The Belle of Eerie, Arizona - Chapter 3, Part 2

Posted 09-07-19 

Revised 10-07-19 

By Christopher Leeson

Chapter 3, Part 2 


Wednesday, December 20, 1871, Continued

“If you just help us with the square dance,” suggested Kayley, “Dale and I will be able to teach Myra the simpler dances.”

“I guess I can lend a helping hand,” George conceded. “But if this foolery runs on for too long, I'll be needing to come back to finish the work later on.”

“You won't get paid for anything you don't do,” Miss Olcott reminded him.

“Well,” he smiled, “if Miss Myra is so determined that I should be dancing with her, I'd be right honored.”

“That's perfect!” beamed Dale. “George, let me wear your hat.”

“What for?” he asked.

“So Myra can tell who the men are while we're dancing or else she'll get confused.”

“I can be one of the men,” offered Myra.

“Don't be silly,” Dale replied. “You hardly have enough time to learn how a girl dances.”

“Let's get on with this, so George can head back to his chores,” the ginger said with a moue.

“Well, Myra,” Dale said, “if you know any square dancing at all, you'll know that two people start out side by side and end up together, too. In between, though, they're dancing with everybody.”

“I wish we had a caller,” remarked Kayley.

“I know a couple dancing songs!” said Dale. “I just hope I can both dance and sing at the same time! Come on, choose your partners.”

Miss Severin stepped up to take Myra's hand, leaving George and Kayley to form the second pair. The two couples took positions facing one another.

“All right then,” Dale continued. “Kayley and George, you start things out with the Salute.”

Kayle put her right foot forward and turned to face George. Then, after giving him a curtsy, she straightened up and turned toward Dale, who was representing a gentleman. She gave “him” a curtsy, too.

“Nice,” said Dale. “Show it to Myra again, but don't move so quickly this time.”

Kayley did as asked and this time Dale gave a satisfied nod. “Now you try it, Myra,” the latter coaxed. Myra moved up uncertainly. “Do just what Kayley did,” Dale told her. “Face me, curtsy, then turn and curtsy to George.

This maneuver was easier said than done. “Oh, come on, Myra, that's not a curtsy,” teased the butterscotch. “That's more like a dip.”

Myra's next curtsy passed muster. But Dale's instructions kept coming. “Left foot back, straighten up, turn to George. Good! Right foot forward. Curtsy again.”

After Myra performed, the gentlemen did their moves. She watched the regimented motions, but it was hard for a novice to follow them.

Dale called for the next maneuver, which was called the “Right and Left.” When the sequence was through, it was followed by the “Balance.” Next came the “Ladies' Chain.” The ladies, which included Myra, were directed to cross from opposite sides and touch their right hands in passing. The gentlemen did the same. The finishing steps brought the original pairs back together again. After that, the “Balance” move had to be repeated.

All these actions taken together were called the “First Figure.” But the First Figure was followed by a Second, Third, Fourth, and a Fifth, each a bit different. It was enough to make a man, or a woman, dizzy. By the time the young people had worked their way through all the mandated figures, Myra was wishing that she'd was anywhere else, doing anything else.

Without calling for a rest, Dale put them all through a second set of five. Following that, they felt like refreshing themselves with water from the kitchen jug. Without allowing too much dallying, Dale put them through the whole routine again, but without so much verbal instruction. They pretty soon fell into a jumble of bodies and Myra cursed her own clumsy feet. The jam up had been mostly her fault.

“We'd better do it over,” Dale suggested. She started a rhythmic song to keep everybody in step. 

'Oh, Dem Golden Slippers! Oh, Dem Golden Slippers!'

'Golden slippers I'se gwine to wear be-kase they look so neat.'

'Oh, Dem Golden Slippers! Oh, Dem Golden Slippers!'

'Golden slippers I'se gwine to wear, to walk de golden street!”' 

By the time all five movements were wrapped up, even the usually lively Kayley was panting. Breathless, she told Myra, “You'll be fine. After two or three dances, no boy on the floor will be able to keep up with you.”

“I can hardly wait,” said the glum hostess.

“Can I go now and do something that won't wear me out so much?” asked George of his sister.

“Oh, no,” Dale said. “The lesson won't stick with Myra unless we work through the whole thing a couple more times.”

“Ay yi yi! Where do you girls get your energy from?” he asked with an exaggerated sigh.

“Lazy bones!” the younger Severin accused. “How are you going to build up your own farm from nothing if you can't hold your wind better?”

“I haven't decided to be a farmer yet,” he said. “I've been thinking about going to sea. At least it'ld take me out to where those island girls are.”

“Go to sea?” Dale exclaimed. “You've never set eyes on an ocean in all your born days!”

“Yes,” added Kayley, “and I bet those island gals aren't half as pretty in real life as they look in the drawings. There must be prettier young ladies right here in Eerie!”

“You may have a point,” agreed George. “Some of the girls around town would be awfully hard to beat.”

“Are you talking about those potion girls?” asked Kayley. “They make me nervous. Don't they seem spooky to you?”

