table. Cautiously, we lifted the sheet and ventured out, stretching our cramped legs and backs.

  The meadow looked like the Hun himself had marched through. Blankets, hats, and spilled picnics were scattered everywhere amid little rivers of mud. Slowly, bedraggled townsfolk were emerging from beneath blankets, as wet and muddy as if there had been no shelter at all. I looked down at myself and saw that I was no different. My dress, which had been crisp with starch just an hour ago, now hung limp, and my white pinafore was streaked with mud.

  I looked over at the row of tables with all the town’s hard work. One table of baked goods had blown over and my mother’s pies were now a sticky, gooey mess on the ground. The other goods hadn’t faired much better. The ladies at the tables had done their best to save what they could, but the storm had been too sudden and fierce, and there had been nowhere dry to put anything.

  The craft table had also gone down, and the railroaders’ wives were emerging and searching the ground for socks and mittens. The wind had carried some things off, and not every sock or mitten had a mate.

  Worst of all, the fine hat that Mrs. Engel had donated for the raffle was gone. One lady reported seeing it catch the wind and sail clean over the barbed-wire fence and away across the pasture. The Larsen boys quickly formed a posse to go after it, but we all knew they were more likely to bring it back dead than alive.

  Imogene, George, and I stood our table back onto its legs and wrung out the sheet. We draped it back over the table, but the felt hearts and cupids had bled in long red streaks down the sheet, an effect that was more gruesome than romantic. I sorted through the broken glass from the pickle jar for the rest of our nickels. Between us, we had made eighty-five cents, but I could only find eighty. I put all the money in the pocket of my pinafore and set the chairs back in place, but I didn’t think we would reopen for business. I couldn’t see that anyone was looking for a kiss from muddy, bedraggled girls, and I was too wet and cold to sit there waiting to find out.

  Across the meadow folks were coming to the aid of friends and neighbors, helping to wring out blankets, recover lost items, and tidy dirty children. Mrs. Crawford, however, took one look at the mess and was immediately overcome by a headache. She insisted that her husband and George take her home at once. George gave me a quick peck on the cheek and a smile, then left me to collect the blanket and picnic basket from the mire on my own. It wasn’t very gentlemanly of him, but his mother didn’t give him a choice.

  On the opposite side of the meadow, the Schmidts were gathering their wet neighbors together. They had loaded their wagon with firewood, which they now unloaded and set ablaze. At once, shivering children, who had been crying to go home, gathered around it. Before long, everyone was warming there, and as we talked, the event began to take on a hue of hilarity. We laughed at our soiled clothes, and at tales of folks falling into cream pies, or men ending up in their wives’ hats by mistake. When the Schmidts set up a table full of frankfurters and unfurled a sign that read Roast a Liberty Dog to Help Roast the Kaiser!—Ten Cents Each! a big cheer went up from the crowd.

  A few ladies gathered what could be salvaged of the soggy baked goods and brought them to the bonfire to sell, and a few gallant gentlemen bought them, although I didn’t see anyone trying to actually eat them.

  The ragged sunshine grew stronger and warmer, and soon folks ventured away from the fire. Fiddlers and banjo players brought out their instruments and the dancing started, despite the puddles and slop. My father and mother stepped out, and Willie reappeared to ask Imogene. She, however, gave him the cold shoulder.

  “Why should I dance with you, William Barnell, when you ran off and left me in the rain? A gentleman would have sheltered me and kept me company.”

  She walked away from Willie, and while he watched she flirted with one of the Larsen boys long enough to get an invitation to dance.

  “Well, sis, I guess it’s just you and me,” Willie said.

  “She’ll forgive you soon,” I said. “She worked too hard to catch you to let you off the hook so easily.”

  “Then I better get a Liberty Dog now, to keep my strength up.”

  He bought three dogs from the Schmidts, stuck them on the ends of willow sticks, and handed one to me. We joined the crowd of people roasting them around the fire. When Imogene returned from dancing, Willie presented her with a roasted dog, and as predicted, she forgave him.

  In the end, most folks in town declared the picnic a success, and one that would be talked about for some time. The bonfire and dancing went well past dark, and the Schmidts sold all of their franks, even after Mr. Schmidt went back into town and got some more. Folks were still throwing wood onto the fire when I left to go to bed. Willie decided to stay, so I retrieved my picnic basket, blanket, and ruined sheet from the kissing booth, and walked back with my parents.

  It was the loveliest of nights, the sky clear and sparkling overhead. It was a very romantic setting, and yet I wasn’t sorry to be walked home by my parents instead of George. I was too confused about my feelings to want one more romantic encounter. I was afraid I would never experience romance now that Josie had spoiled it all for me, and I wished I had never taken her bet.

