The Bride's House (3 page)

When she reached Georgetown, Nealie was bewildered. The depot was crowded with bearded men in muddy boots, talking and gesturing, noisy as schoolboys. Here and there stood frightened women, their hair covered by dirty squares of cotton, clutches of crying children clinging to their skirts. Those women babbled in languages Nealie didn’t understand. She saw men in tailored suits and starched shirts, soft felt hats on their heads, and she turned her face from them, because she had seen such in the gambling halls in Hannibal. And she knew to stay away from the women who were dressed in flashy clothes cut low in the front, their hair arranged in fanciful swirls. One of them looked over the girl and smiled through lips that were tinted an unnatural red, but Nealie didn’t smile back. She knew well enough about prostitutes, because her father had prophesied that if he didn’t beat the devil out of her, Nealie would become one of their sisterhood someday.

And then there was Lidie Travers. Nealie hadn’t noticed her, although the woman had seen Nealie as she climbed aboard the train in Denver, probably taken by the young woman’s odd looks. The woman had watched the girl, who looked like someone’s daughter or perhaps a bride. She saw Nealie step off the train in Georgetown and look around, lost, because until that moment, Nealie had not considered what she would do once she reached her destination. Her plan had been just to get away. The girl wondered if she could afford a room for the night, and she removed from her pocket the little string bag that served as a purse and began to count her money.

Just then, a man who’d been looking over the crowd spotted Nealie and moved toward her, all but hidden from her behind a fat woman who was shoving her way through the throng. As the man reached Nealie, his long fingers grabbed her purse, and he slid away through the disembarking passengers. Nealie was too startled to cry out, and the crook was nearly gone when a strong hand grasped his arm and wrenched it behind his back. “Thief!” Mrs. Travers called in a loud voice. “He stole this woman’s purse.” She held him, because Mrs. Travers was a strong woman; lifting iron pans and carrying trays of food had toughened her arms as much as if she’d worked with a hammer and drill. Within seconds, the purse snatcher was surrounded by a crowd of men, because even in that rough town, a robber was despised, especially one who preyed on women.

Two of the men hustled the thief off to jail, and Mrs. Travers returned the purse to Nealie. “It’s best not to be so public with your money,” she warned. “A place like this attracts the worst men there is.” Then when the girl looked alarmed, Mrs. Travers added, “The best men, too, but sometimes you can’t always tell the difference.”

Nealie thanked her. “Georgetown sounded so nice, the name and all.”

“You’re here because you like the name?”

“I was always partial to ‘George.’”

Mrs. Travers laughed. “Some are here whose reasons for it aren’t any better. You don’t have kin in Georgetown? Friends?”

Nealie shrugged, watching the woman, who was not pretty. She wasn’t even handsome and never had been. But she had a strong face.

“Are you running away?”

“I’m seventeen. I can do as I please.” Nealie wasn’t seventeen, but she would be in six months.

“Oh, don’t you worry. I’m not for sending you back if you don’t want to go. I’m just asking. Do you have a place to stay?” Before Nealie could answer, Mrs. Travers said, “I didn’t think so. Well, I’ve got a room off the kitchen. You could sleep there a night or two till you get your bearings.”

“I’ll pay,” Nealie said. “I’ve got a little money left.”

“Save it. But if you’re of a mind to, you might help me cook supper.”

“For your family?”

“I run a boardinghouse.” She looked Nealie up and down. “I don’t suppose you came here to cook for a bunch of miners, but if it suits, I could give you room and board and something besides. You could help me until you figure out why it is you’re here.” It was doubtful that until that moment, Mrs. Travers had ever considered hiring a girl, but Nealie appeared strong and good-natured, and Mrs. Travers was a capable judge of character. She was practical, as well, and undoubtedly, she knew that a young girl waiting on the table would attract business. It was possible that Mrs. Travers also believed the girl might be good company for her. The woman was a widow with no children, and Georgetown was a lonely place, with few females and those who were there too overworked to sit down for a chat.

