Searching for Silverheels Read online

  Across the street at the station, the train began to puff more eagerly, preparing for the climb over the pass to Breckenridge. On the platform, only two battered trunks had been unloaded. That meant no tourists to take my tours. Luggage in that condition always belonged to miners or ranch hands, not tourists.

  My mother came out of the kitchen, smiling, though her face gleamed with sweat. She helped me carry dishes to the kitchen and pile them on the counter, then wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve.

  “Let’s eat something before we wash these,” she said. She carried the leftover sandwiches to a table. She turned the sign on the door to read CLOSED, but she didn’t lock it. Town folks often wandered by after the lunch rush to see if we had any sandwiches left over. If we did, mother would give them out free to old miners or ranchers who were down on their luck.

  The door opened and Mr. Orenbach came in. “Anything left for a fellow’s been worked off his feet the last two hours?”

  My mother slid back a chair for him at our table, and I pushed the plate of sandwiches toward him. In exchange, he handed my mother a copy of the Rocky Mountain News, fresh off the train. He offered me a slightly battered dime novel that someone had left behind in the station.

  “So, Pearl, what have you been saying to Sufferin’ Josie?” he asked as he selected a sandwich. “She came by the station with her confounded handbills, and she was smiling. I’d never seen her lips curl up like that before—I thought she was having a spasm. I asked her what was the matter, and she said, ‘It’s that Pearl over at the café,’ and then she actually laughed. I didn’t think that woman knew how to laugh.”

  Both Mr. Orenbach and Mother were looking at me, expecting a response, but I wasn’t going to tell them what I had told Josie. What if they laughed too?

  I looked down at my plate and muttered, “I just told her a story.”

  “It must have been a real humdinger of a yarn to get her laughing,” Mr. Orenbach said. “I’d sure like to hear it.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be funny at all!” I jumped to my feet and rushed off to the kitchen, stinging with humiliation. My mother let me be, at least until Mr. Orenbach left. Then she came back to the kitchen where I was scrubbing furiously at plates and cups.

  “What was that about, Pearl?” she asked.

  “Josie wasn’t laughing at the story. She was laughing at me,” I said.

  “Why would a grown woman laugh at you?”

  “Because she’s mean to the core! I wish she wouldn’t come in here!”

  “Pearl,” my mother said reproachfully.

  “Well she is! Why do I have to be polite to her when she’s so rude to me?”

  “Because she’s part of this town, and you, Perline Rose Barnell, are expected to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I know Mrs. Gilbert is prickly and unpleasant at times. She’s old, and I imagine she’s had a hard life. She may well have her reasons for being as she is.”

  “She didn’t have any reason to laugh at me.”

  My mother considered me for a long moment. “Maybe she laughed because your story gave her joy.”

  I scowled and kept washing plates. My mother took up a dish towel and began drying and stacking them.

  “You give me joy, Perline. Every single day,” she said. We continued to work in silence until everything was clean. Then I was free for three full hours, until supper time.

  I left the café by the back door so I could avoid seeing anyone. I wanted to be alone in the fresh air and sunshine. That always made me feel better. I had planned to circle around, past the edge of our small town, across the railroad tracks, and down the short hill to the river, but I never made it. As I rounded the last house and turned toward the train tracks, I saw the last person I wanted to see. I tried to retreat back around the corner before she caught sight of me, but I was too late.

  “Hey, there! Girl!” she called as I tried to disappear.

  I sighed and turned back to face her. “Yes, Mrs. Gilbert?”

  “Come with me,” she said, and began straight up the center of Main Street in her lopsided seaman’s gate.

  I stayed rooted where I was. I wasn’t working now; I could see no reason why I should do what she commanded, even if she was my elder. Maybe if I just stayed where I was she wouldn’t notice I hadn’t followed, and I could slip away.