“I haven't had a conversation with any of them, except a few words with Trisha at the feed store,” he said. “Myra, do you think that them potion girls are spooky?”

“'Potion girls' again! I'm going to have to ask Aunt Irene what in tarnation you're talking about.”

“I'd be glad to fill you in, once we get this dancing over with,” offered George.

That reminded everyone of the matter at hand, and within a minute they were all back at practice.

By the time that the square dancing was finally wrapped up, the four of them felt as tired as bull-riders. Dale, especially, was left hoarse and breathless from having sung about all those golden slippers.

#

The young people took refreshment with some milk and canned apples. George, afterwards, went out to work, but Kayley and Dale remained very animated, chattering about what other dances they should teach Myra. The latter wasn't eager for more, but tried not to show it. As far as the farm girl could see, the only passable thing about dancing was that it allowed a man put his hands on a fetching gal without everybody in the room making a fuss about the propriety of it.

“Myra,” said Dale, “we're still hoping to see that party dress of yours. It must really be something. George couldn't stop complimenting it. Normally, he laughs at the best dresses that Kayley or I show him.”

“Don't worry about George laughing,” Miss Olcott said. “He enjoys making a person fly off the handle. He's does that with me all the time.”

“Maybe,” Dale allowed.

“Did you have a lot of good dresses before they got lost in the stream?” asked Kayley.

“Oh, I had some,” Myra said dismissively. “But I don't know why people always go on about clothing. What the Sam Hill difference does it make what you have on, as long as you're decent?”

“You surprise me, Myra,” said Kayley. “To hear folks tell it, all that Eastern women and girls want to talk about is clothing.”

“All the silly women and girls, you mean,” replied Myra. “Good clothes are deucedly expensive. There are better things to be talking about, or to spend money on.”

“Like what?” asked Dale.

“Like good meals, maybe.”

“Restaurants? But would you want to go into a restaurant if you weren't dressed your best?”

Myra shook her head. “You can't always live your life worrying about what other people think. If somebody's going to like you or dislike you, it won't be because of the clothes you have on.”

“I'd still like to see your party dress?” importuned Kayley.

“I can't show you now,” Myra said. “Aunt Irene took it over to that Mexican woman in town. She's supposed to be pretty good with the needle. It needs to be fitted before Saturday night.”

“That's too bad,” said Dale. “We came on the wrong day.”

“Myra?” spoke up Kayley.

“What?”

“A little while ago, you talked like you didn't know what a potion girl is.”

“No, I don't. Why should I?”

“A body can't live around here for very long without finding out about the potion girls.”

“Kayley,” broke in Dale. “I think we should leave it to Mrs. Fanning to explain something as important as that to Myra.”

“Sure, that's fine with me,” agreed Miss Olcott, not wanting to go into the subject.

“But Irene hasn't told her anything about it yet, or else Myra would already know,” pressed the Grimsley girl. “And if Myra finds it out all by herself, she might be afraid, or even have nightmares.”

Myra threw up her hands. “Whatever it is, it sounds unpleasant, and I don't want us to be talking about unpleasant things. If the subject is so all-fired important, I'll make Aunt Irene tell me about it tonight.”

“That may be the best way to go,” affirmed Dale. “Just remember, Myra, even though it might sound awful, it really doesn't change the way that people live around here. It's mostly just a sad story when you think about it.”

“Wouldn't a hanging be even sadder?” asked Kayley.

“Yes, I suppose it would. But it wouldn't be any stranger.”

After that, Dale urged them back to the lessons. Fortunately, none of these other dances were as difficult as square dancing. There was the polka, the waltz, the Virginia reel, something that Dale pronounced as the “quadrilly,” and a dance that was like a slow polka. Even though it came from Germany, it was called a “Scottish dance.” Myra supposed that the Germans misnamed it because they didn't want to get the blame.

Before too long, Irene's buckboard was heard rattling on the carriage road. Before Mrs. Fanning appeared on the threshold, the other two girls already were gathering up their things. Irene greeted her young neighbors, but they were running late and couldn't chat for very long.

“Those are nice girls,” she told Myra after Dale and Kayley had gone outside, “but they always seem to be in a hurry. What did the three of you talk about?”

“Do I have to tell you everything that I do and say?”

Irene regarded her niece with heightened interest. “Is there something about their visit that you'd rather not talk about?”

Myra knew that she couldn't hold back anything that her aunt really wanted to know. “They wanted to show me how to dance, in case I went to the Christmas shindig.”

“That's very nice of them. How it it go?”

“Dancing is simple. But it's a waste of time, if you ask me.”

Without replying to that particular notion, Irene went to open the bindle from town that she had placed on the table. While her back was turned, Myra shoved the box of her mother's letters farther under Irene's bed, using her heel.

“Carmen will need more time to finish my dress,” Irene reported, not looking Myra's way. “She said that she should have it ready by tomorrow afternoon. If we find any problem with the fitting of your dress, I can take both you and it over to her home for finishing adjustments.”

Her aunt then drew the yellow party dress out of the bundle and held it up. “I want you to try this on again in the morning light so we can check the fit. By the way, did you get much work done before the girls came by?”

