Posted 06-07-20
By Christopher Leeson
Chapter 7, Epilogue
Friday, December
29, 1871 Continued
George
Severin pitched his last forkful of hay into the chute and let it
tumble down to the ground floor, where the barn animals were. He was
having trouble keeping his mind on what he was doing, his thoughts
always drifting back to the beguiling face of Abigail Myra Olcott.
Who
and what was she?
A
sound brought his attention back to his surroundings. On the stone
balcony outside, kittens – eager and hungry – meowed. That’s
what they always sounded like when he or one of his younger siblings
brought t hem their table scraps. He saw a silhouette break the slits
of light streaming in between the boards of the loft door. As he
watched, it opened.
“Easy,
kitties,” Rosedale was saying. “You'll get all get fed!”
George
chuckled. “If those critters weren't so dumb and lazy, they'd be
out catching mice and rats, not begging for milk and breadcrusts.”
“That's
cats for you,” was all the defense that his sister felt like
offering on behalf of the feline pack.
The
youth threw the fork he held into the clover hay. Driven in deeply,
it was left standing straight up. George jumped to the floor and
landed on the soft litter underfoot.
The
youth crossed over to the exit where Rosedale was filling the rusty
kitchen pans that the cats were fed from. “Where are you off to
now?” she asked. “You’ve been awfully quit since the Christmas
dance.”
He
grimaced, as if something were bothering him. “I guess there isn't
much to talk about these days.”
His
sister smiled. “You were dancing up a storm with Myra. I’d have
thought that you’d still be bragging about it.”
His
shrugged. “If I felt like bragging, I’d brag to someone whom I’d
really wanted to impress.”
“So
you want to talk boy-talk about Miss Myra?” she asked.
He
shrugged again.
“You
know, Myra’s dancing was really okay,” the girl continued.
“She'll be even better next time. All anyone needs is a heap of
dancing to get good at it. Did you ask her to come to the New Years
hoedown?”
“I'm
not sure I should.”
“Why
not?”
“Because
I’d expect that she'd say no.”
“How
come?”
“She’ll
say no just because it was me doing the asking.”
“Isn’t
she starting to like you?”
“That
little Eastern gal is a hard one to figure out.”
“Maybe
she is,” Dale conceded.
“Say,
Stockings, “does Myra ever strike you as being somehow – outside
the ordinary?”
“In
what way?”
“In
any way.”
Dale
made a thoughtful face. “I guess so. She likes to talk about what
she reads, but it’s not the stuff that most girls like. But, like
you say, she’s an Easterner. I’m supposing that they have
different ways. Funny, I’d have expected an Eastern girls to be
trying to impress folks with her nice clothes and manners. But Myra’s
not like that; she’s rough and tumble. I think she’d be a
terrible tomboy if her aunt ever let her get away with it.”
“Yeah,”
her brother agreed, “she’s something else down deep.”
“Do
you suppose she got that way because she’s an only child?”
“Maybe,”
said George said distractedly.
“You
know,” continued Rosedale, “I don’t think she had many friends
back home.”
“Why?"
"She
seems so uneasy around people.”
George
met his sister’s glance straight-on. “What do you think about
her? Do you like her?”
“Well,”
the farm girl began thoughtfully,“I guess I do. She's not the
warmest young lady that I’ve ever run across, but there's
something about her.”
He
cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Something
she’s got draws a person to her. I don’t know what it is. She
doesn’t come off like most other girls. She's serious-minded. She
doesn't gush and giggle. I’m kind of glad that she doesn’t,
though. I got enough of that when I was in school.
“How
about you, Fish Hooks?” Dale asked suddenly. “Do you like her?”
Her
brother eased back against the wall. “I’m not sure what I feel.
All I know is that Myra doesn’t like me, not from the minute we
met.”
Rosedale
pursed her lips and nodded. “A lot of girls are shy with boys.
Feeling shy sometimes make a person acts like he’s mad. Land sakes!
It makes me mad, too, not being able to ask a boy to go walking or to
a picnic when I happen to feel like it.”
George
smiled. “Better not get too forward with the boys, or else folks
are going to start calling you a hussy. But if the shoe
fits....”
“Oh,
you!” his sister exclaimed, scooping up a handful of hay to throw
at him. It was never easy to hurl loose hay over a distance and
hardly any of it reached her target.
Still
grinning, her brother asked, “Which boys do you like? Or are there
so many that you can't remember them all?”