  That hope was soon dashed. She stopped, right in the middle of Main Street and shouted, “Hurry up, Pearl!” loud enough for everyone out on the streets to hear. I couldn’t escape her now. If I didn’t do as she asked, word would certainly get back to my mother that I had been disobedient. If there was one thing my mother was strict about, it was manners in public. So, with another heavy sigh, I followed Josie. She marched up Main Street, directly to the old newspaper office where she lived. Not that it was a real newspaper office—not anymore. The paper had gone out of business over twenty years ago, when the silver crash of 1893 had closed the mines and emptied out most of the mountain towns.

  Josie had come to Como just after the crash and bought the paper for a song, but she never published more than a single edition, or so my mother said. That had all been before I was born. For as long as I could remember, the place had looked as it did now. The South Park Record could still be read in peeling paint across the building’s false front, but the large plate-glass window was boarded up, and the front door was locked tight. Josie came and went through the back door. As far as I knew, no one but her had ever gone into her house—after all, she wasn’t exactly the sort to invite the neighbors in for tea. She was more like a hermit, right in the middle of town, so of course I was surprised when she led me around to the back and opened the door.

  I paused a good ten steps away. I couldn’t help it. When we were little, all the kids at the school had speculated in whispers about what she did in there. We had all seen the similarities between Josie and the witches of fairy tales like “Hansel and Gretel.” Knocking on her door had been the dare that only the bravest boys had taken, and none of them had ever stood still long enough after knocking to know whether or not she ever answered.

  “Well, come on, girl,” Josie said, stepping through the door to the dim room beyond. “It’s not as if I’m the kind of witch that eats children.”

  The ease with which she had read my thoughts was hardly reassuring. I swallowed hard and followed her inside, hoping she was telling the truth.

  CHAPTER 5

  Your shoes,” Josie said, the second I stepped inside, pointing toward a pair of muddy work boots by the door.

  “My shoes?”

  “Take them off and leave them there. I won’t have you tracking mud all over my house.”

  My shoes were clean, having come directly from the café, but I didn’t argue. Even if I did notice that Josie hadn’t taken her own boots off but clomped directly across the floor to her stove.

  While she did that, I glanced around, my surprise growing everywhere I looked. I had expected to see squalor, but Josie’s home was tidy, and strange. On the far side of the room, beyond a waist-high railing, the old newspaper printing press was still set up. Around it, Votes for Women! handbills were stacked in neat piles. Drawers of movable type lined an ink-stained worktable, where it looked like Josie had been laying out a new leaflet. I wasn’t sure why. From the stacks around the printing press, it looked like she had already printed enough for a decade.

  This side of the rail was the most surprising part of Josie’s home. Even though it was a boarded-up newspaper office, she had filled it with elegant furnishings—a whole house worth all crammed into the single room. Beyond the stove, a fine mahogany bedstead and wardrobe made a bedroom. At the foot of the bed, a velvet-cushioned sofa with finely carved and polished claw feet divided the room and created a small parlor space, while nearest me, an elegant tea table and carved chairs stood beside a corner curio cabinet displaying fine crystal glasses and delicate china cups and saucers. Hardly what I expected from someone who came to the
café for a free lunch.

  “Close your mouth, girl. You look like a dead fish. I didn’t bring you hear to gawk at my things.”

  I snapped out of my reverie and closed my mouth, which I hadn’t even realized had fallen open. I looked back at Josie, who was filling two chipped mugs from an old teapot. She set one on the table nearest me, which I took to be an invitation to sit down.

  “Why did you bring me here, Mrs. Gilbert?” I asked.

  “Well now, that’s the question, isn’t it.” She pulled out the chair on her side of the table and sat heavily. I perched on the edge of the seat nearest the door. Just in case a fast retreat was in order.

  “There are a few things we need to get straight, girl. First of all, this Mrs. Gilbert business. My name is Josie.”

  “My mother says that it’s disrespectful to call you Josie.”