“The morning work, sure. But they came in early enough to kill the whole rest of the day.”

“That's fine,” her elder replied. “It's a good idea to start introducing yourself to people. If neighbors drop by, you should do your best to make them feel welcome. Just don't use visiting as an excuse to be neglecting necessary work whenever you feel like it.”

“They wore me out with all that prancing around. I think that chores would have been a lot easier on my feet.”

“That's a good attitude. But now it's time to be milking the cows again. It's best to get that out of the way; the light will be failing before you know it.”

Myra drew on her chore coat and went outdoors, happy enough to stop talking about the visit.

George was still out by the pen, but was packing up. She could see right off that he hadn't finished the whole job. “You ain't done yet?” she asked.

“That was a lot of time we lost dancing. Don't worry, I'll get it all finished before Christmas. By the way, did the girls show you how to waltz and reel?”

“What's it to you?”

He didn't break eye contact. “I think you have a knack for dancing. I can stay around for a little longer, if you're hankering to show off what you learned today. Oh, dem golden slippers...” he began to sing.

“If I had any hankers, they wouldn't concern you, Mr. Severin. Now stand aside; I've got a mess of work left to do. Around here, we can't get away with keeping a casual schedule, like you seem to do.”

“Okay, then. I'll be back here before too long,” he said, stepping out of her way, “maybe even tomorrow. I'm not sure yet.”

“Well, don't make any snap decision just on my account,” she advised. 

# 

Thursday, December 21, 1871 

The next morning, Irene carefully examined Myra's dress while her niece modeled it. There were a small number of imperfections, but these were little details that she could confidently adjust herself.

From that point on, the twenty-first of December turned into a busy day. Myra did the usual morning chores while Irene got the yellow dress ready for Saturday's party. After finishing the stitching, there was more party food to make. Every woman, except Myra, perhaps, felt duty-bound to contribute her honest share to the festivities. To the girl, it looked like there would be good eating ahead. That was something she could look forward to. Myron had gone to Christmas parties a couple times before, in the company of Lydon Kelsey. The lads had chucked down plenty of food each time but, unfortunately, boys so young weren't allowed to share in the beer, wine, and whiskey. Irene was against drinking, too, but Myron had managed to get drunk a few times on the sly, before heading out of Eerie on his own.

Thinking about Myron's break for freedom couldn't help but bring back memories of her outlaw days.

Myron had experienced some good times and some bad times along the roads. The best of the good days had been the rare moments when he could get his hands on a glass of decent liquor. On the bad days he wasn't only lacking beer, but everything else, with scarcely a bite to eat. At times like those, he got to thinking that there had to be a less painful way to die. But as empty and unprofitable as the wandering had been, it had turned out to be a terrible mistake to come home – even if he had only done so to rob the stage.

Irene, meanwhile, kept herself busy making pies, cakes, and biscuits. But after lunch, she had to break it off so as to go and pick up her own dress at the Diaz house. She told Myra to keep a watch on the baking and to make sure that nothing burned. With that admonishment, she had dressed and gone off on her errand.

It infuriated Myra to be left doing a woman's work again. It wasn't that she disliked good food, but the business of turning flour, lard, and sugar into something edible seemed like undignified labor. Sure, there were plenty of men who cooked, too, but Myra didn't think much for their ilk. She much preferred eating the victuals, not rustling them up.

Deep down, the girl had the feeling that a warm bed and good grub were never enough. There was no freedom in living here, no way to cut loose and behave like herself. But what was the alternative? Could she really endure being homeless, cold, and hungry again? Sometimes, when passing by a fort, Myron had be tempted to ride through the gate and sign up, just so he'd have a claim to two or three meals each day and a roof over his head. The trouble was that federal soldiers only cleared about $15 per month. That was worse than a cowpoke's wages, which stood at around $25.

True, the government provided grub and a bed, but the soldier's life was bad in every way. The officers and sergeants were mostly bastards who liked to remind the enlistees that they were hardly better than slaves. They thought of their men's lives like other people thought of firewood – something to burn up. During the war, they hadn't been ashamed to ordered drafted recruits to charge against emplacements defended by grapeshot batteries. Soldiers who shied away from the guns were called cowards, put up against a wall and shot. The army had even executed bone-weary soldiers just for falling asleep, too.

One thing that Myron absolutely couldn't stand was being pushed around and taken for granted. So, when a fort was near, he had never felt quite desperate enough to ask for enlistment papers. But by remaining a civilian, he was only avoiding one kind of hell and running square into another. Drifting from one dirt-poor countryside to another, the youth had spent the winter, spring and summer flat-busted, eating whatever he could beg, steal, or shoot. He had begun to wonder about his situation. If there was a better way to live, he couldn't seem to find it in the stunted towns and cactus patches of Arizona.

Most of his nights had been spent out in the open, even in the rain. He'd counted himself lucky if he could run down some stray chicken every now and then. But doing that had taught him something.  A chicken's life counted for more than a poor man's, since every irate farmer seemed quick to shoot. There had been a time when all his anger had been focused on Eerie and he had only wanted to escape from the feeling of being boxed in. But living a vagabond's life on the road had given him a grudge against the entire world.

