A blizzard had no top and no bottom that night.
The snow came sideways across the Colorado high country, swallowing fence posts, swallowing roads, swallowing the lamplight from a small mining town tucked under the Sanre de Christos.
On the main street of that town, every window was dark except one, the telegraph office.
A single lantern burned in the back.
Behind the frosted glass, a brass key tapped fast and frantic.
A small woodpecker in the dead heart of the night.
A man stood at that window, 6’4, beard heavy with snow, a dver’s coat the color of old bark.
He had ridden 14 miles through a wall of white to reach that door, and he had not yet taken off his hat.
In his shirt pocket against his ribs, he carried three telegrams.
Each one carried a fortune.
Each one carried a name.
And somewhere down a lane that no plow had touched behind a blue door, a boy was dying.
He had tested 25 women.
25 dinners.
25 times he had patted his empty pocket and watched the warmth go out of a woman’s eyes.
Hollis Wilder owned a silver mine.
He owned 16,000 acres outside Manitu.
He had a fortune in the Wells Fargo vault and he had hidden every penny of it for 2 years because the last woman who had loved him for his money had walked out of an Arapjo County courtroom in lavender silk on the arm of a railroad man from Chicago.
And Hollis Wilder had made himself a promise.
Never again.
The 26th woman was going to be the last.
If she failed, he was done.
He would ride back up to the cabin in the Sanretos and raise his daughter alone.
He would not court again.
Not in this life.
He did not know yet that the 26th woman was a Norwegian girl named Maragold Ericson.
That she carried her tip money in a twist of muslin against her ribs because she did not own a purse.
That she had a 15-year-old brother in a homemade wheelchair who drew the stars in Norwegian.
And that on a Thursday night in November of 1878, she was going to do a thing that broke him open like an axe breaks kindling.
But before all that, before the boarding house, before the alley, before the blizzard, in the train, in the courtroom, there was a courthouse in Denver.
Denver, summer of 1876.
The Arapjo County Courthouse smelled like old paper and pipe smoke.
A ceiling fan turned slow above the bench, pulled by a rope.
A boy named Tobias kept tugging in the corner.
Sweat ran down the boy’s neck.
Nobody looked at him.
Hollis Wilder stood at the petitioner’s table.
He was 36 then, already big, already weathered, dark beard reaching the second button of his coat, hair pulled back with a leather thong, boots cracked at the heel from a thousand miles of dust.
Across from him sat Octavia.
She wore lavender silk.
Her gloves were the color of fresh cream.
Her hat had a feather that didn’t belong to any bird Hollis had ever shot.
Beside her sat the man with the diamond ring, Reginald Braftoft, the railroad man from Chicago.
The clerk read the documents in a voice flat as a flat iron.
Petition for legal separation.
Grounds.
Irreconcilable differences.
Division of marital property.
Half.
She wanted half.
Half the cattle.
Half the silver mine.
Half the 16,000 acres outside Manitou.
Half the house in Denver with the rosewood piano nobody played.
Half of everything Hollis had built with hands that still had calluses from when he was 12 years old digging post holes for his father in the Kansas wind.
She got it.
The pen the clerk handed him was steel tipped.
Heavy Hollis signed.
His thumbnail bit into his own palm so hard the blood came up.
A drop fell on the bladder paper.
Round red.
A small dark coin on the cream.
Octavia did not look at him when she signed her name.
She looked at her gloves.
Regginal Brooft cleared his throat.
Like a man clears his throat before delivering a sermon.
He said, “You’ll see Wilder, a woman of her caliber.
She was always headed somewhere finer than a dirt ranch.
” Hollis didn’t answer.
A man who answers a man like that just gives him another sentence.
He walked out past the Spatoon, past the baiff, past Tobias, still pulling the fan rope, down the courthouse steps into a Colorado afternoon so blue and so wide it felt like an insult.
He sat on the bottom step.
He took off his hat.
He didn’t cry.
Hollis Wilder hadn’t cried since he was 8 years old.
And he wasn’t fixing to start on a courthouse stoop in front of strangers.
He just held the hat in his hands and looked at the inside band where his sweat had darkened the leather to almost black.
A small voice in his chest said one thing.
Never again.
Not the marriage.
He knew that was over.
The voice meant something else.
Never again will I be loved for what I own.
Two years passed.
2 years and 25 women.
Hollis stopped counting after the 17th.
Then he started counting again because he wanted a number when he was done.
Numbers were how a rancher knew where he stood.
Calves born, head lost to wolves, acres fenced, bullets in the box, women who failed his test.
He had a system.
A worn flannel shirt bought off a drifter near Cheyenne for two bits and a tin cup of coffee.
A pair of denim trousers from a merkantile in Pueblo sunfaded along the thighs.
Boots scuffed deliberately on a stone behind his barn.
A hat that had been new once and was no longer.
The watch stayed home.
The gold pocket watch his father had pressed into his palm at 15, the one with Wilder engraved inside the cover.
It stayed in the top drawer of the bureau in the Denver house, wrapped in the silk handkerchief his mother had embroidered before she died.
The ranch hands knew not to ask.
The lawyer knew not to ask.
The only living soul who knew the whole truth was Henrik Vossberg, the foreman at Wilder Ranch.
Henrik was 63 years old, Norwegian blue-eyed, and had not once in his life used three words where one would do.
He had looked at Hollis the first time Hollis came home from town with a story of another woman who had walked and he had said only this.
Boss, ain’t no woman worth lying for.
Not yourself, not her.
Hollis hadn’t listened.
He’d kept going.
Cheyenne, Boulder, Leadville, Manitou Springs, Pueblo.
Sometimes a stage coach, sometimes the train, sometimes dusty the brown geling, slow and patient as a Sunday.
He picked towns where nobody knew his face.
He found women at boarding house dinners, at church socials, at the apothecary counter.
Once at a quilting bee where he was the only man in the room and felt every eye in the territory pinned to the back of his neck.
He courted them just long enough.
Two dinners, three, then the wallet trick, the pat of the pocket, the look of helpless apology.
Forgive me, I thought I’d brought my pouch of silver.
He watched the eyes.
He watched the moment the warmth went out.
One of them in Leadville had laughed.
She had actually laughed.
A wide brassy laugh in a velvet hat.
Mister, I came here for a steak.
If you cannot pay, the kitchen will let me wash dishes for it.
Or you can.
She had stood up.
She had left.
He had paid the bill and walked back to his rented room and sat on the edge of the rope bed and stared at the wall until the lamp ran out of oil.
By the autumn of 1878, Hollis Wilder was 38 years old.
He had a daughter named Posie.
He had a brown geling named Dusty.
He had a fortune in silver bars in a Wells Fargo vault he had not visited in 9 months.
And he had one promise left to keep to himself.
The 26th woman, the last one.
Because a man cannot test the world forever.
A man cannot keep cutting open the same wound to see if it still bleeds.
So Hollis told himself, “One more, just one, and if she fails, like the rest.
” I go back up to the cabin in the sretos.
I raise my daughter alone.
I keep my own counsel.
I do not court again.
That was the bargain he made with himself the morning he rode into Silver Creek.
Silver Creek was a Colorado mining town 3 days east of the Continental Divide.
Population on the courthouse plaque read 871 souls.
The plaque was 11 years out of date.
The real number was closer to 1300 and rising every month because of the new vein opening up the gulch.
The main street had a livery, a general store, a saloon called the Painted Pony, a Methodist church with a steeple shorter than the surrounding pines, a sheriff’s office made of cottonwood logs, and one boarding house that took regular guests.
Miss Hetty Crowder’s boarding house and eating room.
Hollis tied dusty at the rail.
He let his gaze travel the length of the porch.
wide planks, two rocking chairs, a bucket of sand under the railing in case a man chose to spit and missed the spatoon, a handpainted sign that read, “No boots on the seti.
No guns at the table.
No tobacco after 9:00.
” He pushed the door.
The bell above it rang.
A small flat sound.
Miss Hetty Crowder was already 60 years old that autumn.
She wore her gray hair in a coronet braid that she pinned every morning before sunrise.
She had been a widow for 19 years.
She had buried two husbands and three children and one good dog.
Her eyes were the color of a creek that ran clear over slate.
She missed nothing.
She looked at Hollis once, top to bottom, the flannel, the hat, the dust on the trouser cuffs, the hands.
She did not miss the hands, but she did not say so.
She said, ” $2 a week, meals included.
Sundays you take cold supper, bath on Wednesdays.
Mind your boots in the upstairs hall.
Hollis nodded.
He pulled coins from his pocket.
He counted them slow so a watcher would think they mattered to him.
He put eight silver dollars on the counter.
Four weeks in advance, ma’am.
Miss Hedi raised one eyebrow.
She had not asked for four weeks.
She picked up the coins.
She slid one across the counter back to him.
That one’s bent.
Bank won’t take it.
It wasn’t bent.
Hollis took it anyway.
He climbed the narrow stairs to the second floor.
Room number four, a window over the back garden where Miss Hedi kept a few hens and a goat named Pphanany who hated all men on principal.
A rope bed, a wash stand, a small mirror with a hairline crack down the middle that split his reflection in two.
He set his saddle bag on the chair.
He looked at the split man in the mirror.
He said nothing.
There was nothing left to say to him.
The first morning, he came down for breakfast at 6:00.
The dining room was a long oak table that could seat 12.
That morning there were five, a drummer from Iowa selling boot oil, two miners with hands the color of slag, a widow named Mrs.
Pedigrew who taught the schoolhouse children on the south end, and the silver minusayer a small man in eyelasses named Mr.
Plumbley.
Hollis sat at the end nearest the kitchen door because that was where he could watch.
The kitchen door swung.
She came through carrying a tin coffee pot in both hands.
Maragold Ericson.
He had not yet learned her name.
He knew only what he saw.
She was 22.
He learned that later, too.
But he saw the youngness of her at once.
She had blonde hair the color of wheat in late August.
It was pulled back in a single braid that swung between her shoulder blades when she moved.
Her apron was patched at one corner with white thread that did not quite match the original cotton.
Her eyes were the blue of a high mountain lake on a cloudless day.
Her cheekbones had a small dusting of freckles.
Her wrists were thin.
She was not tall.
She was not fragile either.
There was a steady look about her, a look like she had been pouring coffee for hungry people since before she was old enough to vote.
Only she would never vote because she was a woman.
And that didn’t seem to slow her down a bit.
She set the pot on a folded towel.
She lifted Mr.
Plumley’s cup.
She poured.
She said, “Morning, Mr.
Plumley.
Morning, Goldie.
” So her name was Goldie.
She moved down the table.
She refilled the widow’s cup.
She refilled the drummers.
She came to the minors and she said something to the older one about his shoulder.
And how was the linament Mrs.
Pedigrew had recommended and he grunted in a way that meant better and she nodded and moved on.
She reached Hollis.
She did not know him.
She poured his cup.
She said only you’re new.
He said just arrived.
She nodded once.
She moved on.
That was all for four mornings.
He came down at 6.
He sat at the end of the table.
She poured his cup.
She did not pour him special.
She did not pour him slow.
She did not look at his face longer than she looked at any other face.
She gave him exactly the same measure of coffee she gave Mr.
Plumbley and the drummer and the miners and the widow.
Hollis was used to being looked at.
The flannel and the dust did not fool everyone.
Sometimes a woman saw the watch wasn’t there, and the hand was still a hand that had not held a plow in 20 years.
Sometimes a woman saw the way he sat back straight, chin level, and she sniffed money the way a hound sniffs creek water.
Maragold did not look.
She had her own thoughts behind her eyes, and Hollis was not in them.
On the third morning, she did something he had not seen another waitress do.
The old miner, the one with the bad shoulder.
Eldred was his name.
Eldred Halverson.
Eldred was 71 years old, and he came down to breakfast with a slow tremor in both hands that he tried to hide by gripping the table.
That morning, he reached for the small pewtor pitcher of water.
His hand shook.
The pitcher tipped.
Water spilled across the oil cloth.
It ran toward the bread basket.
Eldrid said, “Oh Lord, oh Lord, I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry, Goldie.
” The drummer made a noise.
The drummer made a small impatient noise in his throat like a man who has waited 11 seconds for a thing to be cleaned.
Maragold was already coming with a cloth.
She did not sigh.
She did not roll her eyes.
She did not say, “Mr.
Halverson, you need to be more careful.
” She came around the table.
She stood at his elbow.
She set the cloth down.
She put one hand just briefly on the back of his shoulder.
The bad one.
She squeezed once, not hard, just a small steady weight.
She said, “You didn’t spill it, Mr.
Halverson.
” The pitcher tipped itself.
