The Bride of Willow Creek

by Maggie Osborne

  “Do we have to talk in front of her?”

  Angie unclamped one of her arms long enough to make a sweeping dismissive gesture. “I’m not budging. If you want privacy, you’ll have to go outside.”

  The girls shoved away from the table.

  April evenings were warm in some parts of the country, but not at an altitude of 9,500 feet. On the other hand, the cold night air would tend to limit the length of these talks, and Sam could get back to his stew and noodles sooner. Angie hadn’t given herself enough credit. She could cook. He could forgive a lot in a woman who was beautiful and who could cook.

  “Get your shawls, girls.” Reluctantly he traded his napkin for a heavy denim jacket and opened the back door. Having learned a thing or two, he chose the top step and let the girls sit on the next step down. That way, when they turned to present their case, their faces would be illuminated by the lantern light spilling out of the doorway behind him.

  “She started right out bossing us around!” Lucy began, indignation flashing in her eyes.

  What Sam didn’t understand was how his daughters began the day as proper, neat young ladies and ended the same day by looking like homeless street urchins who lived in a packing box. He’d always assumed that girl children emerged from the cradle with a deep abhorrence of stained, untidy clothing and mussed hair. But his daughters were never happier than when playing in the dirt with their skirts and tresses in a dusty tangle.

  “The very minute we got home from school, she ordered us to make our bed and clean our room!”

  “Is that what this upset is all about?” His shoulders relaxed. “I would have instructed you to make your bed and keep up your room myself except you’ve had so many other chores. But now that we have Angie to share the load, I think you should make your bed in the mornings.”

  “He’s siding with her,” Lucy said sadly. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  Sam ground his teeth together. “Well? Did you make your bed when Angie told you?”

  “We’ll do it from now on since you say we have to, but we don’t take orders from her. Isn’t that right, Daisy?”

  “That’s right. Angie’s not our mama, she can’t order us around.”

  “If all she did was ask you to make your bed and clean your room . . . that doesn’t sound like an excessive amount of ordering you around. You should have done it. Did you do your regular chores?”

  “We couldn’t dust because she had noodles hanging on everything. We didn’t have to bring in coal or fire up the stove because she’d already done it. And there was no sense sweeping because every time a breeze wiggled the noodles, flour sifted on the floor.”

  Daisy nodded. “We didn’t have any home assignments from school. So we asked if we could go out and play.”

  “You asked?” When children looked the most innocent—that’s when you needed to be the most suspicious. Sam had learned this parental lesson the hard way.

  Daisy frowned at Lucy. “Well . . .”

  “Like we said, there weren’t any chores or school assignments so maybe we were in a hurry and didn’t ask. Maybe we just said that we were going outside. But she said that was all right. She gave us permission to go.”

  “She did, Papa. Lucy told her where we were going and she said it was all right.”

  “Then she got mad because we weren’t home one minute after the six o’clock whistle. And then she got mad because we didn’t like her noodles and picked them out of the stew. She’s mad at us all the time. She hates us.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “The noodles are delicious. Why wouldn’t you eat them?”

  “I don’t like noodles.”

  “Since when? You’ve always liked noodles in the past.” He looked at Daisy. “How about you?”

  “Well, I liked some of the noodles.” Daisy darted a glance at Lucy. “But not all of them. Most of them I didn’t like.”

  “So you didn’t eat your suppers.”

  “She didn’t give us a chance! You’ll never believe what she did! She took our plates away and scraped them back into the stew pot! She wants to starve us!”

  “It’s true,” Daisy confirmed. “We’re starving, Papa.”

  “All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.” He held up his hand and ticked down his fingers. “Angie did all your chores, but she wanted you to make your bed and clean your room. She expected you to come home on time after she’d worked all day to make your supper. And she wanted you to eat what was on your plates, which is probably the rule at every table in this country.”

  “It doesn’t sound right when you say it,” Lucy said, pushing her mouth into a pout.

  “You didn’t say the one about her starving us.”