People didn't seem to see much difference between a man with no money and one who was an out and out bandit. He got to thinking that if he was going to be treated like an outlaw, he might as well become one and make a little easy money. One afternoon, when he was in a dark mood, Ike and the Freely boys had come stomping into the same saloon where had stopped to fill his canteen. They'd talked. The Freelys brought up the topic of rustling, since the pair of them knew a little about that business. The four went out together, got a running iron, and took a plunge into the cattle business. Afterwards, the selling of an occasional beef or two was enough to keep them in beans and, occasionally, let them buy a beer and a meal.

Starting in early November, with the prospect of winter ahead, the gang started thinking that they couldn't keep going the way they'd been going. Their options seemed few, unfortunately. Rustling was either feast or famine. They'd already tried robbing lone horsemen, but had never got much for it, and sometimes nothing at all. Winter was coming.  They came around to the idea that they'd have to start taking bigger risks to keep from starving. From all they'd heard, banks were hard targets.  Holding up stages, on the other hand, seemed to be a little safer. Myron had offered a suggestion at that point. After all, he had grown up next to a stage line that routinely carried precious metals past his home from out of the mining country.

But that was then and this was now. Myra, her hair blowing in the wind, looked around the farm yard and took stock. Her recollections of the outlaw life had begun to seem like someone else's dream. The present reality was different.  She had stumbled back in time and become a child again. To be a child meant doing what grownups told her to do, and disobedience wasn't an option. Like a child, too, she had lost a lot of her physical strength and with it the impression of toughness. Not being able to scare scare people off put a lot of obstacles into a person's path. If she had a choice, she realized, she'd go back to Myron's old life, as bad as it was.  But being as she was -- slight and female -- it seemed to rule out living a life on the dodge. Myra had never heard of a real outlaw woman. Oh, sure, there were stories about some woman who stole a horse now and then, but no one talked about any of the fairer sex getting involved in hard riding, robbing, and shooting.

It was funny, if one paused to think about it, how the simple differences between men and women required that they live very different lives. 

What could what a woman do that was interesting and exciting?  She remembered a novel that she'd read – Captain Steel: The Life of a Highwayman. Steel was a rascal with several shady ladies to dally with. Some of these sly “wenches” lived by crime. She found herself wondering how difficult it would to pick pockets or cut purses like they did. It would take a little practice, and some advice from someone who knew the art.  Even if a robbery went wrong, couldn't she get out of trouble with a derringer? Then a depressing thought came to her.  Would she be able to shoot a person whom she had provoked herself? 

Robbing people on the street was probably a pipe dream.  What else could someone like her do to earn some money? There was school-teaching, laundry and needlework – awful trades. Cleaning? Irene had mentioned that she had made about $8 per month back when she was housekeeping as a widow. That was only a third as much as a cowhand got. If that was all she was left with, she wouldn't have been able to live. Fortunately, there was her small army widow's pension, but work and pension together barely kept her in food and shelter. Cooks earned better than cleaning ladies, Myra reckoned, but with so many men having wives – including common law wives – the need for hired cooks was scant. Anyway, Myra couldn't cook decently and didn't want to learn.

The only women with the chance for decent earnings seemed to be the cat house girls. Gilana had once told Myron that painted cats could take in each month almost as much as a US marshal. The trouble was, there was something about the work that wore them out and made them age fast. An old whore had to work for pennies. But even the young gals had a hard time of it. A woman with money was always an easy mark for robbery. Many shady ladies found protectors, but such a man would like as not be a bully who'd take for himself most of what she eked out.

It seemed to Myra that only one sort of female made out well. That was the fortune-hunter. A woman with looks and decent clothes could go after a husband like a bear goes after a trout. And her kind could afford to be fussy. A flashy gold digger using her wits could get married up with some hombre with jingling pockets. If the marriage was a bad one, and it almost always was, she'd light out in the night with everything that she could cart away.

Any way that a person looked at it, a girl in Myra's situation was looking ahead ahead to grim prospects. The odds were that it wasn't going to be easy to turn the losing hand she'd been dealt into a sure bet.

Close on to sunset, Irene came back from Eerie, her new dress carried in a package. Following a hurried lunch, the two of them went back to baking. Before eight o'clock came, they had no choice but to light up most of the lanterns and candles in the house, just to be able to see their hands in front of their faces.

Doing her duties sleepily, Myra couldn't stop thinking about that box containing her mother's letters. She wanted to skim through them all as soon as possible, but was worried that if Irene found out what she was doing, she would take them away. After all, there had to be a reason that they'd been hidden away in that old feed box. But if they contained something that Irene didn't want anyone to see, Myra was bound and determined to find out what it was. Besides, reading about how things were in the old days served to fill up the holes in her memories. Her life up to the age of twelve had been the best days she had ever lived -- and probably they were better than any she would ever see again. She wanted to remember them as clearly as possible.

