Prayers for Sale (23 page)

“Oh.” Nit frowned, thinking that over, for she was young and not wed long and unused to the complications of love.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Hennie said.

Tom and his brother, Moses, and Moses’s wife, Jessie, came to Middle Swan from Mingo, out east in Colorado Territory, looking for gold, arriving not long after Hennie did. In the few weeks the Earleys lived in Middle Swan, Hennie and Jessie became friends. Jessie taught Hennie about herbs, because she was a doctor of sorts who specialized in women’s ailments. Not until Jessie moved away did Hennie realize the woman was an abortionist, but Hennie never thought less of her for that.

Jessie and Moses were wild and fun-loving, but there was an air of melancholy about Tom. When Hennie asked Jessie about it, the woman replied she thought Tom was sweet on the wife of a homesteader in Mingo. “I don’t know what happened with those two, but I expect it was something, because Tom just gave up his homestead, the crops in the ground, and came out here with us,” Jessie said. “She was a woman of refinement.”

Hennie thought that was so, because Tom once told her he missed talking about books and politics, the way he had with a lady in Mingo. Tom stopped often at the Comfort house, where he and Jake discussed mining, but Tom seemed to like better the times when Jake was away and he could speak of poetry and literature, while Hennie sat with her quilt squares. Once, after he’d observed Jake squeeze Hennie’s hand and kiss the top of her head and she’d returned the affection with a smile, Tom told Hennie that he knew he’d never find someone who loved him as much as she did her husband. “I thought I did once,” he said, and stopped.

“And what?” Hennie asked, for she was curious. But Tom didn’t answer.

Another time, he asked Hennie, “Why does a woman stay with a man who betrayed her?”

“Why do you ask?”

Tom caught himself and replied, “Oh, it’s something I read in a book.”

Tom and Moses didn’t find pay dirt in Middle Swan (although Moses returned a few years later and discovered the Yellowcat). So being restless, they packed up and went to
Montana. But Montana was a bust, too, and Tom left his brother and moved on to the Comstock, where he found a little piece of ground that hadn’t been claimed and struck silver. One of the big mine owners threatened to sue him, saying the vein apexed on his property, and that meant he owned Tom’s claim. Instead of fighting, Tom sold out and used the money to start his own mining equipment manufacturing company in Illinois. He made more money mining the miners than he would have if he’d struck gold.

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 seen 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.