  “You call those old fools at the corner table by their first names,” she pointed out.

  “They’re like family. They’ve been in the café every day my whole life,” I said. Then I realized how that must have sounded to her. She had been there all that time too.

  “Well, if you must, in front of your saintly mother, you can call me Miss Gilbert, but it’s not missus. Unlike your lovely Silverheels, I’ve never let a man take away my name.” She took a long, noisy slurp of her tea, then continued. “I’m proud to say that I have prospered for nearly seventy years without the burden of any man’s laundry or his name.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, since she seemed to be expecting a response, but I had no idea what to say. And I still had no idea why I was there.

  She smiled a little, with just the left corner of her mouth. “Tell me, how do you think Silverheels got to Colorado Territory in that story of yours?” she suddenly asked, surprising me yet again. I had to blink at her for a moment before I could turn my mind the right direction to find an answer.

  “I told you, she took the train.”

  Josie shook her head. “Don’t they teach you anything in school? The train didn’t come to Colorado in 1860. In fact, it didn’t come any farther west than St. Louis.”

  “Well then, she joined a wagon train,” I said.

  “All by herself? Your pretty, sweet, innocent dancer who wanted to dance ballet in Paris? Why would she go west at all? Why didn’t she catch a boat to Europe right off?”

  My mind was racing now. I was determined to come up with answers. I wasn’t going to let her laugh at me again. “She didn’t have enough money.”

  “Ah,” Josie said. “And of course, the gold rush was on in Colorado. ‘Pikes Peak or Bust!’ ”

  “That’s right,” I said. “She hoped to strike it rich and be able to go to Paris to study ballet.”

  Josie nodded and took a long sip of her tea. I watched her, hardly daring to believe I had won the point. She set her cup down again and looked at me. Now both corners of her lips were curling up in a way that made me want to bolt for the door.

  “So it was greed that made her come out west.”

  “Not greed,” I protested.

  “Just the desire to get rich quick,” Josie said. “Call it whatever you like. But I don’t think your pretty little dancer had any intention of shoveling ore for a living—not when her beauty was so precious to her. There were only a few women who came west in the gold rush, and most of them had their own plan of how to get rich.” Her eyes glinted wickedly, and I knew she was suggesting something bad.

  “She was a dance-hall girl,” I said. “She performed for the lonely miners.”

  “I bet she did,” Josie said. “Let’s see, if, as you said, she took the train, she would have stepped off in St. Louis. Now—what did you call her? Gertie?”

  “Gerta,” I corrected.

  “Right. So Gerta stepped off the train at its western-most terminus. And as it happened, just as that little blossom of innocence stepped into the den of hustlers and profiteers that was St. Louis, the cry came from the west—Gold! In the Pikes Peak country! And every red-blooded American man with a shovel and a hankerin’ for money lit out for the territories.

  “But there were red-blooded American women in St. Louis too, clever enough to know how to make a fortune without grubbing in the dirt. Of course, an innocent like Gerta wouldn’t know of such things. Fortunately for her, Gerta was taken under the wing of a shrewd business woman, Lou Bunch. Madam Lou knew that with a few crates of whiskey, a wagonload of pretty girls, and a piano that could plunk out something close to music, she could make more gold in a night than a miner could make in a week. And who better to take along than a pretty young runaway who liked to dance.”

  “But—” I tried to object, but was silenced by a glare from Josie.

  “Hush, girl. This is my story now. Silverheels must have known that what Lou was proposing wasn’t respectable. But Gerta wasn’t one to let that stand in the way of making her fortune. She threw away her name and her honor, bought a pair of silver-heeled dancing shoes and a skirt barely longer than her knees, and she set out west, to make a fortune at any cost.”

  “That’s not right!” I protested. “She was good, and loving!”

  “She was a dance-hall girl. And a conniving one at that. I imagine she started her own scheming the minute she signed on with Lou. Figured a pretty face like hers could convince fellas to tell her their secrets. Secrets worth a pretty penny, like where they had struck it rich, or where they kept their gold hidden.”

