Tom Earley always kept a soft spot for Colorado, however, and after Moses died, he bought the Yellowcat. Hennie thought that was so he had an excuse to return to Middle Swan in the summers. He came back at other times, too, when he was needed, such as when Jake died. An hour after receiving Hennie’s telegram, Tom was on a train for Middle Swan, arriving the day after the burying. He stayed to make sure Hennie was provided for, going to the banker and checking into the state of Jake’s affairs. Hennie knew, because the banker told her so. Tom had asked to be informed if Hennie ever ran out of money.
Tom never forgot Hennie at Christmas, sending her crates of oranges from California and grapefruit from Florida, and he always brought her gewgaws from his travels—carved figurines, china plates, beads. Once he sent her a rug from Persia. If she’d ever stated a longing for a diamond ring, she was sure Tom would have bought her one.
The mountains and old friends meant more to Tom Earley than his money, although it always seemed to Hennie that people with money were the only ones who discounted it. He liked best wandering the hills with a pick, looking for blossom rock, just like any prospector, or sitting in Hennie’s front room with a toddy. Hennie knew she was one of the reasons Tom came back to the Tenmile Range every summer, and she was happy for it, for her heart filled with gladness when she saw him. Besides, the two of them had long had a dependence on each other.
Tom never said anything to Hennie about the homesteader’s wife, but once when he was spending the summer in Middle Swan, he received a telegram and told Hennie he’d be leaving for a time. She’d never seen such raw sorrow on a person’s face before and asked what was wrong.
“Two old friends of mine were killed in a motor car accident,” he replied, which Hennie thought was odd, because there hadn’t been a single automobile in Middle Swan, and she didn’t know they were dangerous. He couldn’t say more without choking up, and handed her the telegram, but she didn’t recognize the names. She did know the name of the man who’d sent it, Benjamin Bondurant, because he was famous in Colorado history.
When Tom returned to Middle Swan a week later, he was a different man. He’d always been a friendly fellow, but he stayed by himself in his cabin that summer and wouldn’t talk to anybody, stayed long past time for him to go home to Chicago. When Tom came back the following summer, his hair, which had been as black as the inside of a mine, was as white as a January blizzard. Once, when he had had too much to drink, he said, “I always figured he’d die, and she’d come to me.”
“Who, Tom?” Hennie asked
He didn’t reply, only muttered, “Life’s uncertain, death’s sure.”
A cloud moved in front of the sun, and Hennie looked up quickly. She didn’t want to be caught in a summer storm high up. But the cloud was a solitary wisp, and in a minute, it floated by, and the sun shone down as hot as ever. Hennie looked to the west, where the storms came from, but there was no sign of weather.
“That’s as sad a story as I ever heard,” Nit said.
“Well, maybe it’s not a real story. Maybe it’s just me meddling in Tom’s business, and like I say, I’d be obliged if you wouldn’t repeat it.” She plucked a columbine and set it on top of Nit’s raspberries.
“Oh no, not to save my life. I won’t ever name it to anybody,” Nit promised. She gathered the napkins that had held the lunch and set them beside the pails and started to get to her feet. “It sounds to me like there’s not so many happy endings in Middle Swan.”
“A mining town’s hard on a woman. She ages early. There’s many a one died in childbirth or from overwork. Or got left behind when her husband was killed, or he taken out on her. Love dies pretty quick in hard times.” Hennie thought that over and added, “Sometimes it dies quick in easy times, too. I’ll tell you one more story. Then we’ll pick us our berries for the last pail and hit the trail.” The sun was warm on Hennie’s bones, and she was not anxious to leave. “Can you stand another story?”
“I can. I wouldn’t like it half so well in Middle Swan if it wasn’t for you and your stories.” Nit sat down again, on the other side of Hennie this time, where there was still a bit of shade. The girl had learned now that the sun at ten thousand feet burned her in minutes and added freckles to her skin. She reached for the canteen and took a swallow. They’d have to fill it again for the trip down the mountain. “I’ll miss your stories when you leave,” she said. “They shouldn’t be forgot.”