“They do that around the equinox.
Have you noticed?” Eldred laughed.
It was a wet broken laugh because the man had nearly cried.
He said, “You’re a terrible liar, Goldie.
” She said, “I know.
My mother said the same.
Drink your coffee.
” She wiped the table.
She moved on.
Holla sat with his cup halfway to his mouth.
He did not drink.
He set the cup down.
His coffee went cold while he stared at the oil cloth.
He drank no more coffee that morning.
He paid for breakfast and he walked out into the cold dawn and he stood in the alley behind the boarding house and he looked at the dirt for a long time.
He told himself it meant nothing.
He told himself it was just the sleep he hadn’t gotten.
He came back the next morning.
By Sunday, four mornings in, he asked.
She was clearing his plate.
The dining room had emptied.
Mr.
Plumbley to the assay office.
the drummer to catch the 8:00 to PBLO, the miners back to the shaft.
Mrs.
Pedigrew to the schoolhouse, though it was a Sunday, because she liked the building when it was empty and quiet, and she could grade papers without the smell of small, unwashed boys.
Maragold reached for his plate.
Hollis spoke.
He surprised himself by speaking.
He said, “Miss Ericson.
” She paused, plate in hand.
“Yes, would you walk with me today after your shift?” She studied him.
She studied him the way a woman studies a horse.
She might or might not buy.
She said why.
He had not expected the question.
He had expected yes or no.
He had not expected why.
He found his voice.
Because I’d like the company, that’s all.
She set the plate down on the table.
She wiped her hand on her apron.
She said, “Mister, I work 70 hours a week between here and a sewing job I take in the evenings.
My brother is 15 and he cannot use his legs.
The hours I have to myself I spend with him.
So when a man I do not know asks me to walk with him, I ask why.
Hollis nodded slow.
He said, “That’s fair.
” He said, “I watched you with Mr.
Halverson yesterday.
” She said, “He’s a kind man.
He’s a clumsy old man with a bad shoulder.
You were kind.
That’s not the same thing.
” She did not answer right away.
She picked the plate up again.
she said finally.
There is a creek 2 milesi north of town, Silver Creek, the thing the town is named for.
There is a fallen cottonwood on the bank.
I sit there sometimes on Sundays.
If you can find it, I will be there at 3:00.
She did not say yes.
She did not say no.
She gave him a place and a time and walked back to the kitchen and the swinging door swung shut behind her.
Holla stood up.
He left a 5-cent piece on the table for her because she had said only that he could find the creek.
She had not promised conversation, and he was a man who had stopped expecting things from women.
Sunday at 3, the cottonwood lay where she had said.
It had fallen in some long ago spring flood, and the bark had bleached silver white in the year since.
The creek ran fast and cold beside it, full of the autumn melt off the high country.
The aspens on the far bank had turned the color of new gold coins.
She was already there.
She wore a plain blue dress, not the boarding house apron, a real dress, cotton.
The hem mended along the inside seam where it had been let down once and then taken up again.
Her hair was loose, down, brushed.
Hollis had not seen her hair down before.
It came almost to her waist.
She held a small tin cup of coffee.
She had brought a second one.
She handed it to him as he sat down on the log.
He took it.
He sipped.
It was terrible coffee.
He said, “Lord, that’s awful.
” She said, “I made it on the cabin stove.
The grounds are old.
I’m sorry.
” He said, “Don’t apologize for the coffee, Miss Ericson.
I drank worse during the war.
” She looked at him sideways.
She said, “You were in the war.
” He said, “61 to 64.
12th Kansas Volunteer Infantry.
I was 18 when I went in, 23 when I came out.
I am not proud of every day of it, but I came home with both legs and most of my hearing, so I count myself blessed.
She said, “My father was a Norwegian who came to America in 53.
He was 26.
He fought in the war, Wisconsin regiment.
He came home with one ear missing.
He never spoke about it.
” Hollis said, “That sounds about right.
” They sat in silence.
The creek did its work over the stones.
She said, “What did you do after the war?” He had his lie ready.
The lie he had told 25 times.
“I worked cattle, drove herds up from Texas to the Kansas railheads.
I saved my wages.
I bought a small piece of land in Wyoming.
Then I lost it in a bad winter in a worse bank.
Now I look for work where I can find it.
I came up here because I heard the Gulch was hiring.
” She nodded.
She was looking at the creek.
She said, “My parents died in a wagon accident 3 years ago.
The team spooked, came down a steep grade above Boulder.
The break gave.
My father was driving.
My mother was beside him.
My brother was in the back.
” She paused.
They threw him clear before it went over.
He hit a tree at the spine.
Hollis closed his eyes.
He opened them.
He said, “How old was he?” “12.
And now he’s 15.
” “He’s 15.
” She lifted the tin cup.
She drank.
She made a face at the coffee.
She said, “My brother’s name is Wesley.
He cannot use his legs.
He has a chair I made from an old chair and the wheels from a baby buggy a neighbor threw away.
He reads.
He draws stars.
He loves the stars.
” He says when he can stand again, he will go work at a place called the Naval Observatory because his teacher told him there is one in Washington.
He has never seen Washington.
He has never seen the ocean.
He has not seen anything but Colorado and the inside of our cabin in the inside of his own head.
But he draws constellations with a coal pencil on butcher paper and he names them in Norwegian when he forgets the English words.
She stopped.
She had said too much.
She had said more than she meant to say to a stranger.
She looked at her hands.
Hollis did not say I’m sorry.
A man like Hollis did not say I’m sorry about a thing he had not done.
I’m sorry was a thing women in Denver said at dinner parties when nothing real was on the line.
I’m sorry was a phrase Octavia had used the night she told him about Reginald.
He said something else.
He said, “What does he need?” She looked up.
Her eyes were not wet, but they were full.
She said, “He needs a surgeon.
There’s a man in St.
Louis.
His name is More.
He studied under Joseph Listister in Edinburgh.
He has restored use of legs to three children in his last two years of practice.
I read about it in a copy of the Harper’s Weekly Mr.
Plumbley lent me.
He charges $800 to come west train fair and instruments in his own time.
I have saved 140 in 3 years.
She said it flat like a person reading aloud from a ledger.
She said, “So when a man I do not know asks me to walk with him, Mr.
Wilder, I ask why.
Because I do not have hours to lose.
Because every hour I do not work is an hour Wesley does not walk.
Holla sat very still.
He had not given her his name.
The thought came up out of his chest before he could stop it.
I never told her my name.
He said, “How did you know my name?” She said, “Miss Hed’s register.
I clean the front parlor on Saturdays.
The page was open.
” He let out a breath.
He laughed.
It was a short surprise sound.
He had not laughed in front of a woman in 2 years.
He said, “Miss Ericson, I am sorry.
I bought your hours today.
” She said, “Don’t be sorry.
I came.
You did not buy them.
I gave them.
There is a difference.
” The wind came up the creek and lifted her hair and dropped it again.
She said, “What about you, Mr.
Wilder? Who do you have?” He said, “A daughter, 8 years old.
Posie.
She lives with her mother in Denver.
She comes to me at Christmas and in the summer.
” her mother.
My wife, former wife, we are separated by law.
Two years now.
Maragold nodded.
She did not ask why.
A woman who has buried both her parents knows there are some questions you do not ask.
You wait.
If the man wants to tell you, he tells you.
Hollis told her he had not told another soul.
He said she left me for a man with a railroad in a townhouse in Chicago.
She said I smelled like cattle and silver and she had married me thinking it was a phase.
It was not a phase.
She took half.
She got Posie for 10 months of the year.
I get July and December.
That is the law.
He stopped.
He had not meant to say that much.
He had not meant to say any of it.
Maragold did not say, “I’m sorry that happened to you.
She did one better.
” She said, “That sounds like a woman who did not know what she had.
” He looked at her.
She was still watching the creek.
She had not turned to him when she said it.
It was the most quietly devastating sentence he had heard since the war.
They walked back together in the late afternoon.
The aspens were so yellow it looked unreal.
She did not let him walk her to her cabin.
She let him walk her to the edge of the boarding house lane.
She said, “Tomorrow I have a double shift.
Tuesday I go to Wesley after sunset.
Wednesday is bath day at Miss Hedes and she will need help carrying water from the well.
” Hollis said, “Thursday.
” She thought a moment.
She said Thursday at 6:00.
the Frontier Hotel dining room.
I have one good dress.
He said, “I will be there.
” She said, “Bring your wallet, Mr.
Wilder.
” He almost smiled.
It was the closest he had come to a smile in 18 months.
He said, “I will bring what I have.
” She walked away.
He watched her until she turned the corner by the livery.
Then he went back to Miss Hedes and he climbed the narrow stairs to room number four.
And he sat on the edge of the bed and he stared at the cracked mirror for a long time.
26, the last one, because he had promised himself.
Because a man cannot keep testing the world, but also for the first time in two years.
For the first time since Octavia had signed her name in lavender ink in front of God and the Arapjo County Clerk.
He did not want her to fail.
Thursday, 6:00, the Frontier Hotel dining room.
The hotel was the nicest building in Silver Creek.
Three stories, brick fronting on the main street, real glass windows, a piano in the corner played by a man named Ezra Stillman, who had once played in a saloon in San Francisco, and lost two fingers in an altercation he refused to describe.
The remaining fingers were enough.
He played Steven Foster ballads with a kind of slow drowning sadness that made the stakes taste better.
Hollis arrived 10 minutes early.
He wore his cleanest shirt, still cotton, still the same shirt.
He had brushed his hat.
The Mater D was a thin German named Mr.
Kungl.
Mr.
Kungl did not like Hollis.
Mr.
Kungl had been told to give Hollis the small table by the kitchen door because the gentleman is a regular at Miss Crowers, which in Mr.
Kungle’s understanding meant the gentleman does not tip well.
Hollis sat at the small table by the kitchen door without complaint.
Maragold arrived at 6 exactly.
She was wearing the blue dress, but she had done something with her hair.
It was up, pinned, a small white ribbon at the nape.
She wore no jewelry.
Her ears were not pierced.
Her wrists were bare.
She walked through the dining room, and she did not look at the chandelier or the piano or the etched glass on the wall.
She walked the way a woman walks who has worked since she was 9 years old and does not need to be impressed by velvet curtains.
She sat across from Hollis.
Mr.
Her uncle brought menus.
Maragold opened hers.
She looked at the prices.
She closed it.
She said, “I’ll have the pan fried trout and coffee.
Thank you.
” It was the second cheapest thing on the page.
Hollis ordered the steak.
He said, “Two trout, two coffees, and the bread.
” Maragold looked at him.
She said, “You said steak.
” He said, “I changed my mind.
I had trout last week in Pueblo, and I have been thinking of it ever since.
” She did not believe him.
She said nothing.
She let him have it.
The food came.
The trout was good.
The bread was good.
Ezra Stillman played hard times.
Come again.
No more on the piano.
Maragold ate slowly.
She did not bolt her food.
She did not apologize for taking the time.
She chewed and she swallowed and she set her fork down between bites and she answered Hollis.
When he asked her things and she asked him things in return, she asked him about Posie.
He told her Posie loved astronomy.
Maragold’s fork paused.
She said Wesley draws stars.
Hollis said, “I know you told me.
” She said, “Maybe one day they could meet.
” She said it light, as if it cost her nothing.
It cost her something.
She had never asked another man to consider Wesley as a person who might be met.
Not since the parents died.
The men in town saw Wesley as a tragedy.
They saw a boy in a homemade chair and they patted Maragold on the shoulder and they said, “Bless you, dear.
You’re a good sister.
” And they did not come back.
Holla said, “I would like to meet your brother.
” She looked at him.
She did not say, “Thank you.
She just took up her fork and kept eating.
The check came.
” Mr.
Conungle laid it face down on the white cloth.
$145.
Hollis reached for his wallet.
He patted his coat pocket.
He patted his trouser pocket.
He patted his coat again.
He let his face do the small surprise thing he had done 25 times before.
He said, “Oh Lord.
” Maragold did not look up.
She was wiping her mouth on the linen napkin.
He said, “I left my pouch of silver on the bureau at the boarding house.
I had it this morning when I paid Miss Hedi for the laundry.
I must have set it down.
” He looked at her.
Now, now was the moment.
This was where they made the small excuse.
The cousin, the headache, the forgotten errand, the carriage waiting.
This was where they reached for their wraps and stood and walked out of his life and left him sitting with a steak bone and a piano man with eight fingers.
Maragold sat down the napkin.
She did not flinch.
She did not look pitying.
She did not look impatient.
She reached into the pocket of her apron.
She was not wearing the boarding house apron.
She had taken it off when she changed into the blue dress.
