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“Thank you.” Sarah pushed a lock of hair out of her face with the back of her arm. “It’s so wonderful to be able to do laundry in the fresh air this morning.” She smiled at Olivia as she took the steaming kettle from Margaret. “I would imagine it was hard for you and your uncle to keep up with chores like this along the trail.”
“We didn’t take time for anything,” Olivia answered, swishing a pair of socks in her tub. “Uncle Nate said we had to keep up with the bull train.”
Sarah turned the heavy skirt in the water and tackled another muddy stain. Her thoughts wandered to Nate Colby. Again. Was he having any success with his wagon? Would he be able to get the axle fixed? He’d have to take it into Deadwood to find someone to repair it.
“Did Uncle James say when he was going to show us the building he rented?” she asked Margaret.
Her aunt looked toward the roofs of the mining camp below them. “He said we would go this afternoon although I can’t see why we need a building down there.”
“Because that’s where the people are. And the academy needs to have a place, unless you want the children studying in the cabin.”
And with the church and school in the center of the mining camp, she would have ready access to the unfortunate young ladies she intended to find and educate.
Sarah looked up at the towering pine trees that climbed the steep hill behind the cabin. On those Sunday afternoons last winter in Dr. Amelia Bennett’s crowded parlor on Beacon Hill, she had never imagined the fire that had been lit in her would bring her to such a place as this.
Dr. Bennett was a pioneer. A visionary. Her plans for educating the women of the docks and brothels of Boston were becoming reality in the opening of her Women’s Educational Institution, and Dr. Bennett had urged Sarah to spread the work to the untamed wilderness of the American West, as she had called it. Sarah intended to make her mentor proud.
A sniff was Margaret’s only reply as she went back into the house. Lucy stopped playing with the pinecones she had found and stared after her.
Olivia wiped an arm across her forehead. “Is she always so...”
“Disapproving?” Sarah finished Olivia’s question. She wrung the water out of her skirt. “My aunt didn’t want to come out West. She’s trying to make the best of things, but it is hard for her to adjust to this life.”
“Why did she come, then? Why didn’t she stay at home?”
Sarah looked from Olivia’s earnest face to Lucy’s wide eyes. Why did any of them leave their homes? “My uncle said God was calling him to preach to the gold seekers.” She put one of her uncle’s shirts into the warm water. “Aunt Margaret came because he asked her to.”
“Why did you come?”
Olivia’s question struck deep. Sarah moved the shirt through the gray water and smiled at the girl. “I wanted adventure, and I wanted a purpose in my life. When Uncle James wrote that there were families here with children, I knew what this town would need is a school.” A great center of learning, for young and old. That was how Dr. Bennett phrased it.
“Can I go to your school?”
“May I...”
“May I go to your school?”
Sarah thought back to her conversation with Nate. Olivia would be such a charming pupil in the academy, one she would love to share the knowledge of the world with, but could she promise such a thing if the girl’s uncle was opposed to it?
“We’ll have to see what your uncle says.” Olivia’s face showed her disappointment as she went back to her scrubbing. “But even if you can’t come, I’ll certainly share my books with you and help you learn.”
“Would you, really?” Olivia’s face shone as if the sun had come clear of a swift cloud. “And will you help me teach Lucy to read?”
Sarah glanced at the five-year-old, who had gone back to her pinecones. It looked as if she was building a house with them. She leaned closer to Olivia. “I’ve never heard your sister say anything. Does she talk?”
Olivia shook her head. “She used to. Before Mama and Papa...” She bit her lip, and Sarah put an arm around her narrow shoulders.
“She hasn’t spoken since you lost your parents?”
At the shake of Olivia’s head, Sarah pulled the girl into a closer embrace. There had been a boy at the orphanage who had never spoken, from the time he came to live there until he passed away a few months later. The matron had said he died of a broken heart, but Sarah had known better. He had died because he couldn’t face life with no hope and no family.
She watched Lucy put the pinecones in lines, framing the rooms of her house. She put rocks into the spaces for furniture and used small pinecones for people that she walked in and out of the doors.
She could learn to speak again. Surely her life wasn’t as hopeless as the boy at the orphanage. Lucy was still surrounded by family, and she was healthy. Surely with love and nurturing she had hope for a normal, happy life. Resolve to assist these children filled her heart.
“I’ll help you teach Lucy to read, and we’ll make sure Charley works on his studies, too.”
Sarah held tight as Olivia’s arms squeezed around her waist. Had she just made a rash promise she couldn’t keep?
* * *
By the time Nate found a wheelwright who could make a new axle, noon had passed. He fingered the coins in his pocket.