“I'll need some rhubarb from the root cellar,” her aunt said suddenly.

“Do I have to go get it?”

“No, I've been on standing in one place for hours; I need to stretch my legs. Sweep up the flour and the other spills off floor; I'll be right back.”

Mrs. Fanning went outside, and this left Myra with a chance to act. She dragged the letter out box from under the bed and hurriedly carried it up into the loft. It took her only a moment to fit the case into a back corner and throw an old ragged dress over it. Then the girl hurried down the ladder and started sweeping.

A few minutes later, Irene came through the door holding a jar of rhubarb.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Belle of Eerie, Arizona - Chapter 3, Part 1

Posted 08-07-19 

Revised 09-07-19 

By Christopher Leeson
 

Chapter 3, Part 1

Wednesday, December 20, 1871 

At the next dawning, Aunt Irene rechecked Myra's measurements. When she was finished, she folded up both their party dresses, bagged them, and put them onto the buckboard. Because the time was short before the Saturday party, they would have to give Teresa Diaz time enough to make needed adjustments. Myra wasn't being forced to go back into town this time. Instead, she'd be left to do her usual chores and to get something ready for George's lunch. At that last instruction, a frown wrote itself Myra' face. She would avoid going anywhere near him, if possible. Let the annoying fellow eat his victuals out in the barn!

Down deep, the farm girl was hoping that he'd choose not to come. If George's pa was going to ride out into the rough lands to look for Myron's body, chances were fair that George would choose to go with him. At least Myra hoped so. She doubted that the boy was as hard a worker as he liked to pretend. Who wouldn't leap at the chance of spending a day riding around the foothills and jawing with his fellow hunters, instead of pitching hog manure in a place where he wasn't welcome?

Thinking about George's invitation to the dance made her especially cheesed off. She didn't like being talked to like a girl, and his motives made her even more annoyed. A person of his kind didn't care about the girl he was trying to consort with. All that mattered was the way she looked. He wanted to show her off to his friends and any fetching girl would serve him just as well. Myron had himself gone after Gilana only because she had the prettiest face in Yuma. It was only later on that he'd found out that she was fun to be with.

At that point, Myra glanced up the road, hoping not to see George riding in. Fortunately, he wasn't there.

How could she deal with a boy who kept pushing his unwanted attentions her way? She'd already tried by discourage him by telling him off. What more could she do? She couldn't beat him up, considering he was so much stronger than she was. Nor could she use a weapon, thanks to those magical commands that her aunt had loaded on her. She couldn't harm anyone at all, in fact, except, supposedly, in honest self-defense. 'Some Christian Irene is,' Myra thought. 'What Bible-believer worth her salt would use the devil's black magic to get her way with somebody else?

After feeding the animals, the girl went to milk the cows. Most than any other farm chore, Myra disliked milking. It seemed like work for girls. The books always talked about milkmaids, never milk-lads. On the other hand, Myra fancied horses well enough, though caring for them was messy and tedious. 

Myron had become an outlaw, in part, to get away from the hard drag of farmer's life. A farmer had to keep scrabbling for pennies until he grew old, sick, and ready to go. By then, he'd probably have lost his farm to the bank and would die knowing that his life had been a total waste. It wasn't the honest worker, but the outlaw, who got away with sacks of money, and did it without breaking a sweat.

But she didn't want to think about that. It would make her mood even worse that it was. 

Well, sure, Gilana Hulbard seemed to enjoy life. Saloon work had had kept away from homemaking. But not many saloon girls received as many tips and gifts as Gilana had. She had had a way that made men want to give her things. Oh, she had had to give out a little more than suited her, but the cancan dancer had liked being around men and seemed pretty well suited to the kind of life that she was living.

With her morning chores wrapped up, Myra decided on start a different project that she had been thinking about. The farm girl had found out that George and reorganized things around the farm more to his liking, and now it was taking her too much time to find tools and implements that he'd moved. To fix the problem, she wanted to go through the barn and the sheds, rearranging things in the way that fit her own preferences. She already knew where she wanted to start – at the old feed box. The thing was in bad shape, so it was being used for random storage. But what Myra had in mind was to turn it into a hiding place for her own valuables. Who knew?  Maybe she could steal something and would need a place to hide it.

Opening the large, lidded box, she saw a mass of mouse nests and scrap wood filling it. Digging a little deeper, she revealed dry and cracking pieces of harness, worn out horseshoes, rusty old iron, odds and ends, and also broken things that had been waiting for repairs that would probably never come. By making a little more room, the bin could be made useful to her needs. On top of that, maybe some of the stuff that she'd end up removing could be sold to a junk dealer.

Myra started sorting the refuse into piles upon the hay-littered floor. As she rummaged deeper into the bin, she touched upon a dusty old wooden case. Though the girl hadn't set eyes on the thing in years, she remembered its distinct appearance. Her parents had, before Irene had come, kept it on a standing shelf by their bed. Her mother had saved keepsakes in it – mostly personal letters. Holding the box in her hands made Myra feel closer to her mother than she had been able to in years.