But she had brought it folded in her reticule under her seat.
She brought it up to her lap.
She opened it.
From the inside pocket of the apron, she took a small twist of muslin tied with a brown string.
She set it on the table.
She untied it.
Coins spilled out.
Silver dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies.
They were still warm.
Hollis could see they were still warm because the muslin held the warmth of her body.
She had been carrying that small twist of tip money against her ribs for 3 days.
She had not yet taken it home to the tin box under Wesley’s bed where they kept the surgeon money.
She counted.
She counted out loud soft like a child counting.
Four quarters, three dimes, six pennies.
That’s $1.
36.
Nine more.
Nine more cents.
She found a nickel.
She found four more pennies.
$145 there.
She slid the coins to the center of the table.
She kept one penny back.
She turned in her chair.
The serving girl was passing with a tray.
A skinny girl, maybe 12, with red hair under a white cap.
Her name was Tilly.
Her mother washed sheets at the hotel.
Maragold caught Till’s eye.
She held out her hand.
Tilly came over.
Maragold pressed the penny into the girl’s palm.
She closed Till’s fingers around it.
She said, “Low, your mama’s cough.
Is it any better?” Tilly said, “No, Miss Goldie.
” Maragold said, “Get her a paper of whound drops on your way home.
They have them at Hawkins’s.
Tell Mrs.
Hawkins I said you can have the small paper for two cents, and I’ll bring her the other penny tomorrow.
” Tilly said, “Yes, Miss Goldie.
” Tilly went away.
Maragold turned back to the table.
She picked up her water glass.
She drank.
She set the glass down.
She did not look at Hollis.
She did not look at him because she had not done it for him.
Hollis sat with his hands flat on the white tablecloth.
He could not move them.
He was a man who could name 46 kinds of grass on the high prairie and could not at that moment name a single one.
His mind was empty.
His chest was full.
The two facts did not match up.
He said only, “I’ll pay you back tomorrow morning.
” Maragold said, “You’ll pay the next meal.
That is how it works.
I am not a bank.
I am a woman who had a $145 in tip money and the use of it for an evening.
He nodded.
He could not speak past the thing behind his ribs.
He paid Mr.
Kungl with the coin still warm from her apron.
He walked her to the corner of the lane.
She did not let him walk further.
She said, “My brother is awake.
He hears my step.
I’ll see you Sunday at the Cottonwood.
” She walked into the dark.
Holla stood at the corner.
The lamps along the boardwalk hissed.
He did not go back to Miss Hedes.
Not yet.
He followed.
He told himself he was not following.
He told himself he was only walking.
Walking the long way around the town because a man needed to clear his head.
Walking because the Colorado sky in late autumn at 9:00 at night was a kind of black you could not get in any city.
But his boots took him in the direction she had gone.
He kept 30 yards back.
He saw the small shape of her ahead.
the blue dress only a darker patch against the dark.
She turned off the main street into the alley behind the general store.
It was a shortcut.
Holla stopped at the mouth of the alley.
He did not go in.
A man was already in the alley.
He had not noticed the man.
Maragold had not noticed the man either because the man had been standing in the deeper shadow against the back wall of Hawkins General Store and he stepped out when Maragold was halfway through.
He was a railroad man.
His name was Carne Bicks and he was a route surveyor for the Denver and Rio Grand and he had been drinking at the Painted Pony since 5:00.
He was tall and thick shouldered and he was holding a coin in his hand, a $20 gold piece, a double eagle.
He held it up so it caught the lamplight from the cross street.
He said, “Goldie, Goldie Ericson, I’ve been thinking about you.
” Maragold stopped.
She did not turn around to run.
Running in a Colorado alley at night was how a woman got caught.
She stood her ground.
She said, “Mr.
Brics, go home to your bunk house.
” He said, “I’ve been thinking about you and that brother of yours.
$800 he needs ain’t it? That St.
Louis surgeon.
I heard you talking to Miss Hedi about it Tuesday last.
” He held up the coin.
He turned it in the light.
He said, “This here’s 20.
I got more.
One night, Goldie, one night and your brother walks again.
” He stepped closer in the alley mouth.
Hollis Wilder put his right hand on the grip of the Colt revolver under his coat.
He had not drawn it on a man since 71.
His thumb went to the hammer.
His jaw was tight enough to ache.
Maragold did not see Hollis.
She did not need to see him.
She walked forward.
She walked right up to Carne Bricks.
She stopped 6 in from his chest.
She was a foot shorter than he was.
She had to tilt her head back to look him in the face.
She said, “My brother lives by his dignity, not by your dirty coin, Mr.
Bricks.
” And she slapped him open hand, full arm.
A real slap, the kind that turns a man’s head and leaves the print of four fingers across his cheek.
The coin fell.
It hit the alley mud and rolled and stopped against a wagon rut.
Carney bricks staggered back a step.
He put his hand to his face.
He looked at her like a dog looks at a kettle of boiling water.
He said, “You little Hollis stepped out of the shadow.
” He did not say anything.
He did not have to.
He stood at the mouth of the alley, 6’4″, coat open, holster plain, beard down to the second button, and he did not say one word.
Carne Bicks looked at him.
Carne Bicks calculated.
Carne Bicks turned and walked the other way down the alley quickly.
He did not run.
He had enough pride left to refuse to run.
But he walked the kind of walk that was a held in run.
The double eagle stayed in the mud.
Maragold did not pick it up.
She stepped over it.
She walked past Hollis without seeing him in the dark.
She did not know he had been there.
She was breathing hard and her hand stung and her face was burning and she just wanted to get to Wesley and check the lock on the door and put a chair against it for the night.
She walked on.
Hollis stood at the alley mouth.
He looked at the coin in the mud.
He did not pick it up either.
It could lie there until the morning rain washed it into the gutter and some boy found it on the way to school.
He did not want the touch of it on his hand.
He walked back to Miss Hedes.
He climbed the narrow stairs.
He did not light the lamp.
He sat on the edge of the rope bed.
He took off his hat.
He set it on the chair.
He reached into his saddle bag.
He brought out the leather notebook.
It was a small thing, brown, smooth at the spine from being held in his pocket for two years.
He opened it 25 names.
He had written them in his own hand.
Each one a date and a town and a sentence about how she had failed.
Margaret and Cheyenne, Amelia in Boulder, the brassy woman in Leadville who had laughed.
Charlotte, Beatatrice, Esme, 25 names.
He looked at them in the dark.
He could not read them.
The room was too dark.
But he knew what was written there.
He had read it 25 times.
He had told himself that it was proof.
Proof of the world.
Proof that Octavia was the rule and not the exception.
Proof that no one would stay if a man’s pockets were empty.
Proof that he was right to keep testing.
Tonight he had been wrong.
Not because Maragold had passed.
She had not even been tested.
The test was not over.
The test was supposed to take six dinners.
Eight.
A month at the least.
25 women had failed by the second meal.
The dinner with the empty wallet was supposed to be the first true measure.
She had passed it.
But that was not what made him wrong.
What made him wrong was Tilly.
What made him wrong was the twist of muslin still warm from a woman’s ribs, the pennies, the whound drops, the girl’s mother in the cough.
What made him wrong was the railroad man in the alley and a $20 gold coin lying in the mud because a young woman with a brother who could not walk had been offered a sum she could not refuse, and she had refused it.
She had refused it before she knew Hollis Wilder was standing 30 ft behind her in the dark.
She would have refused it if she had been alone.
She would refuse it tomorrow night and the night after that and every night for as long as God let her keep her own face in the mirror.
Hollis looked at the leather notebook.
He stood up.
He crossed the room.
He opened the door of the small iron stove that stood in the corner.
He had laid no fire that night because the autumn was mild and Miss Hedi counted the kindling.
There were old ashes inside and a single charred curl of birch bark.
He lit a match.
He held the match to the leather notebook.
The cover did not catch right away.
Leather burned slow.
It blackened first, curled.
Then a small flame caught at one corner and licked up the spine.
He dropped it in.
He closed the stove door.
He stood there for a long time.
He could hear the leather hissing.
He could smell the smoke of it, a bitter mean smell.
the smell of a thing he had carried too long and should have burned the day he left the Arapjo County courthouse.
He thought of Octavia in her lavender silk.
He thought of Reginal Braftoft in the diamond ring.
He thought of the small drop of his own blood on the cream colored bladder paper.
And he thought of Maragold Ericson in a blue dress sliding a penny across a white tablecloth into the hand of a girl whose mother had a cough.
Hollis Wilder, who had not cried since he was 8 years old, did a thing he had told himself he would never do again.
He sat on the floor of the small rented room on the second story of Miss Hetty Crowder’s boarding house and eating room in Silver Creek, Colorado territory in the autumn of 1878.
He put his face in his big callous hands and he wept.
He wept the slow, silent way men weep when there is no one to see.
He wept for the years he had wasted testing women.
He wept for the 25 names and what they had cost him, not in money, but in something he could not get back.
He wept because somewhere out in the dark, a young woman with a Norwegian last name was bolting a door against a man who had insulted her and she would do it again tomorrow and she would do it again the next day.
And she would never know that a man named Hollis Wilder had stood in the mouth of the alley and watched her stand her ground.
He wept because for the first time in two years he wanted a thing very badly.
He wanted to deserve her.
He did not yet know how.
He did not yet know that the wanting was only the beginning.
He did not yet know that the lie he had told her about who he was.
The lie about the ranch hand from Wyoming would grow in the next four months like a vine that takes a house and pulls it down stone by stone.
He knew only this.
Outside his window, the Colorado wind moved in the cottonwoods.
Inside the small iron stove, the leather notebook was ash.
And down at the foot of the lane that led to a cabin where a 15-year-old boy was drawing the constellation Orion in coal pencil on butcher paper, a young woman in a blue dress was putting a chair against her own front door.
The Sunday at the creek would come again.
He would be there.
He would bring better coffee.
November came to Silver Creek the way November always comes to the Colorado high country.
Not gentle.
The first hard freeze took the last of the aspen gold in a single night.
The cottonwoods went bare.
The creek slowed and grew a skin of black ice along the shallows.
The wind came down out of the Sanratos with a sound like a held breath let out slow.
Hollis Wilder had been in Silver Creek for 6 weeks.
He had not gone home to the ranch.
He sent letters to Henrik Vossberg, the foreman.
Henrik wrote back in a hand like fence wire, “Calves wintering.
Mine assayer up from PBlo.
” Posie sent four letters from her mother’s house.
She asked for you.
The Bay Mare threw a shoe.
That was all.
Henrik never asked when Hollis was coming home.
Henrik knew better than to ask.
Hollis read Posy’s letters in the small room above Miss Hedes at night.
Daddy, I learned long division this week, and I do not like it.
Mother says I must learn it anyway.
The sky on Tuesday had a halo around the moon.
Mrs.
Callaway said it means snow, but I think it means God is keeping watch.
I love you, Daddy.
Posie.
He folded the letter small.
He kept them inside his shirt against his ribs.
He had not yet told Margold he had a daughter.
He had told her about Posie at the Frontier Hotel and not since.
He had not brought her name up at the Cottonwood log on Sunday afternoons.
He had not described her brown hair or the gap where her front tooth was coming in or the way she said daddy like it was three syllables instead of two.
Because if Maragold met Posie, the lie would have to grow another room.
And the lie already had too many rooms.
Sunday at the Cottonwood.
Six weeks running.
Same log, same creek, same two tin cups of bad coffee.
Except now Hollis brought the coffee.
He bought the beans at Hawkins’s general store, and he ground them himself in Miss Hed’s kitchen on Saturday nights while she pretended not to watch from the doorway.
Miss Hedi watched everything.
Miss Hedi had seen the leather notebook go into the stove the night of the Frontier Hotel dinner.
She had come up the back stairs at midnight to check the chimney damper and she had smelled the burnt leather.
She had not said a word.
Miss Hedi was waiting.
A woman of 60 learns to wait.
The Sundays grew shorter.
By the second week of November, the light was gone from the creek bank at 4:00.
Maragold and Holla sat on the log and coats.
Her coat was a brown wool with a torn lining.
His coat was the same flannel D’s coat he had bought off a man in Cheyenne for0 50 cents in a tin of tobacco.
He had a coat at the ranch worth $200.
He never wore it here.
On the third Sunday of November, she said, “Wesley wants to meet you.
” Holla set his cup down on the log.
He said, “I’d like to meet him.
” She said, “Tuesday night, supper at the cabin.
I’ll make ludafisk.
It’s my mother’s recipe.
” He said, “Lutisk.
” She said, “Codfish soaked in lie water, then boiled, then served with butter and white pepper.
