Watching Eagles Soar

by Margaret Coel

  Mary Ann thanked Tom Holt for his trouble and showed him to the door. A warm breeze stirred up little clouds of dust along the street. The rolling hills in the distance had turned magenta in the afternoon sun. On the horizon, the mountain peaks, streaked with snow, floated into the blue sky. She could hear Jed’s voice: All that land and sky, Mary Ann. There’s opportunity waiting for us like we never could’ve dreamed.

  She watched Tom Holt make his way down the sidewalk, the long, rangy figure dodging the groups of men milling about, until he stepped into the street and disappeared in the pile of wagons and carts. Then she put on her bonnet. She tied on Little Mary’s bonnet.

  “Where we goin’, Mama?” The child was looking up at her, the pink face so trusting and sweet and hopeful. Oh, how Madame Sylvestre would change all that.

  “Out for a good walk,” Mary Ann said, taking the child’s hand and leading her outside. Wagons clattered past, wheels kicking out sprays of dust. The air was thick with the smells of horse droppings. The sun burned through her gingham dress. They made their way through the groups of men standing about. Past two fine hotels, the Pacific House and the Broadwell House, past the drugstore and the news and periodical shop, past saloons and billiard halls and a barber shop. Some of the men tipped their slouch hats. The widow Salton.

  Mary Ann tightened her hand around Little Mary’s. What was there in such a place for a widow and her child? How could she earn their keep when all she knew was French and lace making? She might start a school, except there was only a handful of children in town and few families. She might take in laundry and sewing, she supposed, but most likely it would give them only a small pittance. This was a place of gold seekers. How could she traipse into the mountains and pan for gold like the men, with Little Mary to care for?

  They turned into the confectionary shop. Mary Ann found two pennies in her skirt pocket, and Litle Mary selected a peppermint stick, which she sucked loudly as they continued down Larimer Street, weaving through the knots of men. Wagons clanked past, and sounds of laughter erupted from the saloon in Apollo Hall. Several men were lined up in front of the Eldorado eating house on the corner. Rough and uncivilized, Tom Holt had said, and yet Denver City seemed a place of energy and possibility. They would walk every day, she decided, until they had to leave. She would memorize every detail. She never wanted to forget.

  They reached the dry bed of Cherry Creek and were about to start back when Mary Ann saw what looked like a crowd of prospectors bunched in front of the two-story plank building that stood in the middle of the creek bed. A sign that said Rocky Mountain News stretched across the top of the peaked roof. Wagons were rolling in, prospectors jumping out and joining the crowd. Each man gripped a drawstring canvas bag.

  She walked the child a little way down E Street until she was close enough to make out the sign on the side of the building: Assay Office, Byers & Shermer. In an instant she understood why Jed had paid out so much of their funds for the cabin. Too ill by then to follow the creeks into the mountains panning for gold, he had searched for another way to earn their living. Then he’d met the go-back looking for somebody to take the cabin and its contents off his hands, and in the cabin was a safe.

  She started back, pulling Little Mary along, something opening up inside her, like a rose turning to the sun. “We must hurry,” she told the child. Little Mary started skipping, as if she felt it, too, a new possibility.

  Inside the cabin, she dropped to her knees in front of the dull green safe. The door held fast. Somehow she would have to work out the combination. She leaned in close—she’d seen Papa do this at the safe in the back room of his store countless times. She turned the knob slowly, listening for the tiny clicking sound. Ah, there it was.

  She kept turning the knob. Another sound, then another. Still the door didn’t open. She sat back on her heels, stung by the sharp sense of defeat, and closed her eyes a moment. She could almost feel the bounce of the wagon and smell the perspiration pouring off the oxen. She looked around at Little Mary, dancing her doll across the tabletop.

