Fireblossom (4 page)

A thin rivulet of sweat trickled out from under the band of Stephen's bowler. He removed it, smoothed down his wavy black hair, and leaned forward to peer at the wagons as they approached Deadwood's Chinatown. The north end of the gulch was wide enough only for Main Street and Whitewood Creek, and the exotic-looking shop facades always startled people who were seeing their first Chinatown. The strong scent of incense pervaded the air. Stephen was watching anxiously when he saw first Benjamin, then Maddie climb out from under their wagon's soiled cover to sit beside the driver. Their innocent faces looked this way and that, taking in the ramshackle Chinese grocery, laundries, joss house, and restaurants. Even more startling, however, was the area of town that came next—the "badlands," a virtual hotbed of vice and corruption. Filthy miners, painted whores, and rowdy gamblers lounged in doorways and on the occasional balcony, laughing, shooting guns into the air, and drinking as they watched the newest crop of pilgrims roll into Deadwood.

Again, Stephen silently expressed his gratitude that Colleen could not comment on his decision to bring their children to this bawdy, smelly, uncivilized town. As the covered wagon bearing his offspring drew closer, he earnestly and uncharacteristically prayed that they would be happy in Deadwood. Were they not his children, too? Perhaps they might even thrive on the contrasts between this new life and the past....

Pulled by a team of tired mules, its wheels clotted with mud, the Avery wagon groaned to a halt.

"Hello, Father."

Stephen's heart hurt, as it always did after a separation, when he saw Madeleine. Even after weeks of travel, she appeared fresh and ladylike from the roots of her shining hair to the tips of her kid leather-shod toes.

"My dearest daughter, how happy and relieved I am to see you both safely arrived!"

The driver had no qualms about climbing down into the stinking mire, which oozed halfway up his boots. "Ma'am, unless you want to step in this muck, you'll have to let me hand you over to the grocery steps."

With a game smile that masked her exhaustion and horror, Madeleine glanced down to make certain the lawn tucker that shielded her bosom was securely in place, then lifted her skirts and allowed Hugo to catch her in his arms. He smelled like something that had not met soap and water for many weeks. Somehow she kept smiling until she was set beside her father on the brand-new pine steps.

"Father, how did you know we would be coming today?" she asked as they embraced.

"Nearly everyone in town has known you were coming, my dear," Stephen replied, reaching out to swing Benjamin over to join them. "A fellow who recently arrived by horseback brought word of the travelers he'd seen coming into the Hills from Pierre."

"Did the fellow mention
me
?" called a female voice from the depths of the wagon.

Stephen's head snapped back slightly while his craggy face registered disbelief. "You'll laugh, children, but for a moment I thought that sounded like-"

"It is, Father," Madeleine confirmed as Susan Hampshire O'Hara's wizened face peeped out. "Gramma Susan came with us."

"Impossible!" he cried.

"But true," his mother-in-law declared, arranging her skirts before surrendering bravely to Hugo's waiting embrace. When she was standing before Stephen, she favored him with a winsome smile. "I think you'll find me helpful. My world travels with Patrick helped me adapt to all sorts of conditions!" Turning pensive, she reached up to smooth back his side-whiskers. "You are going gray, dear boy. I hadn't noticed before."

He swallowed audibly. "Colleen began to count them just before—"

"Stephen," Susan said as her grandchildren politely looked elsewhere, "it's been a hard year for me, too. Colleen was my only daughter... and I found that I couldn't bear to let the children go so far away."

"Gramma Susan was wonderful during our long journey West," Maddie offered. "I can't imagine how we should have managed alone."

"Then I am deeply grateful to you, madame," Stephen said, bowing slightly before the diminutive old woman. "Now, I propose that we go immediately to our new home." He snapped his fingers and a Chinese man scurried out of the grocery, carrying a bag. "Meet Wang Chee, my cook and helper. He's seen to it that I have hot meals and clean clothes. I'll venture that you are all famished, but Chee will soon take care of that!"