  “If the two of you hadn’t suddenly turned into picky eaters, your stomachs would be full now.” Angie was starving them. Heaven help him. He pulled a hand down his face. “From now on you’ll make your bed in the morning and keep your room picked up. And I want you here for supper no later than five minutes after the six o’clock whistle.”

  “You don’t come home until it’s dark.”

  “That’s different. I have to check my claims.”

  “And then you stop by the Gold Slipper,” Lucy said.

  “We can smell the beer and the cigar smoke.”

  “A man’s entitled to wet his whistle after a long day.” That’s where he caught up on the daily news, who’d made a strike, who was waiting for an assay report, who’d gone bust.

  “What about her ordering us around?”

  “Keep in mind that Angie won’t be with us forever. While she’s here, let’s all try to get along. That’s going to mean some compromise on everyone’s part.”

  They groaned and fell on each other’s shoulders.

  “Angie’s responsible for you when I’m not here, so you do as she says. And I don’t want to hear any more about you refusing to eat what’s set before you.”

  “We’ll eat it if we have to, but she can’t make us like it!”

  “You don’t have to like it. But you do have to eat your supper.” Golden-haired, gray-eyed, their faces ravaged by his betrayal, they made him feel guilty about doing what he knew was fair and right. That was another thing he didn’t understand. How did they do that? How did two small girls manage to make him feel so damned guilty when he was absolutely right and they were absolutely wrong? “I don’t know about you two, but I’m getting cold. If we’ve covered everything, let’s go inside and get warm.”

  “Papa?” In the glow of the lantern light, Daisy looked like Sam’s vision of an angel. “What about how we’re starving? Are you going to send us to bed starving?”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Yes.”

  Everything in him objected to sending a child to bed hungry. His inclination was to give them another lecture about eating their supper, then offer them some bread and butter and jelly. But if he did, he would undermine Angie. If he expected the girls to respect her, then he had to support her decisions.

  He placed a hand on two small shoulders. “Look at it this way. You’ll really enjoy breakfast tomorrow.” He gave them a little push inside.

  While he was out in the cold talking to the girls, Angie had whisked away his supper plate. The girls weren’t the only ones who would be going to bed hungry tonight. “It’s your turn,” he said in a tight voice, holding the back door open.

  “I’d prefer that we settle these matters with everyone present so we all know where we stand.” Rising from the table, Angie faced him, not dropping her gaze to the girls at his side. “First. In your opinion, is it reasonable to expect Lucy and Daisy to make their bed and keep their room clean?”

  “Absolutely. We talked about it and they agree.”

  “What other chores do they usually do?”

  “They dust, sweep the floors and porches, wash the dishes from breakfast, clean out their lunch buckets, keep the stove going, help Mrs. Molly if Mrs. Molly is doing any of our laundry on laundry days. What else? It feels like I’
m missing something.”

  “That’s a lot.” Some of the anger faded from Angie’s brow when she finally looked at the girls. “Most of what you’ve been doing, I’ll do from now on. We all agree that you’ll make your bed and keep your room clean. I’d like you to continue cleaning your lunch buckets. You’ll take turns setting the table and helping with meals and the cleanup. Those are your regular chores. There may be special chores on occasion, and it’s possible that I’ve overlooked something. If so it will be added later.”

  All right, her manner was a tad high-handed. And the snapping eyes and clipped words didn’t make anyone happy. But what she said impressed Sam as reasonable, so he didn’t interrupt.

  “Apparently I’m the only person who believed that six o’clock was supper time.” She pointed to the clock. In fact, she was doing a lot of arm waving. Sam figured it might be the Italian thing she’d told him about. “So what is supper time in this house?”

  “The girls don’t have pocket watches, so the six o’clock whistle is their only signal that it’s getting close to supper. To give them a chance to get home and get washed, let’s say six-thirty is the girls’ supper time.” He looked down at them. “I don’t care what you’re doing when the whistle blows, you head for home right then.”

  “The girls’ supper time? And what about you?”