  She got to her feet and went over to the small chest of Jed’s things that she kept next to the mattress. Inside was Jed’s second best shirt, the one he wore every day. She had seen that he wore his best shirt for burial. She set the few items of clothing on top of the bed and lifted out a mahogany box. She opened the lid and stared at Jed’s revolver, memories tumbling through her head. They had walked along the bed of Cherry Creek a half mile or so from town, she and Jed and Little Mary, and Jed coughing so bad. He had placed the revolver in her hand. “You must learn to shoot,” he’d said. “Ladies here must know such things.”

  She set the mahogany box to one side and drew out the canvas-backed ledger book. The lined pages contained the accounts of their life together, recorded in Jed’s precise handwriting. The pay he had earned in Papa’s store, the costs of household items and food. The last entry was for September 16, 1860. $80. Cabin and contents.

  Beneath the entry was a series of numbers separated by dashes. She went back to the safe and turned the knob according to the numbers. The door sprang open. She clasped the ledger book to her chest, conscious of the salty tears stinging her eyes. “Thank you, Jed,” she whispered.

  It didn’t take long—not more than twenty minutes, she reckoned—to tear four empty pages from the back of the ledger book, then tear them again into narrow strips, the size of a calling card back in St. Louis. She copied down the same words on each strip:

  KEEP YOUR GOLD SAFE!

  THE ONLY SAFE IN DENVER CITY

  LARIMER STREET

  PROPRIETOR: MARY ANN SALTON

  She put the strips of paper in her pocket and tied Little Mary’s bonnet under her chin. “We’re going for another walk,” she said, guiding the child into the street. Little Mary skipped ahead, trailing her doll along the sidewalk, giggling in the afternoon sun.

  * * *

  Mary Ann recognized Captain Holt’s footsteps on the sidewalk before she opened the door. Outside, the yellow rosebushes were beginning to stand tall. The captain studied them a moment before he removed his hat and stepped inside.

  “What’s all this?” he said, looking about the cabin. She had hammered pegs into the log walls and hung the clothing that had been in the bottom of the barrel. A good linen cloth covered the table, and another linen cloth was draped over the top of the barrel. The wood carton that she’d found on the street made a satisfactory cabinet for the good china. She had made another doll from scraps of fabric in the barrel, but Little Mary seemed happier running and playing on the sidewalk. The child had insisted upon helping her plant the roses.

  “We’ve been settling in, Captain,” she said.

  “Settling in? The wagon train leaves day after tomorrow. I must warn you, there’s snow already in the mountains. Winter is coming soon. Won’t be any other trains going back. Mrs. Ericson has been kind enough to make room for you and the child in their wagon. She says to tell you, however, that you must leave behind your personal possessions.”

  “I thank you for your trouble, and please thank Mrs. Ericson for her kind offer,” Mary Ann said. She felt the tip of her tongue scraping the back of her teeth. “We won’t be going back. This is our home now.”

  “Heard about your scheme, renting space in that safe of yours.” Holt nodded toward the corner of the room occupied by the iron safe. The bushy eyebrows pulled together. “Don’t see how that’s gonna bring in enough to keep you alive.”

  “I’ll be using some of my earnings to grubstake my most reputable clients,” she said. “Just as I am sure my husband had planned to do. Little Mary and I will have a share in whatever gold my clients find. Other clients are wanting to join me in the investments. I’ll take an even larger share for putting the ventures together. There are great possibilities here, Captain. Little Mary and I would be sorry to leave them behind.”

  Holt let out a loud guf
faw. “At the mercy of the flotsam and jetsam out there?” He stepped sideways and waved through the opened door at the wagons passing, the groups of men sauntering along the wooden sidewalk. “They could burst in here and rob you blind.”

  Mary Ann moved toward the barrel, lifted the linen cloth, and brought out Jed’s revolver. “I hardly think that will be a matter of concern,” she said.

  St. Elmo in Winter

  “St. Elmo oughta be up ahead somewhere,” Liam shouted over one shoulder. His voice was muffled in the canyon, almost lost in the wind whispering in the pine trees and the swoosh of snow falling from the branches. He hunched forward over his cross-country skis, knees slightly bent, and stared at the GPS cushioned in the palms of his black ski mitts. He’d planted his skis across the trail. “Another half mile,” he said. Then he looked back. “Think you can make it?”