Lydia Travers had come to Georgetown five years before, after her husband died, the brute. She’d run a boardinghouse in Kansas City, not just an eatery like the Georgetown boardinghouses, but a place that provided beds as well as meals. She’d run it with Lute Travers, worked her fingers to the bone, while he drank up the profits and fisted her, to boot. She was not yet forty, but she looked ten, fifteen years older, thanks to the poundings Lute gave her. Then he died, passed out in the street and drowned with his face in the mud, and Mrs. Travers sold the boardinghouse and moved to Georgetown, vowing she’d never take another husband.

Nealie thought over the proposition for so long that Mrs. Travers said, “Well, come and stay anyway. You don’t want to get mixed up with the likes of her, a sorry girl, if you take my meaning.” Mrs. Travers nodded her head at the woman in the fancy dress who’d smiled at Nealie.

“I know about such,” Nealie said. She added quickly so that Mrs. Travers wouldn’t think she was acquainted with them, “Their kind was at home. And I’d be obliged to accept your offer, missus.”

“Travers, Mrs. Lidie Travers,” the woman introduced herself. By then, the crowd had thinned out. Mrs. Travers picked up her bags and looked around for Nealie’s luggage.

“Oh, I don’t have anything but my extra dress, and I’m wearing it under this one,” the girl explained. “If Pa had seen me leaving with a box, he’d have tied me up in the barn and switched me good.”

“How did you think you’d manage without so much as an extra handkerchief?” Mrs. Travers asked.

Nealie laughed at the idea. “I never had even one handkerchief, so I guess I can get along just fine without an extra. I didn’t think about packing, not that it would have made a difference. I never had much. I had to get away is all, just had to.”

The girl was so fierce that it was obvious she carried some secret. Perhaps she’d been beaten, or even worse. But Mrs. Travers only nodded and didn’t ask questions, because she had never been one to pry into what wasn’t her business. Perhaps she thought that in time, the girl would tell her where she’d come from and why, but until then, Nealie’s past was hers to keep.

Without a word, Nealie took one of Mrs. Travers’s bags from her, and the two walked out of the station into sunlight bright enough to hurt Nealie’s eyes. The sun warmed her back, and the air was so thin and dry that Nealie felt as light as a blade of grass. Sounds of hammering swept down from the mountains, and the distant boom of a dynamite charge made the girl jump. A fog of smoke from the smelters hung over the town, but that did not bother Nealie, because it brought only a little haze. She liked the bustle, the sense of importance.

And now, just two months after her arrival, Nealie felt more at home in Georgetown than she ever had on her parents’ farm.

CHAPTER 2

“W
HAT DID YOU THINK OF
him?” Mrs. Travers asked after the boarders were gone and the two women were in the kitchen, cleaning up the supper mess.

Nealie didn’t answer. She lifted the cast-iron kettle off the cookstove and filled the dishpan with hot water, tested it with her elbow, set the kettle back on the stove. She picked up one of the chunks of soap that the two of them had made from lye and bacon grease just the week before and made a lather. Then she filled the pan with heavy white cups and saucers and began scrubbing them with a dishrag.

“Well?” Mrs. Travers asked. She was used to the girl ignoring questions she didn’t want to answer.

“Who?” Nealie asked.

“The new boarder. Mr. Spaulding.”

“Oh, him. I barely noticed.” In fact, Nealie had almost dropped the pot of stew she was carrying into the dining room when she saw Will Spaulding. Since she’d spotted him in the Kaiser Mercantile a few days earlier, she’d looked for him in town and had finally given up, thinking he was only passing through. Her heart had beat so fast at the sight of him sitting at the supper table that she’d thought the others could hear it.

“Like Hades!” Mrs. Travers said. “I saw you looking at him out of the side of your eyes like you do when you think nobody can tell. He’s a looker, pretty as a new-laid egg. I’ll grant you that.”

“He is,” Nealie admitted.

“And he seems plenty taken with you.” Mrs. Travers, sitting on a kitchen chair, finished scraping off the plates into the scrap bucket, and stood up, her hands on her waist, stretching her back to get out the kinks.

“He didn’t pay the slightest attention to me,” Nealie said.

“Oh, he didn’t, did he? And I wasn’t the only one who saw it. I don’t suppose you noticed Charlie Dumas stomping off the minute he finished his pie? I believe Charlie’s jealous.”