“Then maybe you’ll pass them on when I’m gone.”
The girl stared at Hennie for a moment before she said importantly, “I will. I surely will.”
Hennie nodded, satisfied, and said the story she was going to tell, which was about Martha Merritt and Charlie Grove, was one of her best ones.
Nit furrowed her brow, as if the names were familiar but she couldn’t place them.
Martha was her friend from White Pigeon, Hennie explained, the one who’d written her the letter that brought Hennie to Middle Swan.
“I recollect now,” Nit said. “She sent you the picture of her and her husband and Mr. Comfort, and you mixed up the men. You didn’t know until you got here that Mr. Comfort was the handsome one.”
“That’s right.” Hennie was pleased that Nit remembered and knew that the girl had a good mind for the stories. She would indeed pass them on. “I can see Martha running till today, lifting her skirts and hurrying off down the trail to meet Charlie when he came home late of a day after shift. She wasn’t any bigger than a minute and had hair like wire gold, and she was always merry as a marriage bell.”
Martha loved Charlie Grove every bit as much as Hennie loved Jake Comfort, although there were some who didn’t see how Charlie’d caught such a pretty girl, him being so ordinary. But she was foolish over him.
Martha and Charlie had four boys and buried two, which was middling odds in a mining town. They didn’t have much money, because Charlie worked for wages, but that didn’t bother Martha, although as a girl before the war, she’d had beautiful clothes, a dogcart, and a servant who fanned away the summer heat. Still, she said she was richer in Middle Swan than she’d ever been in White Pigeon, and that was as true as God’s stars. Charlie wasn’t happy about the poor way they lived, however, with Martha working like a Turk, the way mining town women did. So when he wasn’t in the mine, he was out with a pick and shovel, searching like a fury for precious metal.
When silver was discovered in Leadville, Charlie decided Middle Swan was a bust, and he moved his family over the Mosquito Range to the Carbonate Camp, which was what Leadville was called. That was in 1877. He said he was sure Leadville was where he’d make his strike, and it was. Charlie went out prospecting one hot day, and at noon, he sat down under a lodgepole pine to eat his dinner. Being tired, he decided that shady spot was as good as any to look for silver. So he stuck his pick into an outcrop beside him, and he found pay dirt. He named the claim the Jack Pine, and it was one of the richest mines in Leadville. Charlie filed his claim and announced, “Now my wife can be a lady again!”
It wasn’t more than a couple of months before the Jack Pine was bringing in money faster than Charlie could spend it. He invested in other mines, and they turned out to be even bigger producers than the Jack Pine. At the same time, he bought a fancy house in Leadville, and when he decided it was not fine enough for Martha, he built her a mansion in Denver.
Hennie visited there and was surprised to find her old friend was downright unhappy. Martha was embarrassed by the gilt and the marble in the house, and the peacocks that Charlie bought to parade around the yard. She had a house full of servants who had to be looked after, but no children to tend, because Charlie had sent the boys east to school, and that’s where they stayed. Martha had to endure endless callers—people asking for money, ministers inviting her to join their churches. “I guess mine and Charlie’s souls are worth more now that we’re rich,” she told Hennie.
Charlie bought Martha a necklace, with diamonds the size of corn kernels. “Have you ever s
een a thing so ugly? I won’t wear it.” Martha held out the awful piece of jewelry to Hennie, who wouldn’t have worn it, either. Nor did Martha like the dresses that Charlie picked out for her—gowns made of thick plush, cut with tight sleeves and drapes and trimmed with beads and braid and fur. “I might as well be wrapped up like a mummy,” said Martha, who couldn’t put them on without the help of a maid. And she disliked riding in the blue carriage with a driver and a footman dressed in blue livery to match. She and Charlie quarreled about other things, such as Martha inviting the servants to sit in the parlor and listen to musicales that the couple gave for other new millionaires.