  Charlie dug both ski poles into the snow and pushed another few feet up the steep incline. Half a mile? They might as well be going to the moon. She flashed Liam the most reassuring smile she could muster. The temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees in the last ten minutes. Her fingers felt like icicles inside her gloves. The cold was seeping past her scarf and crawling around inside her jacket. It was starting to snow. They hadn’t seen any other skiers on the trail in more than an hour. Probably the other skiers had already turned back. But she and Liam had set out this morning for the old ghost town of St. Elmo, and she didn’t want to admit that the steep trail, the falling temperatures, and a little snow were more than she could handle.

  “You have to see St. Elmo in winter,” Liam had told her—what, a thousand times? “It’s just like it was in the 1880s. All the shops and houses up and down Main Street are the same. The wooden sidewalks are still there, and the log railings where they used to hitch the horses.”

  “And how would you know St. Elmo looks the same?” She could never resist teasing Liam about his ongoing love affair with Colorado history. It rivaled his affair with her, she sometimes thought, and she wondered which he would choose, if he had to choose between them. A graduate student in physics, in love with history! “You’re in the wrong field,” she’d told him, but had he taken up history, she never would have met him. He’d been her instructor in physics lab class. She guessed she probably wasn’t the first student who had fallen in love with Liam Hollings, with his black curly hair and green eyes, and when he wore his cowboy hat and boots, he looked as if he’d stepped out of the Old West. There were times—when he was lost in a novel about the Old West or one of those grainy cowboy and Indian films—that, she thought, he wished he had lived back then.

  “We could drive to St. Elmo next summer,” she’d suggested. But Liam had gone on about how St. Elmo in the summer just wasn’t the same. It was perfect in the winter, so isolated and still in the snow, like one of those miniature towns in a snow globe or a little town under a Christmas tree. He’d gone to St. Elmo many times, summer and winter. Winter was best.

  Liam smiled at her now as Charlie dug her poles in hard and pulled alongside him. There was a light dusting of snow across his backpack and shoulders, and snowflakes were popping out like ice crystals on the sleeves of her own jacket. She edged her skis to keep from slipping backward and tried to catch her breath. She could hear her heart pounding. The freezing air stung her lungs. The world had been blue and white and golden when they’d started out, the sun blazing in a clear blue sky, the snow on the ground glistening so white it had stung her eyes. The sun had disappeared some time ago, and now the sky looked like a sheet of lead pressing down. The snow on the trail had turned gray.

  “Looks like a few flurries; that’s all.” Liam shrugged the snow off his shoulders. “The storm isn’t forecast until tonight.” He threw a glance up the trail. “See the fork ahead?” he said, but even as he spoke, the gray sky seemed to drop down and envelop the fork. “St. Elmo’s just a short distance on the right. We have plenty of time to see the place before we have to ski back down.”

  They were staying at a cabin at Mount Princeton at the foot of Chalk Creek Canyon, and the thought of the fireplace and the way the warmth of the fire last night had spread into the small living room and the red firelight had licked at the log walls sent a shiver down Charlie’s spine. Even if they were to start back now, it would take the rest of the afternoon to reach the cabin. Her legs and arms felt numb with the cold.

  “Ready?” Liam said, but he was already skiing up the trail, poles pounding the snow.

  Charlie started after him. It felt better to move, loosen her muscles, get the blood flowing. She could see her breath floating ahead in gray puffs. Liam was right, she told herself. He was always right. He knew Chalk Creek Canyon, all the old gold mines and mining camps, all the ghost towns. He’d hiked and skied the trails with his grandfather when he was a kid, filling up on stories that his grandfather told about the way things used to be. And Liam had been hiking and skiing to ghost towns ever since.