” He said, “That sounds difficult.
” She laughed.
It was the first time he had heard her laugh.
A real laugh from the belly.
Her head went back an inch and her eyes squinched up and the laugh came out warm.
She said, “It is.
My father said it tasted like the soul of a fish that had repented.
” He said, “I will eat whatever you cook, Miss Ericson.
” She said, “Goldie.
” He said, “Goldie.
” She said, “Bring an appetite and don’t pity him.
” He said, “I will not pity him.
” She said, “Other men do.
They come to the door.
They look at him.
They put their hat over their heart.
And they speak in the voice you use at a graveside.
He is not dead, Mr.
Wilder.
He is 15 and he knows pity when he sees it and it makes him want to throw a coffee cup.
He said, “Then I will not pity him.
” She nodded once.
She stood up.
She brushed cottonwood bark off the back of her skirt.
She said, “Tuesday, 6:00.
The cabin is the second one east of the Lutheran cemetery, the blue door.
” She walked away up the path.
Hollis sat on the log alone.
He had eaten in restaurants that served pheasant with truffle from France.
He was more afraid of a Tuesday supper of Ludafisk than he had ever been of anything.
Tuesday, he brought a tin of coffee.
He brought a small bag of Brazil nuts from Hawkins’s.
Mr.
Hawkins had imported them on the railroad from New Orleans, and they were 60 cents a pound, and Hollis had paid for them with three quarters and a 5-cent piece, counting slow, because Hawkins had recently begun to look at Hollis the way a storekeeper looks at a man who might be cheating.
Maragold opened the blue door.
She wore a clean apron over the dress.
Her hair was up, her cheeks were flushed from the cook stove.
The cabin was one room, a cook stove on the west wall, a scrubbed pine table, two chairs, a horsehair seti under the window, a loft above with a ladder, and in the corner by the stove, a boy in a wooden chair with cast iron wheels off a baby buggy.
Wesley Ericson, 15 years old.
He had Maragold’s blonde hair, only longer and shaggier falling into his eyes.
He had her blue mountain lake eyes.
He had her thin wrists.
He had her father’s wide Norwegian jaw.
He had legs that lay still under a wool blanket.
He looked at Hollis.
He looked Hollis up and down.
He said, “You’re bigger than my sister described.
” Hollis took off his hat.
He said, “Most people say so.
” Wesley said, “My sister said you were a ranch hand who came down from Wyoming.
” Hollis said, “That’s right.
” Wesley said, “My sister said your hands were rough.
” Hollis held out his right hand.
Wesley reached up.
The boy’s grip was strong.
The boy was studying Hollis’s palm.
Wesley said, “Goldie, he has rancher’s hands.
He has the right calluses, but the heel of his thumb is too soft for a man who roped his own cattle.
” Maragold turned from the stove.
She said, “Wesley.
” Wesley said, “I am only making conversation.
” Hollis said, “Your brother is observant.
” Wesley said, “I haven’t been sitting in this chair for 3 years, Mr.
Wilder.
I have nothing else to do but observe.
Hollis pulled out the second chair.
He sat down.
He met the boy’s eyes.
He said, “I worked the ranch most of my life.
I have done other work besides bookkeeping.
” Some are saying a man cannot rope steers for 40 years and not let some of the calluses soften.
It was a half-lie, a clean half-lie.
The truth was that Hollis had stopped doing the hardest cattle work eight years ago when the ranch grew large enough that he hired three full crews and started traveling to Denver four months out of the year to manage the silver mine and the railroad contracts.
The boy considered him.
The boy nodded.
The boy said, “All right.
” Wesley let his hand go.
Maragold set the ludafisk on the table.
It steamed.
It quivered.
It looked like a small piece of bog risen up to take a holiday.
Hollis ate it.
He ate three helpings.
He found to his surprise that with the butter and white pepper and a slice of dark rye bread, he could not stop eating it.
It tasted of cold sea and warm kitchen and a country he had never seen.
Wesley watched him eat.
After the third helping, Wesley said, “You actually like it.
” Hollis said, “I do.
” Wesley said, “Most Americans spit it out and pretend it was the pepper.
” Hollis said, “I have eaten worse on a cattle drive in a thunderstorm with the rain in the coffee.
” Wesley laughed.
It was a sound Maragold had not heard come out of her brother in 14 months.
She turned to the dish pan so neither of them could see her face.
After supper, Wesley unfolded a piece of butcher paper on the table.
He had drawn Orion.
Three stars for the belt, the bright shoulder, the bright foot, the sword hanging down.
He had labeled them in pencil.
Beetlejuice, Riel, Bellatrix.
Safe.
He had also drawn the part of the sky above the constellation that astronomers do not usually draw in charts.
A small notation in the corner, Orion Nebula, M42, visible to naked eye on a clear winter night south of the belt.
Hollis looked at the page.
He said, “How do you know that?” Wesley said, “Harper’s Weekly, April of last year.
There was an article on the Lick Observatory in California.
” Hollis said, “You know the names.
” Wesley said,”I know the names of 43 constellations and the principal stars in each of them.
I know the Greek myths.
I know the Norse names because my mother taught me.
I know that the Pleaides are called the seven sisters, but you can only ever see six unless the sky is very dark.
” Holla said, “There is a thing happening next summer.
” Wesley said, “The solar eclipse.
” Holla said, “The 29th of July.
” Wesley said it is a partial eclipse over Colorado, total over Wyoming and Montana.
Hollis said, “I am going to take you to see it.
” Wesley said nothing.
The boy stared at the butcher paper.
His jaw moved.
He did not look up.
Maragold stood at the dish pan very still.
Wesley said, “Mr.
Wilder, I cannot walk.
” Holla said, “You do not need to walk.
” Wesley said, “It is a long way to a place where you can see the total.
” Holla said, “I have means to get you there.
I will work it out.
You leave that to me.
” It was the first promise he had made to a person other than Posie in 2 years.
He had no idea yet how he would keep it.
He knew only that he would.
Maragold dried her hands on her apron.
She did not look at Hollis.
She did not need to look at him.
She said very low, “Mr.
Wilder, you should not promise that boy a thing you cannot deliver.
” He said, “I will deliver it.
” She did not answer.
But that night when he left the cabin and walked back through the cold to Miss Hedes, the snow had begun to fall, the first soft snow of November, and the lamplight from the front window of the boarding house came golden through the drifting flakes.
He stopped on the boardwalk.
He did not know why he had stopped.
He stood there until his boots achd with cold.
He told himself, “Just one more month.
I will tell her at Christmas.
I will tell her everything at Christmas.
” I will say Goldie, my name is Hollis Wilder.
I own the Silver Star Mine and 12,000 acres west of Manitou Springs.
I have lied to you for one reason.
I needed to be sure.
I am sure.
But he did not know yet.
That December would bring two visitors to Silver Creek who would tear the lie open before he had a chance to set it down himself.
The first visitor was Posie.
The second was Octavia.
Posie came on the noon train on the first Friday of December.
She came alone except for the porter in a small carpet bag and a paper sack of peppermints her mother had bought her at the Denver station and a letter pinned to her coat that said Posie Wilder.
Age 8.
Father will receive at Silver Creek.
If no father present wire Octavia Sterling Braftoft American House Hotel Denver Octavia had pinned the letter at the throat like a parcel.
Hollis met the train.
He saw Posie step down onto the wooden platform in her good blue traveling coat and her muff and her small brown boots and her brown hair in two braids tied with ribbons.
And her 8-year-old face went bright the way an 8-year-old face does when it sees the man it has been missing for 5 months.
She ran.
She had not run since she was six because Octavia said running was unladylike.
She ran across the platform and Hollis went down on one knee and she hit him hard enough to knock his hat off.
He picked her up.
He held her.
She smelled like her mother’s lavender soap and like the train.
She said into his neck, “Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.
” Holla said nothing for a long moment.
When he could speak, he said, “How long do I get?” She said, “3 weeks.
” Mother said 3 weeks because Mr.
Bankraftoft has business in San Francisco and Mother wishes to accompany him.
3 weeks.
3 weeks was longer than December usually gave him.
Three weeks was a gift, but three weeks meant Posie was in Silver Creek.
Three weeks meant Posie would eat at Miss Hed’s table.
Three weeks meant Posie would meet Maragold.
He carried her on his hip down the platform stairs.
Her boots dangled, her muff bumped against his back.
He said, “There’s somebody I want you to meet, Posie.
” She said, “A lady.
” He said, “A lady.
” She said, “Is she pretty?” He said, “She’s pretty, but that’s not the best thing about her.
” She said, “What’s the best thing?” He thought a moment.
He said she gave a girl a penny for her mama’s cough when she had only one penny left.
Posie looked at him.
Posie was eight.
She understood at once.
Posie met Maragold the next morning at breakfast.
Posie climbed up on the bench at Miss Hed’s long table and she folded her hands like her mother had taught her and she waited for the coffee girl.
Maragold came through the kitchen door with the pot.
Maragold stopped.
She had not known.
Hollis had not told her.
He had meant to tell her that morning.
He had meant to walk to the cottonwood at dawn and say, “Goldie, my daughter is coming on the train.
I need you to meet her.
” But he had overslept because he had stayed up late writing a wire to Henrik that he then did not send.
Maragold looked at the small girl in the blue dress.
She looked at Hollis.
She read his face.
She set the coffee pot down.
She went to Posie.
She crouched beside the bench so her face was level with Posy’s face.
She said, “You must be Miss Posie Wilder.
” Posie said, “You must be the lady who gave the penny.
” Maragold blinked.
She glanced at Hollis.
Hollis looked at the ceiling.
Maragold turned back to Posie.
She said, “I am that lady.
My name is Goldie.
Some people call me Miss Ericson.
You may use either as suits you.
” Posie said, “I will call you Goldie because my mother says first names are friendlier.
” Maragold said, “Your mother is right about that.
” Posie said, “My daddy says you draw stars.
” Maragold said, “My brother draws stars.
I cannot draw a straight line.
” Posie said, “I would like to meet your brother.
I am studying astronomy.
I have a chart of the moons of Jupiter.
” Maragold’s eyes brimmed.
She did not let the water fall.
She said, “Tomorrow afternoon, will you come to tea? My brother will be very pleased.
” Posie said, “Yes, please.
” Maragold stood up.
She poured Posie a cup of milk.
She poured Hollis’s coffee.
She did not look at Hollis when she poured his coffee.
She moved on.
Saturday afternoon, Posie met Wesley.
It was the only thing in Hollis Wilder’s life since the divorce that went exactly as he hoped.
Posie climbed into the chair beside Wesley’s chair, and the two of them put their heads together over a piece of butcher paper, and they did not look up for 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Maragold and Hollis sat at the other end of the small cabin and drank coffee in silence and listened to two children argue about whether Mars had two moons or one.
Wesley said two, Posie said one.
Wesley said Asaf Hall discovered Daimos and Phobos in 1877 at the United States Naval Observatory.
Posie said, “My encyclopedia is from 1875.
” Wesley said, “Your encyclopedia is out of date.
” Posie said, “My encyclopedia cost $14.
” Wesley said, “That does not change the moons of Mars.
” Posie thought about it.
Posie said, “All right, two.
” Wesley said, “You will be a good astronomer when you grow up.
” Posie said, “I do not want to be an astronomer.
I want to be the person who decides who can be an astronomer.
” Wesley said, “That’s better.
” Across the room, Maragold leaned her shoulder into Hollis’s shoulder for 1/ half of a second.
just one half of a second.
Then she sat up straight again and pretended she had not.
He did not pretend with her.
He felt the warmth of her shoulder against his coat sleeve for the next 9 hours.
The second Tuesday of December was the church quilting bee.
Maragold went because Miss Hedi made her go.
Miss Heddy said, “Goldie, you have not been to the bee in 2 months.
Mrs.
Pedigrew will think you have died.
Wear the green shaw.
” Maragold wore the green shaw.
The Methodist church basement smelled of cedar shavings and coffee.
The women of Silver Creek sat on benches around a frame the size of a small wagon bed.
The quilt on the frame was a wedding quilt for a girl named Susanna Galt who was marrying a man up in the Leadville mines in February.
Posie came with Maragold.
It had been Posy’s idea.
Posie had asked, “Goldie, may I come with you to the quilting? My mother says I must learn needle work, but my mother does not know any needle work.
and the woman she hired to teach me smelled like camper.
Maragold had said, “Yes, child, come.
” So Posie sat beside Maragold on the bench.
Maragold taught Posie to thread a needle with a knot the Norwegian way.
She taught Posie to push the needle straight down through three layers of cotton without bending the shaft.
She taught Posie to take a stitch no longer than the head of a pin.