“Is there any place to buy something to eat?” he asked the wheelwright.
“The Shoo Fly Café has good pie.” The burly man gestured with his head up Main Street.
“What about a grocer’s?”
“The closest is Hung Cho’s, right across the way there.”
“Thank you. We’ll be back to pick the axle up around midafternoon.”
Nate guided Charley across the muddy street with one hand on the boy’s shoulder, making sure he stepped wide over the gutter in the middle. Hung Cho’s was a solid wood building with a laundry on one side and what looked like a hotel on the other. Some of the signs were in English, but most had what Nate guessed were Chinese characters.
Charley stared at the short, round Chinese man who approached them as Nate sorted through the wares on the tables outside the store.
“Yes, yes, sir.” The man bowed slightly. “You want some good food for your boy, yes? Hung Cho carries only the best. Only the best for our friends.”
Nate glanced at the man. He had run across men from China before, but Charley hadn’t. Hung Cho’s smile seemed genuine, his expression friendly.
He fingered the coins in his pocket again and looked at the items on the table. He recognized some apples, dry and wrinkled from being stored all winter, but apples nonetheless.
“How much for one of these?”
“Oh, these apples. They are very fine. Make a boy very healthy, yes? Only one dollar.”
“I only want to buy one, not all of them.”
“Yes, yes. I understand.” Hung Cho’s head bobbed as he nodded. “Apples are very dear. One dollar.”
Nate pulled out a dollar coin, along with a two-bit piece. “I’ll take one. Do you have any crackers, and maybe some cheese?”
Hung Cho leaned forward to peer at the coins in his hand, and then slid his look up to Nate’s face. His smile grew wider. “You have coin money, not gold? You are new in Deadwood.”
At Nate’s nod, Hung Cho reached under the table and brought out two apples in much better shape than the ones he had on display. “For cash money, I give you two apples, one pound crackers and cheese. Nice cheese, from back East.”
They followed the little man into the dim interior of his store. The odor of dried fish in one barrel overpowered the close room. Hung Cho squeezed between it and another barrel filled with rice. He scooped crackers out of a third barrel and weighed them in a hanging scale, then sliced a generous wedge of cheese from a wheel behind the counter. He wrapped it all in a clean cloth and handed the bundle to Charley.
“One dollar and two bits, please.”
“Why the change in price?”
“Cash money is hard to come by. Bull train drivers want cash from the Chinese instead of gold.” The man’s smile disappeared as he shook his head. “They do not trust the Chinese. Will not accept gold dust from us for fear it is not pure.”
Nate handed over the coins in his hand.
Hung Cho bowed as he slipped the money into some folds in his robe. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.”
They left the store and then turned right, toward the center of the mining camp. As they crossed an alley and stepped back up on the boardwalk in front of a row of businesses, Charley tilted his head up to look at him. “Where are we going to eat, Uncle Nate?”
They were passing an empty space between two canvas tents. A couple barrels stood close to the boardwalk. “How about right here?”
They settled themselves on the barrels and divided the food between them. Charley shoved the crackers into his mouth two at a time.
“Whoa there, boy. Those crackers won’t disappear. Take your time.”
Charley grinned at him and Nate took a bite of his apple as he settled in to watch the traffic on Main Street.
Two doors down was a saloon, and beyond that were signs for several more. Across the street, a large building had a sign, The Mystic Theater, but from the look of the young women leaning over the rail of the balcony, much more than theatrical entertainment was available there. James MacFarland had been right about the saloon girls—they seemed to be everywhere. This must be the Badlands of Deadwood he had heard the bullwhackers mention.
Nate took another bite of his apple and looked closely at the women on the balcony. The youngest seemed to be no more than sixteen, while a couple of them wore the bored look of years of experience in their business. The apple turned sour in his mouth. He swallowed that bite and then offered the rest to Charley.
Mattie, if she was still alive, would be the age of those older women. Did her face bear that same expression? She would be thirty-two years old by now, and it had been almost fourteen years since she had disappeared.
He watched the two women, their mouths red slashes against their pale, white faces. The dresses they wore had been brightly colored at one time, but now looked sadly faded next to the younger girls, like roses that clung to a few blown and sun-bleached petals.
He hoped that Mattie had found her way out of that life.
He sighed and took a cracker. Turned it in his hands. The last time he had searched for his sister and come home again with no news, Andrew had told him to give it up. If she wanted to come home, she’d find her way.
But Andrew didn’t live with the memory of her face the night he told her he was running away to join the army. The hard, crystalline planes that shut him out.