  It wasn’t until we were back at the café that I remembered the picture Mae Nelson had given me. I had tucked it down deep in the basket to keep it safe. Nervously, I took the basket to the kitchen to unpack it, hoping the phot
ograph was undamaged. To my surprise, the cloth-wrapped photo was not alone in the bottom of the basket. Beneath the dirty plates, napkins, and leftover remains of our lunch, nestled against the photo, was a large damp envelope, bursting with pages. It was a used envelope, with a stamp and postmark from Washington, D.C., and the address of the National Women’s Party in the upper left-hand corner. It had been addressed to Miss Josephine Gilbert, but her name had been crossed out and my own penciled in. The envelope and its contents had absorbed a good deal of rain, and by doing so had probably saved the photograph beneath it, which was dry.

  I took the dry tintype and the damp envelope upstairs to my room. I put the photo on my dresser, leaning against the wall so I could look at it. Then I gently removed the pages from the envelope. They were neatly typeset, like pages from a penny dreadful, with a large headline across the top of the first one that read A TRUE ACCOUNT OF SILVERHEELS AND THE EPIDEMIC OF 1861. The ink on the first few pages was smeared, but I could still make out the words.

  I laid them out across my bedroom floor to dry, thinking I would read them in the morning, but of course I could not go to sleep. I was dying to know what Josie had concocted now. Whatever it was, she had bothered to print it, which meant she intended to distribute it. But to whom? In the café at lunch time? To the tourists at the hotel before they got a chance to talk to me and ask for a tour? Maybe she had come up with proof for her story, and to complete my humiliation, she would have me distribute these along with campaign bills on the platform.

  It was no good lying in bed wondering. I got up and relit the lamp. Then, on hands and knees, I crouched over the wet pages and began to read the blurring words.

  CHAPTER 21

  A TRUE ACCOUNT OF SILVERHEELS AND THE EPIDEMIC OF 1861

  Buckskin Joe was an ordinary mining camp that might have lived and died without notice if not for the tragedy that struck in the winter of 1861; a tragedy for which one woman was to blame. That woman was the dancer Silverheels, who had come in the fall of 1860 with a troop of dance-hall girls. She so enchanted the men of the town that they begged her to stay.

  To keep her with them, they built her a snug cabin and promised to take care of her every need. As winter closed in around the town, the spoiled Silverheels complained of the cold, hinting she might leave for warmer climes if the miners didn’t do something about it. Buck Wilson, who desired Silverheels for his own, organized an expedition to get woolen blankets from the Mexican sheep camps on the southern end of South Park. The mission was successful, but a week after Buck and his party returned with blankets, news reached Buckskin Joe that the sheep herders had fallen victim to smallpox, and not one was left alive.

  Sure enough, before long the first telltale signs appeared in town. Wilbur Hall and Stephen Smith, who had gone with Buck for blankets, appeared in the saloon flushed with fever. By the next morning, pox stood out on their faces.

  A doctor arrived from Fairplay to examine them. “It’s smallpox, all right,” he announced to the gathered townsfolk when he emerged from their cabin. Then he mounted his horse and galloped away, as eager as anyone to escape the sickness.

  Panic swept like floodwaters through town. Everybody with a wagon and a lick of sense got out. Jack Herndon, the saloon owner, sent his wife to Fairplay as fast as he could load her on a horse. The dance-hall girls all headed for Denver City. Mountain men like Zachariah Stuart and Elijah Weldon sent their Indian wives and children to camp in the forests nearby until the plague had passed. Only the men with claims producing gold stayed, fearing theft more than they feared sickness.

  Eli Weldon, being somewhat more prudent than the rest, kept his stepdaughter, Sefa, with him, to cook and clean. After all, she wasn’t his child, and besides, she was half Indian. In those days, and to a man like Eli Weldon, that meant she wasn’t worth much, so her safety wasn’t as important as Weldon’s comfort. As for Sefa, she was frightened of the pox, but she was more frightened that she might never again see Buck Wilson, her heart’s desire, if she left. So, trusting to her mother’s remedies for fever, she stayed.

  Silverheels could have left town too, but she had her own claim to protect: a whole town full of love-struck miners with gold, all eating out of her hand.

  All except Buck Wilson, who seemed to do less work and have more gold than all the rest of the men in town. He had to be running his own con, and she wasn’t about to leave the whole town to him with so much gold for the taking.

  When the flight from Buckskin Joe was complete, the town settled uneasily into waiting, to see what the epidemic would do. Sefa Weldon, though, did not wait. She set to work brewing up the bitter tea that would fight fever. Taking it to Stephen and Wilbur, she encountered Buck Wilson. Love nearly buckled her knees when he called out to her, but her joy turned to fear when she saw the flush of fever in his face.

  “Sefa, go to Silverheels and tell her I’m sick,” he said. “Bring her to me.”