  “With summer coming on, the light’s going to last longer and I can get some work done on my best claim. I’ll get home around sundown.”

  “This is not a restaurant.” The fizz and snap returned to her eyes and she punctuated every word with a jabbing finger. “I serve supper once and once only. At six-thirty. If you’re here you get hot food and you get a plate put in front of you. If you don’t show up until after six-thirty, you can feed yourself with whatever is left over.”

  He blinked.

  “Now. On to the next thing. Do you allow your daughters to loiter around the Old Homestead hoping for a glimpse of a fancy-dressed whore?” Narrowed eyes met his. “Whore is their word, not mine.”

  He stared down at his daughters.

  “I told her we were going to the Old Homestead, and she said we could!”

  “Lucy, you knew perfectly well that Angie wouldn’t know about the Old Homestead. How the hell do you know about it?”

  “Sam, you will not use profanity in front of the girls.”

  Now she was correcting him? He gave her a scowl that promised they would talk later. “Lucy? Daisy? How do you know about the Old Homestead?”

  They looked at each other with incredulity. The stupidest question in the world had just been asked and they were amazed. Sam bit down on his back teeth and waited.

  “Papa, everyone knows about the Old Homestead. That’s where the prettiest, fanciest whores live,” Lucy explained with great patience. This was a given, a fact. Lucy implied that only an imbecile could live in Willow Creek without knowing where to go if he had a two-hundred-dollar itch. And hell, maybe she was right. If five- and seven-year-olds knew about the Old Homestead, then who was left who didn’t? “We like to watch Miss Lily ride.”

  Daisy nodded. “She rides a shiny black horse with a braided tail. And she wears pretty hats with long feathers. I like the red feather best.”

  “But the best thing of all is the way Miss Lily doesn’t look to the left or the right. She looks straight ahead like she doesn’t know or care if anyone’s watching. She rides like this.” Planting her hands on her hips, Lucy lifted her chin, put her nose in the air, and glided forward with an air of haughty disdain. “We’ve seen her out walking, too. She has the most beautiful clothes!”

  To say that Sam was flabbergasted would be to understate his reaction by a mile. He couldn’t believe this. His daughters were ardent admirers of Willow Creek’s most celebrated whore, but they didn’t have a kind word for the respectable woman standing in front of them.

  “Well,” he said after a minute, feeling at a loss. He wasn’t sure where to begin. “I don’t want you going anywhere near the Old Homestead, do you hear me?”

  They both stared at him. Then Lucy said, “We have to walk past the Old Homestead on the way to school.”

  Damn. In the mornings, the Old Homestead was as quiet as a tomb and he never paid it a lick of attention. Not one time had he imagined what might be happening there at three-thirty in the afternoon when they walked home without him.

  “All right. You have to walk past the place.” He would fix that problem if it was the last thing he did. “But you don’t come home, say hello to Angie, then go back to the Old Homestead. You don’t loiter around any of the parlor houses. And if I ever hear about either of you saying the word whore, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap. Decent little girls don’t say words like that.”

  Daisy frowned at him. “Well, what should we call them, Papa?”

  The question planted a stake in his heart. Children this age shouldn’t know about whores or parlor houses, shouldn’t need to know how to refer to prostitutes. One glance at Angie’s expression told him she felt the same.

  But saloons, faro parlors, gambling dens, parlor houses, cribs, beer halls—they were the first buildings erected in a mining camp. The whores and saloon girls arrived long before the wives and mothers. In Willow Creek the sporting ladies had outnumbered the Mrs. Finns and the Molly Johnsons until very recently. Of course his daughters knew about the Old Homestead and Miss Lily. How many other prostitutes did they recognize on sight and know by name?

  Sam clenched his fists. He was going to find his jackpot. Then Daisy would get her operation. And then he would move his daughters as far from the mining camps as he could.

  “If you must refer to the ladies living at the Old Homestead, and I can’t think why you would,” he said, speaking through clenched teeth, “then refer to them as sporting ladies.”