“He has no right to be,” Nealie replied, slamming a cup down so hard on the drainboard that it chipped. Nealie looked at Mrs. Travers, who shrugged. Most of the dishes were chipped or cracked. “I’m not his girl any more than you are, and I’m plain sick of the way he’s around all the time, acting like he’s entitled. He makes me tired.”

“Now, don’t you go chasing him away, Nealie. He pays his board on time and never a complaint about the food. He’s a sticker, too, steady as any man I ever met.” Picking up a dish towel, Mrs. Travers began drying the cups. “Here’s a warning to you: Don’t get to thinking too much about Mr. Spaulding. He’s awful fine-haired for us. I’m surprised he boards here instead of the Grubstake with the rest of the highborn. You don’t suppose he came here because he saw you someplace in town and followed you, do you?” When Nealie didn’t answer, Mrs. Travers added, “No, I didn’t think so.”

“Nobody follows me except Mr. Dumas. He’s generally always around, it seems.” Nealie went to the back door and threw the dirty dishwater onto the flower bed, then put the pan back into the dry sink and filled it again with hot water from the kettle. She dropped handfuls of silverware into the pan, scrubbed the forks and knives and spoons with a brush, and laid them on the drainboard.

The two worked silently until the dishes and utensils, the heavy pots and cast-iron pans, were dried and put away. Then Nealie took the bucket of scraps outside and threw them into the pig trough. The pig was penned in the far side of the yard, and Mrs. Travers had laid narrow boards across the mud as a sidewalk so the two women wouldn’t get their boots dirty. Nealie watched the pig waddle to the trough and take huge bites of the garbage, reminding her of the way some of the men in the boardinghouse ate—Charlie Dumas, for one. As she balanced herself on the board, she caught sight of Will Spaulding leaning against the fence and stared at him in astonishment. She felt the blood rise to her face. Blushing easily was a burden she carried.

“Hello there, Miss Bent. It is Miss Bent, isn’t it?” He removed his hat. “Mrs. Travers introduced you only by your first name, so I’m not sure.”

“It is.” Nealie was pleased that he knew her name and that he called her Miss Bent instead of Miss Nealie. It sounded refined.

“You hardly looked at me at dinner, and I was afraid you were angry that I’ve added to your burden. If that’s the case, I hope to make it up to you, for I’ve never liked to cause unpleasantness. So I waited here, thinking you might come out. I’m new in town and don’t have many friends yet. I’d like to consider you one.”

It was the prettiest speech that Nealie had ever heard, and she was so taken with it that she couldn’t think how to reply. So she stood mute, teetering on the board, the slop bucket gripped in her hand.

As if muteness were the proper answer, Will continued. “I’m told there is a drilling contest being held on Sunday afternoon, and I wonder if you would give me the pleasure of escorting you to it.”

Nealie only stared.

“I’m being awfully forward, but Georgetown doesn’t seem like a place where conventions matter much. In the East, you’d meet a girl at church and get to know her parents and then after a month or two, you’d ask to walk her home. That’s such a bore. Georgetown isn’t half so stiff. It’s one of the things I like about the place—the lack of conventions.” He stood up straight and put his hands on the top rail of the fence, and when Nealie didn’t respond, he said, “I apologize if I’ve given offense. Perhaps you’re spoken for.”

“No. There’s nobody I care about,” Nealie replied. If she had been worldly, Nealie might have flirted a little, dropped a hint that she had many suitors, turned down Will’s first invitation while suggesting he might ask her out another time, made the man anxious. But she had none of those wiles. So tightening her grip on the bail handle of the bucket, she said, “You bet I’ll go. I mean, I’d be pleased to accept, Mr. Spaulding.” She wished her reply could have matched his fine words.

“It will be
my
pleasure,” he said. “I’ll say good evening then and see you at breakfast in the morning.”

Nealie watched him place his hat on his head, turn gracefully, and disappear into the night.

“Oh, good evening yourself,” she called, not sure he heard her. She stared into the darkness for a long time. When she turned to go back into the house, she found Mrs. Travers at the door, watching.