Mrs.
Pedigrew leaned over her spectacles.
Mrs.
Pedigrew was 65 and she had buried two husbands and she had opinions on every soul in Silver Creek and she had not yet decided what her opinion on Maragold Ericson was.
She said, “Posie, dear, have you met your father’s friend before today?” Posie said, “Yes, ma’am.
I met her yesterday.
” Mrs.
Pedigrew said, “And have you met your mother’s friend, Mr.
Braftoft?” Posie paused with the needle halfway through the cotton.
Posie said, “Yes, ma’am.
” Mrs.
Pedigrew said, “And which do you prefer?” The basement went a little quiet.
Maragold set down her thread.
Maragold said, “Mrs.
Pedigrew, that is a question we do not ask a child.
” Mrs.
Pedigrew said, “I was only.
” Maragold said, “You were only.
” “Yes, I understand.
Posie, finish your row.
” Posie finished her row.
Her stitch was crooked.
She bent her head to undo it.
Maragold leaned to her and said in her ear, “You may leave the crooked one.
Every quilt should have one.
My mother said, “A perfect quilt is a vain quilt, and God does not bless vain quilts.
” Posie said into Maragold’s ear, “What about Mr.
Braftoft?” Maragold said into Posy’s ear, “What about him?” Posie said, “Do I have to like him?” Maragold said, “No, you only have to be polite.
Liking is your own private business.
Your heart does not belong to your mother or your father or to any man.
Your heart belongs to you.
Be polite.
Keep your own counsel.
Posie looked up at her.
Posy’s eyes were very large.
She said, “I would like you to be my mother.
” She said it the way an 8-year-old says a thing.
Soft, final, like a fact she had decided about the world while no one was looking.
Maragold did not breathe for a moment.
She picked up the thread.
She said, “You have a mother already, my darling, and she loves you.
I am only your friend.
” Posie said, “I would like to have you, too.
” Maragold’s hand trembled.
The needle slipped.
It pricricked her thumb.
A drop of blood appeared on the white cotton of Susanna Galt’s wedding quilt.
A perfect round red drop, smaller than a pee, bright as a winter berry.
Mrs.
Pedigrew gasped.
Mrs.
Pedigrew said, “Oh dear, that will not come out.
” Maragold looked at the drop.
She did not move to dab it.
She did not apologize.
She said, “It will come out.
cold water and a little salt.
She bent her head and she went back to the work, but under the table she put her hand on Posy’s knee.
She squeezed once, the same squeeze she had given old Mr.
Halverson at the boarding house.
Soft, steady, a small weight that said, “I am here.
” Posie covered Maragold’s hand with her own small hand.
The two of them sewed the rest of the row in silence.
The third Friday of December, the train brought the second visitor.
Hollis was not at the platform to meet her.
Hollis was at Hawkins’s general store buying a tin of cocoa powder for Posie because Posie had said at breakfast she missed her mother’s hot cocoa.
The second visitor stepped down onto the wooden platform alone except for a railroad porter in a Pullman trunk and a small white spananiel on a velvet leash.
The visitor wore a sable coat.
The visitor wore lavender silk under the coat.
The visitor wore a hat with three pheasant feathers.
Octavia Sterling Braftoft followed by Reginald Braftoft in his cigar.
Hollis did not know they were in town until 10:00 that night.
Saturday night, a town dance at the Graange Hall.
Maragold had not wanted to go.
Miss Hedi had made her go again.
Miss Hedi said, “Goldie, you have been working 16 hours a day for 4 years.
You will go to the dance and you will eat one slice of cake and you will dance one waltz and then you may come home and crawl into a hole until next Easter for all I care.
So Maragold went.
She wore the blue dress.
She had no other dress.
The graange hall was packed.
Lanterns, a four-piece string band on the platform, pine boughs on the window sills because Christmas was two weeks off.
a long table at the back with minced pies and ginger cake and a bowl of mold cider as big as a baby’s bath.
Maragold stood by the cider bowl.
She had taken the post of cider girl because cider girls did not have to dance.
She ladled cider.
She smiled at the wives.
She smiled at the children.
Posie was there.
Posie was dancing with Wesley in his chair.
Wesley had been carried in by Hollis and Henrik.
Henrik had come up from the ranch for a single night and disappeared before midnight without being seen by more than three people.
Wesley sat at the side and Posie held his hand and turned slowly in a circle in front of him because she had decided that this was a way Wesley could dance too.
It was a kind thing.
Maragold watched it from the cider bowl and her eyes burned.
Then the door opened.
A cold wind came in.
Three pheasant feathers came in on a wide-brimmed hat.
Octavia Sterling Brooft stepped into the Graange Hall in Silver Creek, Colorado territory in a sable coat that was worth more than the building.
The room went a little quiet.
Then the room went back to its noise because most of the room did not know who she was.
But Hollis knew.
Hollis was standing in the corner by the back door with a cup of cider in his hand.
He saw the feathers.
He saw the silk under the coat.
His hand closed on the cider cup.
The clay cracked.
Cider ran down his wrist.
He did not feel it.
Octavia did not see him at first.
Octavia was looking around the room with a small bored expression of a woman who has come to a thing she does not respect.
She handed her coat to Reginald.
Reginald handed it to a Grange Hall coat girl who did not know what to do with Sable.
Octavia smoothed her gloves.
She lifted her chin.
She walked toward the cider bowl because the cider bowl was the only place a woman like Octavia would naturally walk.
She arrived.
She held out her cup.
she said without looking at the cider girl.
A small portion.
The cinnamon is heavy.
Maragold ladled.
Maragold poured a small portion.
Maragold lifted her eyes.
Octavia looked at her.
Octavia’s face did one quick small thing.
A re-calibration.
A woman of 35 in lavender silk looking at a woman of 22 in blue cotton with a single braid down her back and a patched apron.
Octavia smiled.
It was the smile she had used on Hollis the morning she told him about Reginald.
It was a smile that had been practiced in a mirror in a Chicago dress maker shop and refined in the lobby of the American House Hotel.
Octavia said, “You are the boarding house girl.
” Maragold said, “I am.
” Octavia said, “Norwegian, I take it the hair.
” Margold said, “My father was.
” Octavia said, “Charmming.
” Maragold did not answer.
Octavia said, “Tell me, has anyone told you who your gentleman friend is?” Maragold’s hand did not stop ladling cider.
Maragold said, “My gentleman friend.
” Octavia said, “The big one, the bearded ranch hand who is not a ranch hand.
” She said it loud enough, loud enough that two women on the other side of the cider table heard.
Octavia leaned forward.
Octavia said low and sweet the way a woman pours sugar into a cup.
His name is Hollis Wilder.
He owns the Silver Star Mine.
He owns 12,000 acres west of Manitou Springs.
He has a townhouse on Lammer Street in Denver with a rosewood piano and a Brussels carpet.
I know because I was his wife.
I lived in that house.
I played that piano badly.
I have been told by reliable persons in Denver that he is amusing himself this autumn with a charity romance up in the mining towns.
He has done it before with other women.
I cannot count how many.
Be careful, darling.
He will leave.
He always does.
Maragold’s ladle paused above the bowl.
Just for a moment.
Just a small, still moment.
The ladle dripped cider back into the bowl.
Tap, tap, tap.
Then Maragold finished pouring Octavia’s cup.
She handed it to her.
She said, “Thank you for your visit, ma’am.
” Octavia said, “You don’t believe me.
” Maragold said, “I have only known you for 90 seconds.
I do not yet know what I believe, but you are interrupting my work.
Octavia laughed.
It was a chime laugh, light, polished.
Octavia said, “Suit yourself, child.
Save your tears for later.
I do not enjoy watching them fall in person.
” Octavia turned.
Octavia walked back across the Graange Hall floor with her cider cup.
Regginal Braftoft was waiting with two seats at the back near the band.
Maragold stood at the cider bowl.
She ladled the next cup.
Her hand was steady.
She gave the next cup to old Mr.
Halverson, who had limped up to her with his bad shoulder and a wide grin because Mr.
Halverson had not heard one word of what had just passed.
She said, “Mr.
Halverson, have a cookie.
” He said, “Bless you, Goldie.
” She watched him hobble away with his cup.
She did not look toward the corner where Hollis stood.
She did not have to look.
She felt him there.
She felt him the way a person feels a stove on the other side of a dark room.
3 hours later, long after Octavia and Reginald had departed in their carriage to the rail sighting where their private Pullman was parked.
Long after Posie had been put to bed at Miss Hedes with a kiss from her father and a kiss from Maragold.
Long after Wesley had been carried home and tucked into his loft bed and was sound asleep with a copy of the Harper’s Weekly open on his chest.
Maragold sat at the kitchen table of her cabin alone, a single lamp, a cup of cold coffee, a piece of butcher paper.
She had written across the top in her neat schoolroom hand things a stranger said tonight.
Under it she had written one, Hollis Wilder owns the Silver Star Mine.
Two, Hollis Wilder owns 12,000 acres west of Manitou Springs.
Three, Hollis Wilder owns a townhouse on Lmer Street with a rosewood piano.
Four, the woman who said it wore sable and lavender silk and feeasant feathers.
Five, the woman who said it called him ranchhand, who is not a ranch hand.
Six, the woman who said it was once his wife.
She sat looking at the list.
She did not cry.
She did not write seven.
She picked up the piece of paper.
She folded it small.
She tucked it under the loose board beside the cook stove where the family had kept the surgeon money since 1875.
She blew out the lamp.
She went to bed.
She did not sleep.
The first week of December had brought Posie.
The third week of December brought a different thing.
A man Maragold had served twice at the boarding house came to dine with a lawyer.
The man’s name was Reginald Braftoft.
The lawyer’s name was Mr.
Hardwick.
They came on a Thursday evening.
They asked Miss Hedi for the private booth at the back of the dining room.
the one set off by a folding screen of carved walnut that Miss Hed’s first husband had brought from St.
Louis in 1851.
Maragold served them.
She brought roast pork.
She brought potatoes.
She brought a bottle of Tennessee whiskey Reginald had brought himself, which Miss Hedi permitted because Reginald paid her four silver dollars for the use of the booth.
Maragold poured.
Maragold did not stay at the booth.
Maragold went back to the kitchen and pretended to dry dishes, but the kitchen door was an old door.
The kitchen door had a crack between the planks.
A crack a young woman with sharp eyes could see through.
A crack through which the voices of two men eating roast pork carried clean and clear.
Maragold listened.
She did not write anything down.
Then she listened.
Reginald said he will not sell.
Hardwick said he must.
Reginald said he is stubborn.
He has always been stubborn.
The mine alone is worth a fortune in silver and he does not need our money.
Hardwick said, “Then we take the child.
” Maragold’s hand stopped above the dish pan.
Regginald said, “Octavia has agreed.
” Hardwick said, “She is the natural mother.
We file in Denver probate court.
We ask for full guardianship.
We argue moral unfitness.
The girl has been seen in the company of a Norwegian boarding house girl of disreputable employment.
The judge is a friend of Mr.
Bankrooft’s.
” Reginald said, “Which judge?” Hardwick said, “Witcom, he owes us $600 in unpaid notes from the Gley land deal.
He will rule as we ask.
” Regginald said, “And then Wilder must choose the land or the child.
” Hardwick said, “He will choose the child.
They always do, even the hard ones.
” Regginald said, “Then we get the right of way through the Manitou tract.
” Hardwick said, “And the Denver and Rio Grand pays us $6,000 per mile.
” Reginald laughed.
Reginald said to Octavia.
Hardwick said to Octavia.
The whiskey glasses clinkedked.
Maragold stood in the boarding house kitchen.
The dish rag was in her hand.
Soap was on her wrist.
She did not move for one minute.
Then she set down the dish rag.
She went to the small writing desk in Miss Hed’s pantry where Miss Hedi kept the boarding house accounts.
She took a sheet of paper.
She took a pencil.
She wrote.
She wrote everything she had just heard.
names, numbers, the whiskey brand, the judge, the amount of the unpaid notes, the price per mile.
She wrote until her hand cramped.
Then she folded the paper.
She slid it down the front of her dress against her ribs.
The way a woman carries the only thing in the world that matters.
The next morning, the wind shifted.
The wind came down from the high country with a wet smell.
Mrs.
Pedigrew said at breakfast, “A storm.
” By Tuesday, a bad one.
By Tuesday, a different thing happened.
Wesley sat up in bed in the loft and he reached down to scratch his left ankle.
He had not scratched his ankle in three years.
He had not felt his ankle in 3 years.
His ankle itched.
He scratched it.
Then he stopped.
He went very still.
Then he wiggled the toes of his left foot.