Martha hated the way the money changed Charlie. He put on airs and began talking about becoming senator or maybe governor, and he threw away money on his political pals. He avoided his old friends from Middle Swan. And instead of sitting around the fire in the evening with Martha reading aloud to him, the way they’d pleasured themselves in Middle Swan, he went off to his clubs—or elsewhere, for Charlie had turned into a loose horse. He’d stay out all night and come home smelling of liquor and perfume. They had words, cruel ones, about that.
Charlie had his complaints, too. Martha didn’t appreciate what he’d done for her, and instead of being grateful, she’d turned into a sharp-tongued woman. “To tell you where it started, I couldn’t,” Martha told Hennie, who had hurried to Denver from Middle Swan, when she heard Charlie was past caring for Martha. “But I’ll tell you where it ended.”
One day, a woman showed up at the mansion and claimed she was in a family way. “Charlie’s its father,” she said, showing as proof a note that Charlie had written to her, saying, “I can’t stay away from you.” So Martha called it deep enough. When Charlie arrived home late that evening, Martha had his bags packed and told him she wouldn’t go it anymore.
“Charlie Grove is the biggest kind of fool,” Hennie said, when Martha told her, “but I ought to thump you, too, for what you had between you was uncommon good. You ought to work it out.”
“The time’s gone by when we can talk things over,” Martha replied.
Charlie married the girl. Martha stayed in that mansion with nobody else, the rooms closed up and sheetcovers over the furniture, living on popcorn, baked sweet potatoes, and molasses candy.
Then the silver crash came. In 1893, the government stopped backing the price of silver, and the crash led to the worst depression the West had ever seen, with silver mines shutting down, and thousands of miners going on the tramp. The mine owners were in bad shape, too, and since Charlie’d never put his money into anything but silver, he lost his fortune—his mines, the houses, the horses. Martha lost everything, as well, because instead of taking a cash settlement when she divorced Charlie, Martha had agreed to let Charlie pay her a sum of money every month. She’d wanted that connection with him, Hennie believed. Then Charlie’s new wife left him. And it turned out there never was any baby.
Her boys were grown by then, and they wanted Martha to move east so that they could look after her. But instead, she went back to Middle Swan and lived in the house where she and Charlie had been so happy. The boys sent her a little money, and she made do. By then, Charlie had disappeared. Nobody saw him for ten or twenty years, and when his name came up, which wasn’t often, everyone assumed he’d crossed over.
Time passed on. It ran on, and one day, Hennie was out in her yard after a summer storm, sweeping away the pine needles, and there came Charlie Grove over the hill, a pick and a gold pan strapped to the back of his burro, looking just like he had forty years before, poor as fool’s gold. Hennie said, “Charlie Grove, you get in here and have you a toddy and so forth.” He’d hardly lifted the glass and said, “Here’s to you,” when Hennie got her idea. She told Charlie to wash himself good while she went to Roy Pinto’s to buy something for them to eat, for he smelled worse than beaver bait. Hennie went to the store, all right, but she also stopped at Martha’s house and invited her to take supper.
There never were any two people as surprised and happy as Charlie and Martha when she walked through the door. Charlie took to courting her all over again, just as he had when they were young, and it didn’t take much doing, because Martha had loved him all along. Why, it wasn’t any time at all before they got married again and Charlie moved back into the old cabin.
“Finally at last, that’s the end of my stories for today,” Hennie said. “Now, best us finish picking and be on our way.” She started to get up, but suddenly, she stopped. “Why, Mrs. Spindle, we forgot all about our quilting. I must be in my final days, because quilting’s the last thing I’d ever forget.” She laughed at herself as she reached into her pocket and took out a half-done quilt square and some loose pieces. “Look you, it’s Pine Tree. Now isn’t that the finest coincidence?” she asked, shoving the quilting back into her pocket.