Myra took the case out to the light and set it on a shelf by the door. Squinting, the girl checked the small padlock that held it closed. The little key was not to be seen, but that was a minor problem. Myron had learned how to pick locks from Lydon Kelsey. The youth had learned a few slick tricks from an uncle who had done time in Kansas state prison for burglary.

The girl considered what sort of lock-picking tool she would need and remembered the tin of old nails that she had already dug out of the feed box. She went back to it and selected a strong, slender one. As Myra turned about, she saw that the rectangle of sunlight made by the open door was being broken by a silhouette. Its abrupt appearance wrested a startled sound from her throat.

“George!” she exclaimed.

“Howdy day,” young Severin said. “I was going to start up the pen-cleaning again.”

“I-I'm surprised. I was supposing that you'd go out with your pa looking for Thorn's body.”

“Oh, he asked me if I wanted to trail along. In fact, I wouldn't have minded that one little bit, but I'd already told Mrs. Fanning that I'd be back today. I wish them luck, but somehow I don't think they're going to find what they're looking for.”

“Why's that?”

“Just a hunch.”

“A convenient hunch.”

“Why convenient?” asked George.

“You never liked Thorn. Maybe you'd prefer to have the vultures make a meal of him.”

“Did your aunt tell you that I didn't like Thorn?”

“No.”

“Then why do you suppose that I didn't? How would you know anything at all? You said you never met Myron, that you'd never even gotten a letter from him.”

“Just a hunch,” she said in mimicry.

“As a matter of fact, he was a hard one to like,” the boy said. “But I'd want him to be found, so this awful thing could be put behind you and Mrs. Fanning.”

“Nice to hear, but we can't stand here jabbering. We've both got more important things to do.”

“Before you disappear, Miss Myra, there was a topic that I was a mite curious about.”

“What now?”

“Pa said you told him and Mr. Grimsley that you weren't so sure that Myron was dead.”

She shrugged. “I was just thinking out loud. It's not important.”

“How can your cousin being alive not be important?”

“I guess what was only hoping out loud. But, honestly, he couldn't last for a week out in the open -- hungry, no water, cold.  And people say he was wounded.  He has to be dead.”

“Well, I look at it the same way. But what if the outlaws took him away alive?

“They wouldn't have done that. A wounded man would have slowed up their getaway too much. They'd rather finish him than get themselves caught. Or so I think.”

“Maybe so,” he conceded. “By the way, are you still going to the party?”

Myra was glad to talk about something other than her dead body. “Irene is dragging me to it. I just hope that you aren't going to make a pest of yourself while I'm there.”

He smiled. “If you don't like having company, you're due to get a mess of it today. Dale and Kayle are planning to come over. They got it in their heads that you wanted to get some dancing lessons.”

“Those silly females! I didn't ask for any dancing lessons. It was all their own idea.”

“Yep, that sounds like something that the two of them would cook up.”

Myra sniffed. “For a lonely old farmstead, this place is sure gets more than its share of visitors.” She then paused. “Why would they take time off to teach me to dance? Did – either – of them say that they liked me?”

George thought for a moment. “No, I reckon not. I figure they think that you're about as hard to like as your cousin was.” Then he grinned, as if joking.

Sour-faced, the girl moved toward the exit, stepping widely around the boy.

“But whatever impression you made on the girls in town, they're still coming over,” George called after her. “That's a good break for you, isn't it? If you mind your manners, the three of you might become as thick as thieves.”

She paused and looked back. “Don't worry about my manners, Mr. Severin. If the young ladies don't get too much in the way while they're around, they'll be welcome. It's better to have them chattering at me than listening to you.”

“Oh, I'll be here for a spell, too. I'll have to stop by the house for a bite to eat come noon, if you don't mind. I got accustomed to Mrs. Fanning feeding me right well.”

“My aunt told me about that already. I hope you don't have anything against cold food. Just don't waste the time of day nibbling at it for too long!”

Myra stepped closer to the locked box and paused alongside it. She didn't want George to start asking questions as to what it contained. Should she pretend the thing was nothing and leave it where it was, not coming back for it until the hired man was outside? But, then again, if she left the box in plain sight, he might he get snoopy and try to open it. That couldn't be allowed. No outsider had any right to nose around inside her mother's private memories.

She took the case off the shelf and tucked it under her right arm.

“What've you got there, Miss Myra?” George inquired.

“You and your questions!” Myra flung back as she strutted away.

#

Once inside, Myra checked the clock up on the high shelf. It was more than an hour to noon and it wouldn't take long to dump some edibles onto a platter, not if she didn't waste time cooking them. Myra would much rather be tinkering with the locked box than be acting like a hostess.

Placing the little chest on the table, the girl reached into her coat pocket to find the slim nail that she had salvaged. Myra drew up a chair and took a turn at examining the miniature mechanism. It wasn't cleverly made at all and, using the nail, she popped it open in just a minute. As expected, the thing was stuffed full of letters.