The toes moved.
The toes moved a quarter of an inch.
Wesley called down the ladder.
He did not call loud.
He said Goldie.
Maragold was at the cook stove starting oats.
She came to the foot of the ladder.
She said, “What?” He said, “Come up.
” She climbed.
He pulled the wool blanket off his legs.
He said, “Watch.
” He looked down at his left foot.
His brow furrowed.
The big toe twitched.
The big toe moved a quarter of an inch.
Maragold sat down hard on the law floor.
She put both hands over her mouth.
Wesley said, “Goldie, Goldie, the St.
Louis surgeon, the listister man.
I have to get to him before this stops.
Whatever it is, whatever has come back, I have to get it documented before it goes again.
Maragold could not speak.
She nodded.
Wesley said, “Get Dr.
Heath.
” She climbed down.
She put on her shawl.
She ran.
Dr.
Phineas Heath came at noon with his stethoscope in his small black bag.
He examined the boy for 40 minutes.
He pinched and pricricked and pressed and watched.
He stood up.
He took off his spectacles.
He polished them on his vest.
He said, “Miss Ericson, there is a small return of motor function.
I cannot tell you what it means.
I am a country physician.
The surgeon in St.
Louis Mobre has had three cases like this.
He has restored full use in two of them.
If the boy can be examined by him within the next 90 days, there is reason for hope.
After that, the window narrows.
” Maragold said 90 days.
Heath said yes.
Maragold said his fee.
Heath said 800 plus travel.
Maragold said I have 140.
Heath looked at her.
Heath had treated Maragold’s father.
Heath had pulled Wesley out of the wreckage of the wagon 3 years earlier with his own two hands and a bottle of carbolic acid.
Heath said Goldie.
Maragold said I will get it.
He said do not do anything foolish.
She said I will not.
She lied to him.
She had already decided what to do.
She walked that afternoon in the cold December wind down the main street of Silver Creek to the office of the land registar.
Mr.
Tobias Penrose was the registar.
Tobias Penrose owned the flower mill at the south end of town.
Tobias Penrose had been trying to buy the 40 acres on Ericson Ridge for 2 years because the creek that ran through it would turn his second millheel.
Maragold walked in.
She said, “Mr.
Penrose.
” He looked up from his ledger.
He said, “Miss Ericson.
” She said, “I have come to sell.
” His face did the small ugly thing a man’s face does when he gets a thing he wants.
He said, “How much?” She said, “7700.
” He said, “6.
” She said, “650.
” And the title goes clean to your name today.
Before sundown.
He said, “Done.
” She signed.
She walked out into the cold with 650 silver dollars in a leather pouch against her hip.
She walked home through snow that had begun to fall.
She did not know.
Hollis Wilder had been standing in the alley across from the registars’s office.
He had seen her go in.
He had seen her come out with the pouch.
He had seen her face.
He had seen the small slope of her shoulders under the brown coat as she walked away into the snow.
And his heart broke for her.
And his heart broke for himself because he had known for three weeks that the moment was coming when he must tell her.
and he had let her sell the last 40 acres of her family’s land while he stood in an alley and watched.
That night the wind grew teeth.
That night Hollis Wilder walked the four blocks from Miss Hedes to the Ericson cabin.
That night he knocked on the blue door.
Maragold opened it.
The lamp behind her threw her face half in gold and half in shadow.
She had been crying.
It was the first time he had seen her after she had been crying.
She did not let him in.
She said, “Mr.
Wilder.
He said, “Goldie, will you walk with me?” She said, “It’s snowing.
” He said, “To the cottonwood.
” Just to the cottonwood.
I have a thing to tell you that I should have told you 6 weeks ago.
I cannot carry it another night.
She looked at him.
She looked at him for a long moment.
Then she took her shawl off the peg behind the door.
She closed the door behind her.
They walked through the snow to the cottonwood.
The creek was black under a thin lit of ice.
The cottonwood log was white with new snow.
The aspens beyond were bare.
The wind moved through them with a small dry sound like an old book being opened.
He brushed snow off the log.
She sat.
She wrapped the shawl tighter.
He sat beside her.
He took off his hat.
He held it in his hands.
He said, “Goldie, my name is Hollis Wilder.
I own the Silver Star Mine.
I own 12,000 acres in the Manitou tract.
I have a house in Denver with a piano my former wife played badly.
I am not a ranch hand from Wyoming.
I have lied to you every day since I came to Silver Creek.
You are the 26th woman I have tested with an empty wallet.
You are the last one I will ever test because I have known for 6 weeks that I am in love with you and I cannot keep one more lie in my mouth.
Snow fell.
A little snow fell on her hair.
A little snow fell on his bare head.
Maragold did not look at him.
She looked at the creek.
She said very quiet, “You watched me eat oats for 3 weeks.
” He said, “Yes.
” She said, “You watched me sell my brother’s land this afternoon.
” He said, “Yes.
” She said, “You sat at my table.
You ate my mother’s lutafisk.
You promised my brother an eclipse.
You let your daughter sew with me yesterday and tell me she wanted me for her mother.
You did all of that while you knew.
” He said, “I did.
” She turned her head.
She looked at him.
There were no tears.
The tears had been in the cabin.
They were finished.
Her eyes were the blue of a high mountain lake the night before it freezes hard.
She said, “I am not a test, Mr.
Wilder.
I am Maragold Ericson, daughter of Bejorn and Astred, sister of Wesley.
I have been a person for 22 years.
I will be a person for as long as the Lord gives me.
You may keep your mine and your acres and your piano.
I would like to be left alone now.
” She stood up.
She wrapped the shawl.
She walked back toward the cabin through the snow.
She did not look back.
Hollis Wilder sat on the cottonwood log in the December dark.
Snow fell on his hair and his shoulders and the brim of his hat in his hands.
He sat there for a long time.
He sat until the snow had built a small ridge along his left arm.
Then he stood up.
He walked back to Miss Hedes.
He did not light the lamp.
He sat on the edge of the rope bed in the small dark room and he stared at the wall.
3 days later, 3 days into a blizzard that closed every pass between Silver Creek and the Continental Divide.
3 days into snow that piled 5 feet against the north walls of every building in town.
A small boy came pounding on Miss Hed’s door at 2:00 in the morning.
He was Wesley Ericson’s neighbor’s son.
He had run a mile through drifts to bring the message.
He said, “Mister, mister.
” Goldie said, “Come.
” Hollis was already pulling on his boots.
The boy said, “Wesley is hot.
He is hot like a stove.
He cannot speak.
” Goldie said, “Come now.
” Hollis took his coat.
He took his hat.
He saddled dusty in the dark.
He rode out into the storm.
The blizzard had no top and no bottom.
It came down in a way that did not look like falling.
It looked like the world had been turned sideways in the air was a wall and the wall was moving.
Hollis Wilder rode dusty through it.
He could not see the road.
He knew the road by the line of the cottonwoods on the south side and by the fence posts on the north.
He counted the post because he could not see them.
He counted by the small thump of Dusty’s right shoulder striking each post as the brown geling stumbled.
14 posts.
16.
The cabin had 31 posts from town.
He counted to 31 in the dark with snow blowing sideways into his beard, into his eyes, into the inside of his collar where it melted against the skin of his neck and refroze into a small chain of ice.
The blue door was a darker patch in the dark.
He swung down.
He did not tie Dusty.
Dusty was too tired to wander.
He pounded the door once and pushed it open.
The cabin was hot.
Maragold had built the cook stove up so high the iron lid glowed red around the edges.
She had pulled Wesley’s pallet down from the loft and laid him on the horsehair seti in only his night shirt.
The boy’s hair was wet.
His lips were cracked.
His eyes were open, but they were not seeing.
Margold knelt beside him.
She had a tin pan of snow water and a rag.
She was ringing the rag out over and over.
She did not look up when Hollis came in.
She said only it came on at sundown.
He said, “How long since he spoke?” She said, “2 hours.
” He said, “Has he kept water down?” She said,”None.
” He shed his coat.
He shed his hat.
He went down on one knee beside the boy.
He put the back of his hand against Wesley’s forehead.
He said 104, maybe higher.
Maragold said, “I know.
” He said, “Dr.
Heath.
” She said, “He is at the Hansen farm.
The wife is in childbirth.
The boy who came told me he cannot come until the snow eases.
” Holla stood up.
He went to the cook stove.
He took the pan of snow water.
He set it back on the stove top.
He took a clean piece of cotton from the basket by Maragold’s elbow.
He soaked it.
He rung it.
He said, “Goldie, look at me.
” She looked up.
Her face was the color of paper.
Her hair had come down out of the braid and was stuck to her wet cheeks.
He said, “You will keep cooling him.
I will go for Mobre.
” She said, “St.
Louis is 1500 miles.
” He said, “I know how far it is.
” She said the line is closed.
He said it will open.
She said you cannot open the Denver and Rio Grand.
He said I can.
I will.
You stay with him.
You do not leave this room.
I will come back with a doctor and a train and instruments and the carbolic acid solution and whatever else the man requires.
Do you understand me? She looked at him.
She did not know who she was looking at anymore.
The lie was gone.
What sat in front of her on his heels beside her dying brother was a man she had known for 10 weeks and a man she had not known at all.
She said, “Why?” He said, “Because I love him, too.
” He stood up.
He put on his coat.
He pulled the hat down over his ears.
He said, “Goldie.
” She did not answer.
He said it anyway.
He said, “I will be back.
” He went out the door.
Dusty was already shaking with cold.
Hollis did not get back in the saddle.
He took the reinss and he walked.
He walked the brown geling back the 31 fence post to town and he counted them backwards and the wind cut through the d’s coat as if the coat were paper.
He got to Silver Creek at 4 in the morning.
He went to the telegraph office.
The night operator was a man named Asa Bickl.
Asa Bickl was 60 years old and he had been a telegrapher since the war.
He slept on a cot in the back room and he was wake by the bell on the door.
Hollis pounded.
Asa came in his night shirt with a kerosene lantern.
He said, “Wild or Lord, man.
The lines are down west of Pueblo.
” Holla said, “Are they down east?” Asa said, “East to Denver, they are open.
Denver to St.
Louis, they are open.
The break is west.
Coming back from the divide.
” Hollis said, “Then we go east first.
” He sat down at the table.
He pulled a sheet of yellow paper.
He wrote He wrote fast in pencil because his hands were stiff with cold.
He wrote three telegrams.
The first one went to Henrik Vossberg at the Wilder Ranch in Manitu.
Henrik, need every dollar in the Denver vault.
Move tonight.
Wire 2,000 silver to Asa Bickl at Silver Creek Western Union by Sunrise.
No questions.
H.
Wilder.
The second one went to the Denver office of the Denver and Rio Grand Railroad.
To a man named Thaddius Greer, who was the Western Superintendent of Motive Power.
Greer Hollis Wilder of Silverstar Mine.
I require your rotary snowplow off the main line for 12 hours.
Route to Silver Creek branch.
We’ll pay 1,500 silver delivered to DNRG Denver office by Vossberg before noon.
Surgeon must reach Silver Creek by Tuesday or boy will die.
Wireback H.
Wilder.
The third one went to a hotel in St.
Louis, the Lindell Hotel, where the bills from Harper’s Weekly had said the surgeon Arasmus More took his Saturday breakfast.
Dr.
Mobre Arasmus More Listister Man I am Hollis Wilder of Colorado I have a 15year-old boy with returning motor function after spinal injury window narrowing I will pay your full fee plus expenses plus 1,000 silver bonus to come immediately special train Denver to Silver Creek wire confirmation as Bickl Western Union Silver Creek Colorado territory H Wilder Asa Bickl read the three telegrams in the lantern night.
He looked up at Hollis.
He said, “Wilder, you are dropping 4,000 silver before the sun is up.
” Hollis said, “Send them.
” Asa said, “That gold piece you had Hawkins bend last month, so he would call it bent.
” I never said anything.
Holla said, “I know.
” Asa said, “You’re not a ranch hand.
” Holla said, “No.
” Asa said, “Goldie know yet.
” Holla said, “She knows.
” Asa said, “Then God help you.
Send them.
I will.
” He sat down at the key.
He began to tap.
The little brass arm went up and down in the lantern light.
Dot dash dot dot dash.
A sound like a small woodpecker very far away.
Hollis stood at the window of the telegraph office and watched the snow fall on the main street of Silver Creek and waited for an answer.
The answers came back over the next nine hours.
Henrik Vossberg first.
2,000 on the way.
Vault opened.
Mrs.
Brooft’s lawyer called yesterday asking after your whereabouts.
Told him you were dead.
HV Hollis almost smiled.
Thaddius Greer second.