Even as Madeleine gave Wang Chee a gracious smile, her heart sank. It had never occurred to her to wonder how her father had been coping thus far, whether he could cook or wash his own shirts or keep house. As they'd traveled west, the romance of creating a home for them had excited her imagination. But, perhaps that would be Wang Chee's domain.

As an open wagon was loaded with the trunks from Hugo's prairie schooner, they all climbed up and found places.

"I know, I know," Stephen Avery said in tones of apology as his mules struggled to pull the wagon forward through the mud, "you're wondering why I've brought you to such a godforsaken town, but I hope that you'll be patient and reserve judgment for a bit."

"Mama told me towns like this were only in books!" Benjamin exclaimed, unable to repress his enthusiasm a moment longer. "I bet if she'd known a place as tremendous as Deadwood could be real, she'd've come, too! Right, Papa?"

"Well, Benjamin," his father began, aware of Susan's warning glance, "as it happens, Deadwood was not
real
until this past spring, so your dear mama was quite right. However, I have a notion that she might not have liked such a town as much as we men do. I can only pray that Madeleine will be more broadminded."

Maddie put on her bravest smile. "I must own that the town is beginning to look a trifle more respectable," she murmured, gazing around at more tents and cabins which appeared to be occupied by relatively normal-looking people. At least here there were no more half-naked women watching from windows, or gamblers and rowdies cursing loudly between swigs of whiskey.

With a nervous chuckle, Stephen said, "How remiss of me... I should have explained that the part of town you saw when you entered is known as the 'badlands.' Part of the reason I bought the land I did was so you children wouldn't have to be near Deadwood's seedier side."

"Oh, Stephen, you always were the most conscientious father," Susan said, with just enough irony to secure his attention.

Madeleine, meanwhile, was beset by waves of anxiety. She had seen no young people might be deemed appropriate for her acquaintance. Was her house far from town, a shack surrounded by a wide moat of mud? Where would she shop, and what could she buy? Half of the "stores" were merely tents with barrels stuck out in front to display the owner's wares.

"There it is." They had turned a corner and Stephen was pointing toward the gently sloping hillsides above Sherman Street, but all his family could see were more miners, burned logs, mud, and tents.

Even Benjamin wasn't enthusiastic enough about the West to live in a tent. "Papa...?"

"I own five claims, three hundred feet each, on that hillside. Those men work for me. On good days, my claims pay one thousand dollars."

The wagon had rolled farther south and now turned up a lane that slanted sideways up the hill. Looking carefully, Madeleine made out the shape of a house behind a stand of pine trees. She sat up a little straighter, and Stephen caught her eye, smiling. When they reached the top of the drive, he guided the mules past the trees and brought them to a standstill in front of the new house.

"Golly!" cried Benjamin. "It's the finest house in Deadwood!"

"A singular honor," Susan murmured dryly as she climbed down from the wagon unassisted.

Madeleine let her father lift her to the ground. The house had a tired-looking dirt yard. Pine boards had been laid out end to end from the door, forming a makeshift walkway.

The house itself was grand indeed, for Deadwood. A little porch extended in front of the two-story whitewashed dwelling. Stephen said that as soon as the paint he had ordered arrived, Madeleine could choose proper colors. They entered into a little parlor with a plain drop-leaf table, some battered chairs, and a settee against one wall. Stephen walked across the raw pine floor and proudly touched the back of the settee, which was on old rococo revival piece trimmed in scarred mahogany. The original maroon velvet upholstery peeped out from under a cover of flowered Chinese silk.

"You've no idea how difficult it still is to obtain real furniture here," he said proudly. "The army and the Indians make it hard for any transportation company to get supplies into the Hills. I've been begging and bribing to furnish the house, Madeleine. Soon we'll have a nice stove to heat the parlor. I know it's nothing compared to what you're used to, but I'm counting on you to transform this shell into a proper home."

Susan tottered over and sat down on the hideous sofa, raising a cloud of dust. "You've outdone yourself this time, Stephen," she said, and sneezed.