Myra opened the top letter on the stack. The return address told her that it was from Aunt Claudelle. Sliding the Fools Cap sheet out, she held the yellow page up to the light. It was a brief note wishing her mom well for the Christmas season. Myra couldn't remember ever meeting Claudelle. She had barely known even Uncle Amos. The latter had made a visit to Pennsylvania as a sort of goodbye to his sister, who was going West with her family. Claudelle and Abigail hadn't come with him for some reason. It seemed that neither of her parents nor Irene had been on easy terms with Amos' wife. Irene had hardly ever mentioned Claudelle over the last five years. But Myra's father had earlier let out an amusing story about Claudelle's father getting himself into trouble years back for chicken stealing.

But as uninformative as the missive was, it felt strange to be reading a letter to her mother. The written lines seemed to open a window into the past, and their words were like a voice speaking though the years.

Myra skimmed a few more letters. Addie Caldwell's most frequent correspondent seemed to have been Aunt Irene. Irene's letters were much longer than Claudelle's. They told a lot about what she was doing back East. Most of them had been written during the short time that she had been married.

The curious girl found one letter from her aunt that showed running ink on the address. It didn't look like there had been a spill.  The way the water had run had probably been tears. Myra had a hunch that the subject would turn out to be the death of uncle Darby. She didn't finish the sad letter. She didn't care for the way that females couldn't resist talking about things that made them cry. Gilana hadn't been a crybaby, luckily. She could make a joke out of the most awful happenings, and Myron had respected that aspect of her.

It seemed that most of these correspondences had been written back in a very different time. Those had been the war years. The far-away war had meant nothing to the very young Myron in those days, except that it was an exciting subject to read about in the newspaper -- at a time when he was new to reading. But it had been during the war that her parents had seemed to undergo quite a sudden change. All of a sudden they often seemed worried and sad. They started to speak very quietly at times, as if discussing serious problems that they didn't want their son to overhear. 

The obvious secrecy had made Myron extremely eager to listen in on them from hiding, but he rarely could catch more than an odd word here or there -- like “money” and “Grimsley.” Funny thing. The name of Grimsley had come up quite a bit during these secret talks. Why had that been? They had no quarrel with the man that she knew of, not like the run of trouble that they'd had with Tully Singer over the boundary line. And Grimsley hadn't been the neighbor that they'd most often socialized with, either.

What had made her folks change? Not the war. They didn't show much fear about what was going to happen if the Southerners won. They just wanted the killing to stop. A couple times, she remembered, her father has said something like, “Mark my words, the banks and the railroaders started this war, and they're the only ones who are going to benefit from it. I wonder how many of their pampered sons are making bayonet charges in Virginia.”

Myra looked at the clock again. More time had passed than she had realized. She wanted to keep reading, even though the memories that the letters invoked so far were not happy ones.

But the girl needed to put together a lunch for George. If he showed up at the door and it wasn't ready, the lazy cuss would stand around jabbering while she was scrounging up the victuals. The less talking she had to do with young Severin, the better. She opened a can of beans and spooned them into a pair of sauce dishes – one for George and one for herself. Hopefully, she could get hers eaten and be away from the table before he came in. She next went to the pantry.

She and her aunt kept the pantry door shut most of the time.  The little window inside it was half-open, and the December air kept the space cooler for the food inside. There were some chubs of bologna wrapped in rags, sealed in paraffin and hung up. The fragrant smell of the meat brought back more positive recollections. The aroma of curing bologna had filled the entire house during the autumn seasons. That scent still made her think of Christmas time, when everyone was allowed to eat their fill. Most of the neighbors likewise made their own sausage, but Myron had rated his ma's and pa's the best in the neighborhood. For one thing, almost everybody put too much spice into their ground meat, and spice was not something that sat well with the boy's pallet.

Myra found a chub that Irene had already been cutting from. Naturally, the farm girl chose that one, since sausage left open to the air wouldn't stay fresh for very long. She cut a portion for herself and a larger one for George. The way, she figured, he'd stay indoors less long if his first piece filled him up. Next, she sliced the end off a loaf of bread, put some churned butter into a small dish, and ladled into a fruit bowl some cooked apples from an already-opened jar.

Myra then stood back and took stock. It wasn't a meal. She wouldn't enjoy it herself, but she'd gotten used to forcing down rough fare while on the outlaw trail. Nevertheless, what the farm girl had put together should reasonably be enough for a hired man's lunch. It was only missing something to drink. Since the maid had brought in fresh milk from her morning chores, she went to the can and filled a small pitcher with it. She poured milk into a pair of tin cups for herself and George.

She gave a sigh, glad to be done.

With two lunches occupying the small table, there was little space left for her mother's letters. Not wanting the snoopy George to take a handful and start reading them, Myra separated the ones that she'd already skimmed from the others, creating two different bundles, and these she packed back into the wooden case. Then the girl concealed her treasure chest under her aunt's bed. She was still on her knees when a tapping sounded on the pine-board door, which she had carelessly left hanging open. Expecting that it was George, she called over her shoulder, “Yeah!”