Snow plow available.
Crew on standby.
1500 received.
Plow departs PBLO 5 a.
m.
Branch to Silver Creek estimated clear by Monday noon.
Greer Arasmus More 3rd.
The wire came at 1:00 in the afternoon Saturday.
Mr.
Wilder have read your wire.
have packed instruments.
Boarding Denver Express at 4 will require following at Denver.
Pure ether 6 ounces carbolic acid solution 5%.
Two quarts silver wire suture clean cotton sheeting.
Two assistants in clean shirts.
I will operate on a kitchen table if a kitchen table is what God has given me.
Emo MDM RCS Eden.
Hollis took the three slips of paper.
He folded them in his shirt against his ribs.
He paid Asa $50.
He went home to Miss Hedes.
He slept for three hours.
He dreamed of nothing.
By Sunday at noon, the snow stopped.
By Sunday at sundown, the rotary snow plow of the Denver and Rio Grand Railroad came up the Silver Creek branch line throwing a fan of white 60 ft into the air.
The men of the town came out to watch.
They had never seen a rotary plow.
It looked like a steam locomotive with a great round propeller on the front made of curved iron blades.
The blades spun.
Steam screamed.
Snow flew out the chute and made a long white arc against the pink evening sky.
Children stood on the boardwalk with their mouths open.
Behind the plow came the special car.
A single Pullman painted dark green lit from within by oil lamps.
Arasmus More stepped off the steps of the Pullman at 6:14 in the evening mountain time on Sunday the 22nd of December 1878.
He was 46 years old.
He had a small clip beard.
He wore round spectacles.
He carried a black leather case the size of a small.
He looked at Hollis Wilder standing on the platform with his beard full of snow and his coat under his coat and his hat in his hand.
Mobre said, “Mr.
Wilder.
” Hollis said, “Doctor.
” Mobre said, “Take me to the boy.
” They took him to the cabin in a sleigh.
The two assistants Mobre had brought from Denver, both clean shaven young men in white shirts and black coats, followed in a second sleigh with the instruments in the ether and the carbolic in the cotton sheeting.
Maragold opened the blue door.
Her hair was unbrushed.
Her apron was stre with sweat from three days at the cook stove.
She had not slept.
She had not changed clothes.
She had not eaten.
She looked at Mobre.
She did not look at Hollis.
She said, “Doctor, this way.
” She did not say thank you.
She did not say anything to Hollis at all.
Mobre went to the seti.
He bent over Wesley.
He listened with his stethoscope.
He lifted the eyelids.
He pinched the toes.
He pressed the spine.
He took the temperature.
He counted the pulse.
He straightened.
He took off his spectacles.
He polished them.
He said the fever is from a urinary infection secondary to long bed bound use.
We will treat the fever with cool water and small doses of quinine through the night.
The fever will break.
He will live.
Maragold sat down on the floor.
She sat down hard.
Mobre said, “As to the spine, I will examine him fully tomorrow when the fever is broken.
From what I see now, I believe the returning function is genuine.
I have brought my instruments.
With your permission, Miss Ericson, I will perform the decompression procedure here in this cabin in 3 days time.
Maragold said, “Yes.
” Mobre said, “You will be present.
” Maragold said, “Yes.
” Mobres said, “Mr.
Wilder will be present to assist with hot water and clean cloth, and to fetch what is needed from the sleigh.
He has done me a kindness I will repay by saving your brother’s life.
We will speak no more of payment tonight.
” Holla stood in the doorway.
He did not come in.
He held his hat against his chest.
Maragold did not turn her head to him.
Mobre began to give instructions to the assistants.
Hollis went back out to Dusty and led the brown geling back to town through the dark.
He did not stay.
She had not asked him to stay.
3 days later, Christmas Eve.
The fever broke at dawn on Tuesday.
Wesley opened his eyes at 6:00 and he saw the iron of the cook stove glowing dull red.
and he saw his sister asleep in the chair beside him with her head fallen forward and he said in a voice like dry paper, “Goldie, I am hungry.
” She woke.
She wept.
She wept for 10 minutes and then she made him broth.
Mobre came at 8.
He pronounced the boy fit for surgery.
The surgery took 4 hours.
It happened on the scrub pine table of the Ericson kitchen.
The table was draped in white cotton sheeting that had been boiled the night before.
The instruments lay on a second table in a tray.
The carbolic acid solution was sprayed in a fine mist from a small brass atomizer the assistants pumped by hand.
The ether was administered drop by drop through a wireframe mask with cotton gauze laid over Wesley’s face.
Mobre cut.
Mobre opened a small window into the spine at the lumbar.
Mobre lifted a fragment of bone the size of a fingernail clipping that had been pressing on the cord for 3 years and 4 months.
Mobre held it up in the forceps so Maragold could see it.
She nodded.
She did not cry then.
She did not have any more crying in her that morning.
Mobre closed the wound with silver wire suture.
Mobre straightened.
He took off the white apron he had brought from St.
Louis.
He washed his hands again in Carbolic.
He said, “Miss Ericson, the next three months will tell us.
Manitou Springs is 60 mi south.
The hot mineral water there, the Swedish massage.
3 months daily he will walk.
Maragold said three months in Manitu is $80 at the cliff house.
Mobre said I have already paid the cliff house through March.
She said you he said Mr.
Wilder.
She said nothing.
She put her hand on the table edge to keep from sitting down on the floor.
Outside the cabin, Hollis Wilder stood by the wood pile splitting kindling.
He had been splitting kindling for 4 hours.
He had a pile knee high.
He did not look at the door.
He swung the axe.
Woods split.
He set up another piece.
He swung the axe.
Woods split.
He did this because he did not know what else to do.
He did this because he had said he would be present.
And he was present only.
She had not asked him into the cabin, so he was present outside it the way a hired man is present.
He split the wood.
The lie had cost him the right to come inside.
He understood that.
He accepted it.
Christmas Eve evening.
Snow had stopped.
The sky over Silver Creek was the deep, clean blue of a Colorado winter dusk.
Hollis was at Miss Hedes putting on a clean shirt because Posie had asked him to come to the cabin and read her the Bible story.
Posie was sleeping at the cabin that week.
Maragold had taken Posie in without a word the morning of the fever.
The girl should not be at the boarding house alone.
Bring her to me.
That was all she had said.
Hollis had brought her.
Posie had not been told the whole of what had happened between her father and Goldie.
Posie was eight.
Posie knew only that Goldie was sad and Wesley had been sick and her father slept at Miss Hedes instead of the cabin even though there was room.
Hollis buttoned his shirt.
There was a knock at his door.
Miss Hedi.
She did not wait for him to answer.
She came in.
She had a folded paper in her hand.
She said, “Boy brought this from the telegraph office.
Came on the noon wire.
He took the paper.
He read.
He read it again.
He read it a third time.
Wilder.
Octavia Sterling Braftoft has filed petition in Denver probate court.
Recustody of minor child Posie Wilder.
Hearing set for January 7th.
Grounds.
Moral unfitness of father.
Cohabitation with Norwegian boarding housewoman of disreputable employment.
Friendly judge Whitam assigned.
Vossberg.
Holla sat down on the edge of the bed.
He held the telegram in his hand.
Miss Hedi watched him.
She said, “How bad?” He said, “They are taking my daughter.
” She said, “On what grounds?” He said, “Goldie.
” Miss Heddy sat down on the chair.
She said, “Hollas Wilder, you will tell that woman.
” He said, “I cannot tell her.
She does not want to see me.
” Miss Heddy said, “You will tell her tonight, Christmas Eve, after Posie is asleep.
You will sit in my parlor and you will tell that girl that the man who is trying to take Posie is the same man who is trying to take the Wilderland for his railroad and that the price the man is willing to pay is the use of Goldie Ericson’s name as a slur in a Denver courtroom.
You will tell her,” she stood up.
She said, “And then Hollis Wilder, you will ask her what she wants to do about it because that girl is not a victim and she is not a charity.
She is a person.
You let her decide.
” She went out.
She closed the door.
Hollis sat on the edge of the bed for a long time.
Then he finished buttoning his shirt.
He took down his coat.
He walked out into the cold.
He went to the cabin.
He read the Bible story to Posie from the Gospel of Luke.
The shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night, the angel of the Lord coming upon them, the glory of the Lord shining round about them.
Posie fell asleep with her head against his arm.
He carried her up the ladder to the loft.
He laid her in the small bed Maragold had made up with a quilt of her mother’s.
He came down the ladder.
Wesley was awake.
Wesley was sitting up against three pillows on the sati.
Wesley said, “Mr.
Wilder.
” Holla said, “Yes.
” Wesley said, “I know.
” Holla said, “What do you know?” Wesley said, “About the mine, about the land, about the train you bought, about the $1,500 for the snowplow.
” Asa Bickl told the postmaster.
And the postmaster told Mrs.
Hansen.
And Mrs.
Hansen told me when she brought the soup.
I know my sister is angry.
I know why.
I am also angry.
But I am not as angry as she is.
I had 3 days of fever and I know what you did.
I am going to tell you a thing now.
Holla sat down on the chair beside the sati.
He said, “All right.
” Wesley said, “My sister will forgive you.
” Holla said, “You do not know that.
” Wesley said, “I know my sister.
I know her better than you know her.
She forgave the man who was driving the team that killed my parents because the break was old and not his fault.
She forgave our uncle who refused to take us in after the funeral.
She forgave the bank that called our parents note.
She forgives.
It takes her time, but she forgives.
Holla said, “I do not want forgiveness if it is given because of what I did this week.
” Wesley said, “You did not do this week’s thing to earn forgiveness.
” Holla said, “No, I did it because of Maragold and because of you.
” Wesley said, “Then she will know that she is sitting in the kitchen.
She has been sitting in the kitchen since I went to sleep.
Go talk to her.
” Hollis stood up.
He stood there a moment.
Wesley said, “And Mr.
Wilder,” Hollis turned.
Wesley said, “Bring her the telegram.
” Hollis said, “How do you know about the telegram?” Wesley said, “Hetty Crowder, she brought a pie at 4:00.
She told me everything.
” Hollis almost laughed.
He walked into the small kitchen.
Maragold sat at the pine table.
She had a cup of cold tea.
She did not look up.
He set the telegram down in front of her.
He sat down across from her.
She read it.
She read it twice.
She put the paper down.
She said they want my name in the court.
He said yes.
She said as evidence against you.
He said yes.
She said as proof that you are unfit.
He said yes.
She said because of who I am.
He said, “Because of who they say you are.
” She looked up for the first time in three weeks.
She looked at his face.
She said, “What do you want me to do?” He said, “I want you to do whatever you decide is right for you.
I want you to know what is happening.
I want you not to find it out from a Denver newspaper.
I want you to be a person making her own choice.
” Goldie, you are not a victim of this.
You are not bait.
You are a witness if you choose.
You heard them at the boarding house.
You have the paper.
the judges bought.
The amount is in the wires Asa took.
There is enough here to put two men in a federal prison, but it is your choice.
She looked at him for a long time.
She said, “Mr.
Wilder.
” He said, “Yes.
” She said, “Did you love me before or after you knew I would pass?” He said, “Before.
” She said, “How long before?” He said, “The morning I watched you give Tilly a penny for her mother’s cough.
” She said, “That was the second time we met.
” He said, “Yes.
” She said, “You burned the notebook that night.
” He looked at her.
He said, “Miss Hetti.
” She said, “Miss Hetty?” “Yes, she told me 3 weeks ago, the night Octavia came to the dance.
” She said, “Goldie, the man burned a book of names the night he took you to the Frontier Hotel.
I do not know what was in the book, but I know he burned it.
Make of it what you will.
” He said nothing.
She said I have made of it nothing for 3 weeks.
I was too angry.
He said you had the right.
She said I still have the right but I am setting it down for now for this week because there is a small girl asleep upstairs who would like a mother and a brother who would like to walk and a man across the table from me who rode through a blizzard for my family and bought a railroad to do it.
She picked up the telegram.
She folded it.
She put it in her apron pocket.
She said, “I will testify.
” She said, “And after the trial, I will tell you whether I forgive you until then.
” “Mr.
Wilder, we have a great deal of work to do.
” He nodded.
He stood up.
He did not touch her.
He said, “Thank you, Goldie.
” She said, “Do not thank me yet.
Save it for after I save your daughter.
” January the 7th, Denver, Arapjo County Probate Court, the same building where Hollis had signed away half his life.
The same ceiling fan, the same rope, a different boy now pulling it, the same flat iron clerk, the same air of pipe smoke and varnish, a different table, a different judge.
Judge Wickham sat the bench.
He was 63.