“You’ll kill Ma and Pa,” she had whispered as she tried to wrest his bundle of clothes from him. “And then what will I do?”
He had turned from her, bent on following Andrew, but she had been right. By the time he had come home after the war was over, Ma and Pa were dead, and Mattie was gone.
He looked back up at the balcony of the Mystic. He’d never give up looking, hoping that someday he’d find her before... The cracker snapped between his fingers. He refused to listen to that voice inside that kept telling him it was too late.
When Charley finished his lunch, Nate wrapped up the rest of the crackers and cheese.
“Let’s go see what the town looks like.”
The street was crowded with men all going nowhere in particular and Nate pulled Charley closer to his side. Between the coarse language and the open bottles of liquor, he knew this wasn’t a place Andrew and Jenny would want their son to be. But this was where they were.
The businesses crowded together between the hills rising behind them and the narrow mudhole that passed for a street. Nate slowed his pace as the storefronts turned from the saloons to a printing office. Next came a general store and a clothing store, with a tobacconist wedged in between. Across the street was Star and Bullock, a large hardware store that filled almost an entire block.
And in the middle of it all, just where the street took a steep slope up to a higher level on the hill, men worked a mining claim. Nate shook his head. In all his travels through the West, he had never seen anything quite like Deadwood.
“Look, Uncle Nate. There’s Miss Sarah!”
Charley ran ahead to where the MacFarlands stood at the end of the block. Nate halted, watching Sarah’s face as she greeted the boy. She looked truly happy to see him. From what he had seen, busybodies from schools and orphanages never seemed to like the children they claimed to care so much about.
She didn’t fit the mold. She didn’t fit any mold.
Charley pointed his way and she looked for him. Another smile. The crowded streets seemed to fall silent, and Nate saw several of the men on the boardwalk look in her direction. He hurried to catch up with Charley.
“Miss MacFarland.” He found himself smiling, and he turned to the elder MacFarlands. “Mrs. MacFarland. James.” Lucy reached for him and he lifted her into his arms.
Sarah’s wide skirts swung as she turned toward him. “Was your errand a success?”
“The broken axle is being repaired as we speak.”
“We were just on our way to see the new storefront Uncle James rented. Would you and Charley like to come along?”
“Say yes, Uncle Nate. Please?” Charley clung to his free hand, while Olivia hopped up and down. He couldn’t say no to them.
“We’ll be pleased to accompany you.”
They all followed James as he turned down a side street and led the way toward a boarded-up saloon. Nate let Sarah go ahead of him, Charley and Olivia each holding on to one of her hands, while he followed with Lucy. Anyone watching would think they were a family.
Nate let that idea sift through until it soured his stomach. A family? He hugged Lucy close as he carried her. These children were all the family he needed, and he didn’t deserve even this.
* * *
When they reached the building on Lee Street, a few doors from the corner at Main, Sarah took Lucy’s and Olivia’s hands while Nate and Uncle James pulled the slats from the boarded-up door. Once there was an opening, Uncle James led them in.
“This is a church?” Olivia let go of Sarah’s hand and stepped farther into the room. “It looks like a saloon.”
Uncle James cleared his throat as Margaret followed Olivia to the bar that extended from one end of the room to the other. “The latest tenants ran a drinking establishment, and it needs work.”
Aunt Margaret stared at him. “You said you had found a storefront.”
Lucy tightened her grasp on Sarah’s other hand at the ice in Margaret’s voice. Sarah gave her small hand a reassuring squeeze. “It does need a lot of work, but I can see the possibilities.” She led Lucy to the center of the room to get a feeling for the size of the space. “If that bar is removed...”
“And that hideous mirror behind it.” Aunt Margaret waved her hand in the direction of the gold-flecked monstrosity on the wall. A narrow hole in the center radiated spiderweb cracks in all directions.
“There will be room enough for whoever comes to worship.” Sarah glanced around the room again. A piano listed to the side in one corner. Perhaps there would be someone in town who knew how to repair it.
She glanced back at Nate, standing in the doorway. He was removing nails from the wood slats, one by one. He didn’t seem to want to come any farther into the dusty building.
Margaret sniffed as she ran one finger along the top of the bar and inspected her glove.
“You need to see this place as I do, dear.” Uncle James crossed the room to his wife and pulled both of her hands into his own. “With some effort, we can redeem this place for the Lord’s work.” He turned to look around the room. Sarah had to smile at the grin on his face. Uncle James was a hopeless optimist.
No, not hopeless. He had confidence in the Lord’s leading.
“What I see is a den of iniquity.” Margaret’s voice softened. “But if anyone can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, it’s you, James MacFarland.”