Nit helped Hennie to her feet, and the two took the empty bucket and went to gathering berries. In a few minutes, the last bucket was full. Hennie covered each pail with a napkin, and the two women started down the trail. Picking raspberries at Mae’s house in Fort Madison would be easier, Hennie thought, for Mae had the bushes right in her back yard, but the berries wouldn’t be as sweet as those gathered at ten thousand feet on a midsummer’s day.
The descent was easier than the climb, of course, but after a time, Hennie called a halt, for she didn’t want to wear out the girl. Nit went to the stream and filled the canteen, then the two rested for a few minutes. “I’ve been thinking, Mrs. Comfort,” the girl said. “Whatever happened to Martha and Charlie Grove?”
“I thought you’d get around to that.” The old woman chuckled. “It wasn’t all sunshine, for old age never is, but those two have had more fun than a little. The second time around, they didn’t want anything but each other. It’s a good marriage, yes. But then you can judge that for yourself.” Hennie waited until the words sank in and Nit sent her a questioning look. “That’s right. Judge for yourself. You saw Martha and Charlie Grove this morning. They were walking down the street with the birdcage.”
Chapter 7
A look of pleasure came over Hennie Comfort’s face as she opened the door to find Tom Earley standing on her threshold. He leaned over and kissed her old cheek, which was still egg-smooth despite the sun and wind and blizzards of more than two thirds of a century living on the earth’s backbone.
Tom entered the house and looked around, nodding at the young couple sitting on the broad sofa and telling Hennie, as he had a hundred times before, that she had it real nice there. Real nice, he added, and he was right. The log walls shone amber in the late-day light, and the big furniture with its comfortable pillows made from old quilts was welcoming. Tom handed her two loaves of bread, then took from his pocket something wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a gold ribbon. “Go ahead, open it,” he said with a trace of excitement in his voice.
Hennie untied the ribbon and folded back the tissue. Her eyes glowed when she saw the tortoiseshell side combs edged with silver and dotted with turquoise. “Oh my,” she said, sighing. “These must have been made by the wild Indians.” She combed up stray white hairs on the side of her head with one and fastened the comb to her hair, then repeated the grooming on the other side with the second comb. “Now, don’t I look just as fancy as the Queen of England?”
“And prettier,” Tom said, as Hennie went to a mirror and admired herself, thinking she didn’t look so bad at that. “The silver matches your hair,” Tom said.
“Yours, too.” Hennie continued looking at her reflection until she became sensible that Tom was still standing. “Now where are my manners? You taken off your coat and hang it on the hook. Would you have a hoot, Tom?”
He removed the wool jacket, which he had worn because, although it was summer yet in Middle Swan, the nights were always cool, and there could be frost before long. Hennie had laid a fire in the stone fireplace, ready to light if the evening turned cold. “I don’t want my stomach to rust,” he replied. “I’ll take a
drink as long as there’s one in the house.”
Hennie set the bread on the table, then went to the sink and poured a goodly amount of whiskey into a tumbler that was standing on the drainboard. She had added a dash of water to the boy’s drink and the girl’s was almost all water, but Hennie and Tom took their whiskey neat. “Did I tell you this is Tenmile Moon, made right here on the Swan?” she asked the boy, as she handed Tom his glass. “Tastiest stuff there is. And it won’t give you a Tenmile head. That’s what we call a hangover at ten thousand feet.”
“Or a blue Monday, either,” Tom added.
The leather bellies didn’t call it “blue Monday” because of washday. Blue Monday was when you were still hungover from drinking whiskey on Saturday night, Hennie explained. She stood back and lifted her glass. “Here’s to your health.” She took in her three guests with the toast.
“And the same right back to you.” Tom lifted his tumbler and downed the whiskey in one gulp.
Hennie motioned for Tom to sit down in Jake’s old chair, a heavy oak piece with wide arms, a chair as rooted to the floor as a stump to the land. Tom leaned his cane against the arm and sat down awkwardly, holding out his right leg, for it was stiff. He propped it on a stool. “You already met Nit Spindle yesterday morning on the street. Now, make you acquainted with her husband, Dick Spindle,” Hennie said.
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