He had a face like a wet cigar.
He owed Reginald Braftoft $600 in unpaid notes from a piece of land near Gley.
He had agreed to rule for Octavia Sterling Brooft, and he had agreed to do it before the noon recess.
He had a lunchon engagement.
Octavia sat at the petitioner’s table.
She wore navy silk this time, a small navy hat with a single white plume.
Mr.
Hardwick beside her, Reginal Bankraftoft in the second row with his cigar between his fingers, but unlit because the court forbade smoking before noon.
Hollis sat at the respondent’s table.
His lawyer was a man named Cornelius Bllye from Denver.
Maragold sat in the gallery in a black wool dress Miss Hedi had given her.
Her hair was up, her hands were folded.
She had a small leather pouch in her lap.
Inside the pouch, a folded sheet of paper, the kitchen crack notes, a second sheet from Asa Bickl, a third document, a signed sworn affidavit from a Pinkerton detective named Cyrus Wit, who had been hired by Hollis on the recommendation of Henrik Vossberg and who had spent 11 days in Denver verifying every claim on Maragold’s note from the boarding house kitchen.
The pouch was small.
The pouch was enough.
Judge Whitcom gabbled the room.
He said this is a hearing on the matter of the guardianship of one Posie Wilder age eight minor child of the petitioner Octavia Sterling Braftoft and the respondent Hollis Wilder.
The court has reviewed the petition.
The court is inclined to find for the petitioner on grounds of Cornelius Bllye stood up.
He said your honor.
Witcom said Mr.
Bllye.
Bllye said the respondent calls a witness.
Witcom said this is a probate hearing not a trial.
You do not call witnesses.
Bllye said, “Your honor, the witness has evidence of conspiracy to defraud the court.
” Federal offense.
Under territorial statute, the court must hear evidence of federal offense before ruling.
I direct your honor to section 19 of the territorial code.
Wickham went a small color, a small modeled color.
He said, “Very well, briefly.
” Bllye turned.
Bllye said, “The respondent calls Miss Maragold Ericson of Silver Creek, Colorado territory.
The room turned.
Octavia did not turn.
Octavia kept her face forward.
Maragold stood up.
She walked the length of the aisle in her black wool dress and her hair pinned up in a leather pouch in her right hand.
She walked the way a woman walks who has waited tables for 70 hours a week for four years.
Even pace, eyes level, no hesitation.
She climbed onto the witness chair.
She raised her right hand.
The clerk swore her in.
She lowered her hand.
She set the pouch on her lap.
Bllye said, “State your name, please.
” She said, “Maragold Astred Ericson.
” Bllye said, “Your occupation.
” She said, “I am a kitchen and dining room assistant at Miss Hetty Crowder’s boarding house in Silver Creek.
” Bllye said, “Miss Ericson, on the evening of December the 18th, 1878, did you serve dinner to two gentlemen in the private booth at Miss Crowder’s boarding house?” She said, “I did.
” Bllye said, “Who were those gentlemen?” She said, “Mr.
Regginal Braftoft and his attorney, a Mr.
Hardwick of Chicago.
Regginald’s cigar moved one inch in his fingers.
Bllye said, “Did you overhear conversation between those two men?” She said, “I did.
There is a crack in the kitchen door.
” The voices came through clean.
Bllye said, “Would you tell the court what you heard?” She said, “Yes, I will read from notes I made that night.
I have brought the notes.
” She opened the pouch.
She unfolded the paper.
She read.
She read in her clear schoolroom voice.
She read names.
She read dates.
She read the amount Judge Whitcom owed Reginald Braftoft from the Gley land deal.
$612.
38.
She read the phrase, “We take the child.
” She read the phrase, “We argue moral unfitness.
” She read the phrase, “The girl has been seen in the company of a Norwegian boarding house girl of disreputable employment.
” She read the phrase $6,000 per mile to Octavia.
The courtroom was very quiet.
Judge Wickham’s color went from modeled to gray.
Reginald Brooft set down a cigar.
Octavia stared at her gloves.
Maragold folded the paper.
She put it back in the pouch.
She took out the second paper.
She said, “This is a sworn affidavit from a Pinkerton detective named Cyrus Wit.
He has confirmed the contents of my notes by independent investigation.
He has confirmed the payment Mr.
Bankraftoft made to a clerk of this court, a Mr.
Edgar Twill in the amount of $500 to schedule this hearing before Judge Whitam.
The receipts are with him today.
He waits outside this courtroom.
She set the paper down.
She looked at Judge Whitam.
She said, “Your honor, I am not a lawyer.
I am a girl from Silver Creek, but I believe these matters are for a federal court and not for this one.
Judge Whitam said nothing.
Judge Whitam sat very still.
A senior judge of the Arapjo County District named Judge Marcus Reid had been seated in the gallery for the last 20 minutes because Hollis Wilders’s lawyer, Cornelius Bllye, had taken the precaution of inviting him.
Judge Reed stood up.
He said, “This court is in recess.
Judge Whitcom.
The baleiff will escort you to Chambers.
” The baleiff escorted Judge Whitam to Chambers.
A federal marshal who had also been quietly seated in the gallery arrested Regginal Braftoft on the courthouse steps that afternoon at 20 minutes past 3.
Octavia Sterling Braftoft was not arrested.
She was not charged, but the Denver papers were thick on the steps with notebooks open and pencils ready.
And a woman of 35 in Navy silk does not survive the front page of three Denver dailies for breakfast on January the 9th.
She lost her standing in society in a week.
She lost the case in two.
The new judge, Judge Reed himself, ruled on the 22nd of January, 1879.
Full custody of Posie Wilder to her father, Hollis Wilder.
Visitation for the mother.
Two weeks in summer, supervised.
The afternoon, Maragold stepped down from the witness chair.
She walked out of the courthouse and down the granite steps into the Denver sun, and Hollis Wilder was waiting at the bottom with his hat in his hand.
She came to the bottom step.
She stopped.
She did not come closer.
She said, “Mr.
Wilder.
” He said, “Goldie.
” She said, “I did that for Posie.
” He said, “I know.
” She said, “And for Wesley.
” He said, “I know.
” She said, “Not for you.
” He said, “I know.
” She looked at him, a long quiet look.
She said, “You may visit me in the spring at the cabin.
Bring coffee.
Bring better coffee than what Hawkins sells.
” He said, “I will.
” She said, “And Mr.
Wilder.
” He said, “Yes.
” She said, “You may court me if you wish from the beginning as Hollis Wilder of the Wilder Ranch with your true name on the door with your daughter at the supper table without any lie under any rock.
” He said, “I wish to, Goldie, I wish to with everything I have.
” She nodded once.
She walked past him into the Denver afternoon to find the train back to Silver Creek.
He watched her go.
He did not follow.
A man does not follow on the day he has been given a beginning.
He waits for the spring.
Spring came late that year.
The snow and the high passes lingered into May.
By the first Sunday of April, the cottonwood at Silver Creek had small green buds at the tips of its black branches.
By the first Sunday of May, Wesley Ericson took his first three steps with crutches Hollis Wilder had carved from black walnut in three nights of work by lamplight.
By the first Sunday of June, Wesley walked the length of the cabin with one crutch.
By the first Sunday of July, Wesley walked to the cottonwood log at the creek beside his sister with no crutch at all, only a black walnut cane and a slight lean to the left when he was tired.
Hollis courted Maragold through the spring.
He brought coffee, the good coffee, beans from a roaster in Denver that he had shipped up by rail every Friday in a brown paper sack tied with string.
He brought himself, the whole self, with the ranch and the mine and the name and the truth.
He brought Posie on weekends.
Posie learned to ride in a small girl saddle Hollis had ordered from a man in Pueblo.
And Maragold taught Posie to braid her hair the Norwegian way so it would not whip in her face when she rode.
The wedding was set for the Sunday after Easter.
The Methodist church in Silver Creek.
Reverend Matias Quill officiating.
The wedding took place in 1879 on a Sunday in late April under a sky the color of a freshwashed sheet.
Maragold wore a dress of white cotton she had sewn herself in the back room of Miss Hed’s boarding house over six weeks of evenings.
The lace at the cuffs was from her mother’s veil.
The veil was yellow with 28 years of being folded in a chest and Maragold did not whiten it.
She wore it yellow because her mother had worn it yellow.
She carried a small bouquet of yellow Colorado wild flowers Posie had picked at dawn.
Hollis Wilder trimmed his beard for the first time in six years.
Just trimmed.
did not shave.
Mountain men do not shave for women, and Maragold had told him so.
I did not fall in love with a clean shaven banker.
Do not become one on my account.
He wore a plain black three-piece suit.
He wore a gold pocket watch, the watch his father had given him at 15.
He wore it openly for the first time in three years.
Wesley walked his sister down the aisle.
He walked with the black walnut cane.
He walked with a slight lean to the left.
He walked.
Posie scattered yellow flower petals from a small basket along the aisle.
She did not skip.
She walked the way a girl walks who has been allowed to do an important thing.
Reverend Quill spoke briefly because Maragold had asked him to speak briefly.
I do not need a long sermon, Reverend.
Speak true and speak short.
He said the vows.
Holla spoke first.
His voice was rough.
He said Maragold Astred Ericson.
I crossed a continent looking for proof that a person would stay when I had nothing.
I looked in the wrong place.
You are not the proof.
You are the reason.
I take you to wife in front of God in Silver Creek and my daughter and your brother and Miss Hetty Crowder and Mr.
Eldred Halverson who is crying in the third row.
I take you.
I will not lie to you again.
Not about money, not about myself, not about anything.
So help me God.
Eldred Halverson was crying in the third row.
He was not the only one.
Maragold spoke.
She said, “Hollis Wilder, I have known you 26 weeks.
I have been angry with you for nine of them.
I expect I will be angry with you for one week of every 50 for the rest of our lives.
That is the bargain you are making today.
Do you understand?” Holla said, “I understand.
” She said, “I take you with your beard, with your land, with your daughter, with your mind, with your lies all burned.
I take you.
So help me God.
Reverend Quill said, “By the authority vested in me by the Methodist Church and by the territory of Colorado, I pronounce you husband and wife.
” Hollis bent.
He kissed her.
The church bell rang.
That night on the porch of the Welder Ranch house, 60 mi south of Silver Creek in the warm, dry April dark of a Manitou.
Holla sat in a rocking chair with Maragold beside him in a second rocker.
Wesley was inside at the kitchen table teaching Posie how to find Polaris with a sexant Mobre had sent from St.
Louis as a wedding gift.
The two of them were arguing again.
Posie said the angle was 40.
Wesley said 38.
They argued in a way that meant they would argue for the next 60 years.
Maragold leaned her head on Hollis’s shoulder.
She said, “Are you still angry with yourself?” He said, “A little every morning for about 10 minutes after I open my eyes.
” She said, “Good.
Keep that.
10 minutes a day for the rest of your life.
He said, “And then.
” She said, “And then you make coffee.
” He said, “What kind?” She said, “The good kind.
The Denver kind, not the Hawkins kind.
” He laughed.
She had made him laugh out loud now, perhaps 50 times since November.
She intended to make him laugh 10,000 times before they were done.
He took her hand in his.
He looked down at her hand, small, calloused at the base of the fingers, the thin gold band on the fourth finger.
the hand of a woman who had once carried a twist of muslin warm against her ribs because she did not own a purse.
He said, “Goldie, did you ever pick up that gold piece?” The one Carney bricks dropped in the alley.
She turned her face up to him, her blue eyes in the starlight.
She said, “I never went back to that alley.
I do not know if the coin is still there or if a boy found it or if the rain took it down the gutter.
I have not thought of it once in 7 months,” she said.
and neither should you, Mr.
Wilder.
He kissed the top of her head.
Inside the cabin, Wesley said, “38.
I will bet you a slice of pie.
” Posie said, “Done.
Two slices.
” Above the Wilder Ranch porch, the Colorado sky turned.
The Big Dipper, the North Star, Orion already gone for the season.
Mars rising small and orange over the dark line of the mountains.
A small wind moved in the pines.
It carried the smell of new grass and wood smoke and somewhere far off the sound of cattle settling for the night.
Hollis Wilder just turned 39 the week before.
Owner of the Silverstar mine.
Owner of 12,000 acres west of Manitou Springs.
Father of Posie, brother by marriage to Wesley, husband to Maragold, husband.
The word.
He turned it over in his mouth like a man tasting a coin to know its weight.
It rang true.
It rang silver, the silver under the dust.
Inside the cabin, Posie laughed at something Wesley had said.
Outside the cabin, the wind moved.
The stars wheeled.
The night went on, the way nights go on.
When a thing is finally set right,