But, upon standing up, she saw that her callers were a couple of girls – Kayley and Rosedale, of course. They came right in, burdened with carry-alls. “Hello, Myra!” Dale said. Behind her, Kayley nodded and smiled. Myra managed to smile back at them, though she was scarcely in a mood for company.

“I guess it is lunch time,” said Kayley.

“Come in. Do you need a bite?” Myra asked. She preferred not to have to put together a bigger meal, but the custom of hospitality was a very strong one. It wasn't uncommon for a visitor who received less than what he expected to rebuke his host to his face.

“An apple, maybe,” said Dale, approaching the table. “Kayley and I lunched just before we started over. We don't have to get back home until supper.”

That's going to be a long time to put up with these two, Myra thought. She didn't look forward to acting like a girl for nearly six hours. And what if they wanted to talk about embarrassing things, like women's bodies? That was a subject that females tended to bring up when no menfolk were around.

“Hey now!” exclaimed George, stepping in through the open door. “Isn't it nice to be having dinner with three fetching ladies – even if one of them is only my homely little sister?”

“Homely! You mangy coyote!” Dale answered him back.

“It's still five minutes to noon,” Myra reminded the youth.

“I didn't think you'd mind,” the Severin lad said. “It's probably best if I get my chowing done quickly, so you can get on with those dancing lessons. I know you've been powerfully excited on the subject all morning.”

Dale shook her head. “Men always want to make fun of people when they're trying to learn something new.”

“Always,” agreed Kayley. “I want to learn to drive the buggy, but my dad talks as if I was asking him to let me break a bronco.”

“I think you could give a bronc a good fight of it,” teased George.

“You talk like a brother,” the Grimsley girl responded, “and that's not a good thing.”

“How come? Why wouldn't you want another brother just like Jeremy? What have you got against Jeremy?”

“Nothing. And we weren't talking about Jeremy, not until you brought him up.”

“I can drive a buggy. I can teach you, Kayley.”

“You can?” the neighbor girl asked.

“I've said it, haven't I?”

“That would be jim-dandy!” Kayley exclaimed. She looked over her shoulder. “Why couldn't you offer to do the same for me, George?”

“The same reason that Dale hasn't. If your pa wanted you to be driving, he'd be teaching you himself. It's not proper for a neighbor to be interfering between a girl and what her folks' want for her.”

“Myra doesn't seem to care about fussy rules like that.”

“Well, it isn't for me to be saying what Myra should or shouldn't be doing. But remember how our folks made Dale promise not to be teaching you – not on any subject – not unless your ma and pa say that it's all right first. Now that Myra's spoken up, maybe they'll be coming over to arm-twist her into giving them that same promise. They already think that our Dale is a wild girl for starting out driving a carriage horse at such a young age.”

“Let's leave this sort of business for later, George,” suggested Dale. “Your victuals will be getting cold.”

“No rush,” her brother said. “Myra told me that she was fixing things up cold. With a nice hot stove in here, they can only get warmer.”

“I'm not much of a cook,” the ginger-maned girl explained.

“You can't cook?” said Kayley. “Oh, you have to learn, Myra, or you're not going to find the best kind of husband. Dale and I can teach you cooking.”

“Well, my aunt already said she's going to teach me. If everybody starts teaching me at the same time, I'll be learning to cook from dawn to dusk.”

“Would that be worse than choring all day?” asked Rosedale.

“It might be,” Myra said.

“Come on, you gals, don't try to change Myra into the mirror-image of yourselves,” advised George. “I think she's mighty nice the way she is.”

“Oh, yes, it's very clear how nice you think Miss Myra is,” teased his sister. “Is she going to the dance with you?”

“She says she'll be at the dance. Maybe I'll get her to dance with me once or twice while I'm there,” he said.

“Perfect!” exclaimed Kayley. “They always have square dancing. You'll have to get ready for that, Myra. It's the hardest sort of dance for a person to learn. It takes at least four people to teach it right. George, can you stay and help us show Myra some dance steps?”

“I'm not sure I should. I won't get a whole lot of the pen cleaned if I do. Today and tomorrow are the shortest days of the year, you know.”

“If you're nice to Myra, it could make her like you better,” suggested Rosdale, trying to keep from giggling.

“Think it would do just the opposite,” replied Myra.

“Oh, pshaw! Everybody's afraid to dance at first!” exclaimed Dale. “But I've been to lots of dances and believe me, if you know just a little, you'll look better than most of the other people there.”

“Let's start by showing Myra the square dance,” urged Kayley.

“I tried some square dancing once, but it's too crazy to understand,” complained the redhead. “It's bad enough trying to remember what you're supposed to be doing, but in square dancing you also need to understand what twenty different people are doing at the same time!”

“Everybody has trouble square dancing at first, but it's the dance that's always the most fun,” said Dale Severin. “And you aren't really dancing with twenty people; it just looks that way. Everyone dances in groups of four, or maybe eight, if a lot of people show up. You stay inside your own group to dance. Because there are lots of other groups dancing just as fast as they can, it looks more confusing than it really is.”

George was shaking his head.“This sounds like it's going to take a lot of time, and I don't have time to spare.”

TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 3, Part 2