Maddie touched her father's arm. "I can see that you've worked very hard, Father, and nothing would please me more than to keep house for us—that is, unless Wang Chee would feel that I was interfering...."

"Good Lord, no! He's been hoping daily that you'd arrive so that he can go to work on the claim I've given him to manage." Nestling his daughter's hand in the crook of his arm, Stephen led her back into the kitchen. "Chee will be happy to assist you in any way he can. He's suggested that we send our washing to his wife. They operate a small laundry in Chinatown."

Madeleine was pleased that the house was her nest to feather. Yet, looking around at the rather frightening wood-burning stove and the meager assortment of crude cooking implements, she felt hopelessly out of her element. Nothing in her background had prepared her for such conditions. Three wooden planks stretched across two carpenter's horses passed for a table, while an assortment of crates and camp stools served as chairs.

Seeing her dismay, Stephen said, "My dear, as new shipments arrive, you may choose whatever strikes your fancy."

"At least... we are all together," Maddie whispered. "That's what matters."

Benjamin bounded through the house while Maddie made a quieter tour. In the downstairs bedroom she saw a water-stained bureau and a high full-size bed with one leg missing, now replaced by a stack of yellowed copies of
Harper's Weekly.

Upstairs, under the eaves, a rough woolen blanket had been hung to divide the two sleeping areas. The narrow beds were nearly identical, each with its own dressing table, which consisted of a packing box with shelves nailed inside. A kerosene lamp, tin pitcher, basin, and cracked mirror completed the supplied necessities. Maddie knew which bed was meant for her and which for Benjamin: a little toy soldier wearing a chipped Union uniform was propped on her brother's muslin-sheathed pillow; on her own rested a little china doll with golden curls of real hair. Slowly Madeleine picked up the long-forgotten toy, given to her father when he'd come home from Nevada to fight in the Civil War. Although she'd only been six at the time, Maddie remembered now what she had said in her earnest little presentation speech:

"Papa, you should take my dolly with you because she's the prettiest one I have. She has hair like Mama's... She might remind you of Mama while you are away again, and then maybe you'll come home sooner."

It never would have occurred to Maddie to give her father a doll that looked like
her
.

"I've convinced your father to let me sleep upstairs with you, darling," Gramma Susan said from the doorway. Though slow-moving, she remained agile enough on steps. "Ah, there's your doll. Do you know that I gave you that for your sixth birthday? I wanted to buy you a little doll with red hair and freckles, but you'd have no part of
that."

"I thought she looked like Mama," Madeleine whispered.

"I know, love. Your mother was beautiful, but certainly no more than you. And she was quite human."

"I miss her—" Maddie's voice broke on a sob. It was comforting to press her cheek against her grandmother's white hair, freed now of its bonnet. Gramma Susan always smelled faintly of violets; it was a scent that reminded Madeleine, sharply, pleasantly, of her childhood.

"I know you miss her, darling. We all do."

Lifting her head, Maddie looked out the narrow window that brought light in under the pitch of the roof. Deadwood's Main Street was dimly visible from their hillside home, and she could hear the curses and laughter of the miners from the other side of the pine trees. Her father's men. "Mama would be horrified by this place," she murmured, relieved to say the words aloud. "Every detail of our new life would repulse her... even this house."

"Madeleine, your mother isn't with us any longer, and you are free to form your own opinions." Susan's blue eyes gleamed behind her spectacles. "What's important, I think, is that all of us who loved Colleen, and miss her, are here together, endeavoring to begin anew."

Maddie stepped to the window, surveying the muddy, ramshackle, vice-ridden town below with a rueful smile. "I ought to be safe from people's expectations here. Everyone in Philadelphia pressed me about becoming active in society... and marrying, of course." Glancing back over her shoulder, Maddie laughed. "I shan't have to suffer any attempts at wooing me here! There would appear to be sufficient numbers of... women to attend to the needs of the sort of men swarming through Deadwood. I have yet to glimpse one of them, save Father, who looks as if he's bathed since Easter! I'm certainly not their type, and I couldn't be more pleased...."

Chapter 2