  Somehow the phrase sporting ladies made the whores sound adventurous and athletic. A sporting lady sounded rather like a desirable person to be.

  Angie shook her head. She also spoke through clenched teeth. “A better way is to refer to them as those poor unfortunates.”

  “They’re fallen angels.” At once he saw that he had erred again. Both of his daughters stared up at him with stricken expressions.

  Daisy wrung her hands together. “Did Miss Lily get hurt when she fell out of heaven? Is that why she doesn’t turn her head to look at us? Did she hurt her neck when she fell?”

  There were times when the responsibilities of fatherhood overwhelmed him. When he felt that every word he spoke painted him further into a problem corner. He glanced at Angie, hoping she would jump in and say something to rescue the situation. But she clamped her arms over her breast and lifted an expectant eyebrow as if she, too, wanted to know if Miss Lily had sustained any injuries as a result of her fall.

  “Actually, Miss Lily didn’t really fall out of heaven,” Sam began. “Fallen angel is just an expression that some people use meaning that all women are angels, but some have fallen from grace. Do you understand?”

  “Who said all women are angels? We’re not angels. And she’s not an angel.”

  “But Mama is an angel.” Sudden tears welled in Daisy’s eyes. “Oh no! Is Mama going to fall out of heaven?”

  Lucy gasped and instant tears spilled over her lashes. “Oh! I don’t want Mama to be a fallen angel like Miss Lily!”

  Horror and disbelief slackened Sam’s jaw. How on earth had this gone so badly? He lifted his gaze to Angie. “You can step in here anytime you like. I’d appreciate it.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of interfering,” she said, backing up a step. “I warned you that I don’t know about these things. You got into this, you’ll have to get out of it.” She fanned her face with the edge of her shawl. “In fact, I think I’ll . . . I’ll just step outside for some air.”

  Wasn’t that like her? To abandon him when he needed her the most?

  Trying to be fair, he reminded himself that this was only Angie’s second day. He knelt in front of his cryin
g daughters. “Let’s start over. . . .”

  In the mornings, when John Avril was airing out the place, the Gold Slipper didn’t smell as smoky and beer-soaked as it did during the rest of the day. In the mornings, with clean sawdust freshly laid down and the spittoons emptied, the Slipper smelled like coffee and Mrs. Avril’s famous cheese bread.

  “What I’m saying is our children shouldn’t have to walk past the Old Homestead on the way to school.”

  One of the town councilmen that Sam had summoned swallowed a wedge of cheese bread, then shook his head. “No help for it, Sam. The Old Homestead is here to stay.”

  “I’m not suggesting that we shut down the ladies or that we force the Old Homestead to move. I’m saying let’s build another school on the uphill side of Bennet where there aren’t any saloons or whorehouses.”

  “There’s already a school up there,” the mayor reminded everyone at the table.

  “I have to agree with Sam,” one of the councilmen stated, lighting a cigar. “The Eaton Street school has thirty kids crammed into one room.”

  Sam nodded. “If that school could hold two more children, my daughters would be there, too. If we build another, we could put the lower grades in one school and the upper grades in the second.”

  “That’s all fine and dandy, but where’s the money coming from? Schools don’t grow on trees. And frankly, Sam, there are things this town needs more than another school. We need a bigger jail for one thing. Now that we’ve got the railroad and important visitors arriving on a regular basis, we should pave Bennet Street. Install more streetlamps. Clean up Poverty Gulch.” The mayor shrugged. “Now you want another school.”

  “Suppose I could get another school without it costing the town anything except the land underneath it?”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  Sam thought a minute. “I’ll build it, and I won’t charge for labor. I’m willing to bet my crew will donate their labor, too. We could ask that new fellow who owns the sawmill if he’d donate the lumber. We take up a collection for the materials.”

  “Well . . . that might work.”

  “Your enthusiasm isn’t exactly overwhelming,” Sam remarked. “Is there a problem that I’m not seeing?”