She
scowled. “A girl can't be telling something like that, not even to
a brother. But if you want some advice, your problem with Myra is
probably just that you don’t know how to behave around a girl. I
could teach you plenty.”
“I
don’t think so.”
“Chicken!”
I could so teach you.”
“Teach
me what? Why most girls act like ninnies?”
She
grinned. “I bet you don’t think that Myra is a ninny.”
“I
don’t know what she is. She's topsy-turvy on everything.”
Dale
nodded. “Why do you suppose that is?”
“Umm.
I've got my theories.”
“What
sort of theories?”
“I’m
not telling you anything. You’d just go running off to Miss Olcott
to repeat everything that I say.”
“I’d
be tempted. But here’s a word to make you wise. A good way to get a
girl to notice you is to do something that gets her mad at you.”
Young
Severin shook his head. “She notices me plenty. And whenever she
does, she moves away.”
Dale
came a step closer and pretended to sniff for a bad odor. George
playfully pushed her away.
“Well,
if you don’t want to make her mad,” suggested Rosedale, “I’d
say that the next best shot is to try being nice. Once she starts
feeling easy having you around, she’ll naturally become more
friendly.”
George
scowled. “I don’t want to be any girl’s friend. If a boy gets
to be a girl’s friend, she’ll never let him be anything else.”
“You’re
silly!”
“Oh,
yeah, Little Sister, you’re a whole lot sillier than I am.”
“Hey,
don’t call me that. You're only a year older than me.”
“But
I'm a lot less silly.”
“Oh,
pshaw! You're twice as silly as I ever was, even on my worst day!”
“Says
who?”
“Says
me!”
“The opinions of silly people don't matter!”
George answered back.
“We'll
see which one of us is most silly,” the girl declared, her hands on
her hips.
“One
of these days, I guess we will.” With that, the youth gave his
sister a parting nod and pushed the door open to the afternoon light.
He
descended from the small balcony via a short ladder. The weather had
continued chilly, despite the bright sunlight, and he reflexively
adjusted his cap and collar.
George’s
chores being done for the moment, he went for a walk across the
pasture. His thoughts immediately returned to Myra. The girl had
shown up little more than two weeks earlier, but it already felt like
he’d known her for much longer. Could there be a reason for that? he
wondered.
The
young man had a theory, and it was a crazy one. People would have
laughed to hear it. Or at least they would have laughed if this was
anywhere else except Eerie, Arizona. He had been keeping his
suspicions quiet, not just because his idea was a wild one, but also
because spreading that kind of talk around might hurt Myra.
Especially if it were true.
She
had surprised him the first time that he’d laid eyes on her, by
naming him on sight. How had she done that? Furthermore, she had
shown up on the same day that Thorn Caldwell had gotten shot dead up
in the Gap And what about that strange horse that she’d been
riding? The saddle on it wasn’t like the one that Mrs. Fanning had
kept in the barn. A saddled horse would have had to have run away
from somebody, but who? Later, when he’d suggested to Myra that
the bay could have been her cousin's horse, she hadn’t seemed the
least bit interested. And another thing: she could ride pretty well
for a gal who’d just come out of the East.
Beyond
that, Myra sometimes referred to Myron as Thorn. She had herself said
that she hadn’t been getting any letters from her cousin, and Mrs.
Fanning never used that nickname, so why the girl choose to call him
that? Moreover, one couldn’t help but notice that the cousins were
about the same age and both had been named after the same maternal
grandmother. On top of everything else, they apparently liked the
same sort of reading material.
And
then there was the way that Mrs. Fanning was behaving. Like, why did
a church lady like her suddenly become chummy with Molly O'Toole, the
wife of the one man in the West who knew how to make a remarkable
magical potion? Other proper ladies in town avoided both of the
O’Tooles. What had happened to bring the farmer and the
saloon-keeper together at exactly the same time that Myra had arrived
in Eerie?
Additionally,
it seemed strange to him that Myra had come to town with only one
dress to her name. She didn’t even have a winter coat. Her aunt
said that she‘d lost her luggage in a stage accident. If so, why
had every witness he’d questioned sworn that she’d never been on
that stage? If the girl hadn’t come in by stagecoach, why were she
and Irene trying to make people believe that she had? Mrs. Fanning
seldom joked, and never so pointlessly.
Nothing that surrounded Myra made any sense. Why had Deputy Grant allowed a
grass-green girl from the East to go with him up to the Gap while
he was looking for outlaw loot? Did he think that Myra knew
something about the robbery? If she didn’t, how was it that the lawman
found the gold in record time?