  “Oh, Buck, you can’t be!” Sefa cried.

  He smiled a little, but it was a bitter smile. He held out an envelope. “Take this to Silverheels, Sefa. Please? For your old friend Buck?”

  Sefa knew it must be a declaration of love for Silverheels, the last thing she wanted to deliver, but the lovesick little calf would have done anything for Buck. So she turned up the path toward Silverheels’s cabin.

  Flakes of snow were swirling through the air by the time she reached the door.

  “Who is it?” Silverheels called without opening it.

  “It’s me,” Sefa said. “I have a letter from Buck!”

  Silverheels opened the door just a crack to take the letter.

  “He wants you to come to him. He’s sick,” Sefa said.

  “I don’t want to get sick too,” Silverheels said, and she slammed the door.

  Sefa wasn’t sorry that Silverheels wouldn’t come. She planned to cure Buck with her medicine. Then he would love her at last, instead of the pretty dancer.

  Buck didn’t bother to mask his disappointment when he threw open the door to Sefa instead of Silverheels, but Sefa pretended not to notice. She fussed over him and gave him her foul-tasting tea. He took one sip and dumped the rest while she wasn’t looking.

  After tending Buck, Sefa visited the other sick miners. Wilbur beckoned her to his bedside.

  “I ran away,” he croaked in a dried-out voice. “And now I’m gonna die!”

  He clutched at her hand, the fear of death turning his grip to iron.

  “You gotta write my momma and sister. Send them my gold. I been saving it for them. It’s in my trunk. Promise you’ll send it. Tell them what happened to me.”

  “Send it where?” Sefa said.

  His hand loosened on her arm, the strength running out of him like water. “There’s a Bible in the trunk. Their names and address are there. Promise me, Sefa.”

  “I promise,” she said, stepping away now that he had released her.

  He smiled a little and closed his eyes.

  Sefa returned to her cabin as darkness settled in over Buckskin Joe, bringing the coldest night in the town’s history. A blizzard screamed and raged around the cabins, cutting the town off from the rest of the world.

  Morning came and the storm slackened. Sefa brewed more tea and set out to visit the invalids. Buck was sprawled across his bed in his long johns and a filthy undershirt soaked with sweat. A tangle of blankets lay in a heap on the floor beside him.

  Sefa gathered the blankets and covered him. “Buck. Buck, wake up. You should eat something to keep up your strength.”

  “No use,” he muttered. “I’m dying. Sefa, bring Silverheels. I must have her here.”

  The tears froze on Sefa’s cheeks as she made her way through the drifted snow to Silverheels’s cabin, but she did as she was told. At first, Silverheels was reluctant to leave the comfort of her snug cabin. But when Sefa told her Buck was dying, she agreed to go.

  Back in his cabin, Buck was drifting in and out of sleep. Silverheels bent over him a
nd spoke sweetly. “Buck, darling. It’s me, your Gerta. Buck, can you hear me?”

  Buck opened his eyes and smiled weakly. “Lie here with me a moment, won’t you, Gerta dear?”

  Silverheels would have preferred to lie in a bed of eels rather than with this sweaty, filthy, fevered man, but she remembered his hidden gold and, kneeling beside the bed, bent her head to rest on his shoulder.

  “You mustn’t worry about claim jumpers or thieves,” she said. “Tell me where your gold is, and I’ll keep it safe for you until you’re better.”

  Buck gave a dry laugh that wrenched a cough from him. “It will cost you, honey.”

  Silverheels bolted up and glared at him. He gave her a faint smile. “Kiss me, Gerta,” he said. “A big kiss and your everlasting love. That will be the price if you want to know my secrets.”

  She stared, horrified. He laughed again. “We’re both gamblers, you and I. Well, Silverheels, the chips are down. I’m calling your bluff. What’s my claim worth to you?”

  Ever naive, Sefa blundered to the bedside with a cup of her horrid tea just then. “We must get him to drink this. It will save his life,” she said.

  “I’ll do that. Why don’t you bring in more firewood,” Silverheels replied. “We mustn’t let him get cold.” She and Buck had not let go of each other’s gaze. Sefa mistook the look for true love, so she gave the cup to Silverheels and did as she was told.

  When they were alone, Silverheels gave Buck a cold smile. “I don’t think all the chips are down just yet, Buck. The real question is, what is life worth to you.” And while he watched, she raised the cup to her lips and drank the tea that could save him.

  When Sefa came in with the wood, Silverheels hurried her back outside. “He’s resting. We shouldn’t disturb him,” she whispered. They went together to visit Wilbur and Stephen. Both men were dead, so Silverheels went to Wilbur’s trunk and threw it open.

  “What are you doing?” Sefa asked.

  “He’s dead. His gold’s no use to him now,” Silverheels said.