  “We’ll follow the old railroad bed up the canyon,” he’d told her this morning, a map of the area spread on the table in front of them, their coffee mugs holding down two corners. “The Denver South Park and Pacific ran up Chalk Creek Canyon to the gold mines. Four or five trains a day, imagine, and every one of them stopped at St. Elmo. Passengers coming and going, all kinds of freight being loaded and unloaded. The depot was like Grand Central Station. St. Elmo was the biggest town in the area in the boom days of the 1880s and 1890s. Miners and railroaders lived there. Ranchers came into town on the weekends. There were boardinghouses, all kinds of stores—merchandise and hardware—a livery and fire station, the town hall where dances were held every Saturday night. Saloons and gambling parlors and whorehouses. Then the mines played out. The trains kept running for a while, but pretty soon there wasn’t much reason to go up Chalk Creek Canyon. The tracks were finally pulled up in 1926. The few folks still living in St. Elmo just walked out the front doors and left everything the way it was.”

  “I get the picture,” she’d told him, and she’d even admitted that St. Elmo would be something to see, a town that had stayed on in the canyon when everything else had left. Mines shut down, tracks pulled up, people gone away.

  “We’ll have to watch ourselves on the trail,” Liam had said. “It’s not very wide. The old narrow-gauge trains didn’t need much room.”

  Now Charlie planted her poles as hard as she could and tried to ski faster. Still Liam seemed farther and farther ahead, a gray splotch moving up the trail carved into the mountainside. The dark shadows of pine trees, boulders, and gray snow covered the slope that loomed over the south side of the narrow railroad bed. On the north side was the sheer drop-off into the canyon several hundred feet below. Charlie tried to stay close to the left, but the snow was getting heavier, blowing across the trail and stinging her face. She had to keep her head down, her chin tucked inside the folds of her scarf. Her face felt like ice. Her goggles were fogging. It was hard to make out where she was on the trail. She concentrated on staying close to the line of trees. If she swerved too far to the right, tipped her skis over the edge, she could tumble into the canyon before she knew what had happened. No one would ever find her. She could taste the panic beginning to rise inside her, like the burning aftermath of a spicy dinner.

  She couldn’t see Liam! The realization took her breath away. “Liam!” she shouted, but it was only the sound of her own voice that echoed in the silence of the falling snow. She made herself ski faster, digging the poles in hard to pull herself along. The snow cracked like ice beneath her skis, and the driving snow crusted on the front of her jacket and ski pants. She shouted again: “Liam, wait up!”

  She’d reached the fork in the trail, she realized. It had to be the fork because directly ahead were the dark shapes of trees looming out of the snow. She was in a whiteout, nearly blinded by the whiteness everywhere: air, sky, ground. She felt disoriented, slightly dizzy, and she had to lean forward on her poles a m
oment to regain her equilibrium. The storm predicted for tonight, when she and Liam had planned to be back at the cabin cooking steaks on the little grill in the kitchen and roasting potatoes in the fireplace and sipping hot wine—that storm was here now. Weather forecasts seldom got it right about the mountains: sunny and beautiful one moment, a blizzard the next. She could barely make out the branches of the fork. St. Elmo on the right, Liam had said.

  She headed to the right, still trying to stay with the line of trees, using their dark shadows as a guide. St. Elmo had to be close by. Houses and other buildings were still there, Liam had said. He was probably already in town looking for someplace where they could get in out of the storm. He’d come back for her. He wouldn’t leave her alone out here. “Liam!” she shouted again, hearing the panic rippling through the echo that came back to her.

  The trail was getting steeper, and that was almost funny, because she couldn’t see that she was climbing higher. But she felt the tightness in her chest, the strain in her calf muscles. Only the grooves in the base of her skis kept her from slipping backward. Exhaustion pulled at her, as if iron weights had attached themselves to her legs and arms. Her backpack felt like a hundred pounds. The cold had worked its way into her bones. She tried to flex her fingers, but they were numb. You could die in a storm like this—that was a fact—just lie down in the snow and go to sleep. She had to keep moving. Every few minutes, she heard someone shouting for Liam, and she realized that she was shouting and that she had settled into a weird rhythm: Ski, ski, shout. Ski, ski, shout.