  “No! She had a good heart. She cared about folks. She wasn’t after their gold!” I insisted.

  Josie brayed with laughter again, and I sprang to my feet.

  “Why do you have to spoil everything nice?” I said.

  Her laughter sputtered to snorts and snickers. “Why do you want to sugarcoat everything? I’m just trying to get you to see sense.”

  “No you’re not! You’re trying to make everything rotten for everyone else, just because you’re a sour old grump yourself.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Sour old grump, eh? Careful there, girl. You’ll be disrespectfully calling me Josie next.”

  I wanted to shout at her, but I took a deep breath instead. I was likely already going to be in big trouble when she told my mother what I had said.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Josie said. “I’ll make a bet with you.”

  “My mother doesn’t approve of gambling.”

  “Well then, it’s a good thing I’m making a bet with you and not her, isn’t it.”

  I said nothing, only waited to hear what else she had to say.

  “You don’t like me talking to your tourists in the café, do you. If you can prove to me that Silverheels was the sweet angel of mercy you say she was, I won’t say another word to anyone there.”

  “How am I supposed to prove it?” I asked.

  “Use your head for something other than drivel, girl. If you can’t come up with a way, I can say whatever I please in the café. And if I can prove to you that I’m right—that Silverheels was a con and a thief, then you will help me give out handbills on the platform for a whole week. How about it?”

  I chewed my lip, considering. I wasn’t worried about losing, I knew she would never convince me of her version of the story. But I didn’t think it was any more likely that I would convince her of my version of things. And there was a chance I’d be in trouble with my mother if she found out. Plus, I didn’t trust her.

  “Why do you even care about Silverheels?”

  “I don’t,” Josie said, and the scorn in her voice proved her point. “I don’t care one whit about her, and it’s high time no one else did either. She’s a symbol of everything that holds girls back in this country. Girls like you who need to stop sighing and moaning about love and make something of themselves. Then again, I should have known a girl like that wouldn’t take my bet. You have no spine at all, do you, girl.”

  I scowled at her, my hands balling into fists. I wasn’t going to listen to one more insult. I straightened my spine, just to prove I h
ad one, and lifted my chin. “I’ll take your bet, and I will prove Silverheels was good and kind and that those men loved her.”

  “You do that,” she said with a smirk. “Now get, and let me get some work done in peace.”

  I left by the back door we’d entered by, my head full of the bet. I had no idea how I’d prove anything about the story, but I was determined to try. Anything to get Josie out of the café! Maybe some of the old-timers could remember something helpful. At least it was a place to start.

  I was still thinking about the possibilities when I stepped out into the street, which is why I didn’t see George and Mrs. Crawford until I nearly ran into them. They appeared to be walking back from the millinery shop, because George was carrying a large hat box for his mother.

  “Good afternoon, Pearl,” he said with a smile, shifting a little to avoid colliding with me.

  “Oh!” I said in surprise, stepping backward so suddenly that I turned my ankle. George reached a hand to my elbow to steady me. His hand felt strong and warm. I was sure that if I swooned right there he would catch me, but I wasn’t feeling woozy, and besides, his mother was there, spoiling the moment.

  Mrs. Crawford glanced at me, then back the way I had come, the dirt path along the side of the newspaper building that only led to Josie’s back door. When her eyes darted back to me, her expression was severe.

  “Honestly, Pearl. What would your father say if he knew you were running wild like this while he’s away? What were you doing back there?”

  “I wasn’t— I’m not—”

  “Come along, George.” She lifted her nose in the air and strode away.

  I couldn’t look at George, for fear I might see the same disapproval on his face.

  He took his hand gently from my elbow. “Never mind, Pearl,” he said. “I’ll see you later, okay?” Then he followed his mother, while I nearly collapsed with relief and gratitude.