And
how was it that the body of Thorn Caldwell was so deucedly hard to
find? The outlaws could have hidden it, sure, but why did they take
the trouble to hide it so well?
Then,
too, why did Myra have a theory that Thorn wasn't really dead?
Myra was a puzzle with a lot of pieces, but they didn’t fit
together. He remembered the funny talk that Mrs. Fanning gave at the
memorial. Why had she she suppose that an unrepentant sinner like
Myron could still get another chance at Heaven? Was she talking about
Purgatory? He didn’t think so. Methodists didn’t believe in any
such place.
Beyond
that, Myra had been seen speaking to the sheriff at a spot
out of earshot of the other party visitors Saturday night. The youth
had himself seen her talking to Lydon Kelsey. He knew that Kelsey and
Caldwell had been as thick as the thieves until the latter left town.
Why would a girl new to the community pick out a roughneck
like that to talk to?
George,
having certain suspicions, had tested Myra. He had deliberately
mentioned Indian Head, a local landmark that a lot of the young
people nearabouts liked to visit, mostly to spoon. Myra had replied,
“If you hang around up there, I'll have to keep shy of the place.”
It had sounded like she had known what he was referring to. How so, with
her being a newcomer? Neither she nor Mrs. Fanning had ever mentioned
Myra having taken any sight-seeing excursions into the local woods
and ridges during her short time in town.
And
then there was the Christmas day visit to his home, when Miss Olcott
had been shown all the girlish things that Dale was so proud of. To
George’s mind, it seemed like Myra had looked at them with boredom
and annoyance, not interest.
It
was all a bit too peculiar to ignore but, over the span of two weeks,
George had come up with a theory, a theory that he didn’t care for
at all.
What
if Myron Thornton Caldwell had robbed that stage and gotten shot,
just like Mrs. Deeters had witnessed? Then, what if he stayed
conscious and had seen the outlaws hiding the gold? Had Myron afterwards been fit enough to ride out of the Gap and meet up with his aunt a couple of
miles away? If Thorn had gotten to the farm badly wounded, Mrs.
Fanning would naturally have hurried him to Doc Upshaw. As a good
friend of the O'Tooles, the doctor would have been able to tell Irene
that Thorn had only once chance to stay live – to take the magic
potion that Shamus could provide. After all, it had already saved
the life of Elmer O’Hanlan. Would Mrs. Fanning have had any other
choice but to go along with such a crazy idea?
It
seemed to George that if Myron really had become Myra, she probably
wouldn’t have wanted to have the whole town laughing at her. It
would have been natural enough for the aunt and her nephew – now a
niece – to concoct a story about Myra having just come to Eerie.
The deception would certainly have needed to involve Shamus, and
Molly would probably have pitched in to help, too. Because Myra would
have come into existence with no women’s clothes to wear, Molly
could very easily have volunteered to go shopping for her. She’d
naturally enough to over to Phoenix, where she was less well known
and few people would have wondered why a childless woman should be
buying clothes for a young person.
Afterwards,
George reasoned, Myron would have grudgingly done his best to make a go
of things as Myra. Pretty soon, Deputy Grant and Judge Humphreys
would have visited the farm, wanting information about the robbery.
As Myron, Miss Olcott would had been a witness. The deputy would have
asked for her help in finding the lost gold shipment, and Myra
wouldn’t have had much choice but to agree.
The
youth’s theory, if true, would also explain why Myra had so
disliked him from the start. At least it was fortunate that she had.
If they’d gotten close, George knew he would be feeling very embarrassed about now. The farm boy shook his head. This was a damned strange town, he
had to concede, one haunted by Indian magic, and one where many of its
prettiest girls used to be men.
The
more he thought about it, the more convinced George became that he
was on to the truth. If Myra really was Thorn, her life must really
be something, learning how to live a very different sort of life. The
thought of Thorn being sentenced a life of wearing
corsets and pantaloons should have made him laugh, except that the
idea seemed to be such a powerfully strange one.
If
George had had his druthers, Myra would have been a natural-born
girl. That he had found her to be so interesting and attractive from the word "go"
bothered him considerably.
What
was making him into a co-conspirator in the keeping of her secret? He
couldn’t figure it out. He didn’t want her to be publicly mortified, but
why should he care so much?
George
looked off in the direction of the Fanning farm. Every time he went
over there from now on he would act as a player in one hell of a story. But what
sort of story would it be? He hoped it would be a comedy, not a
tragedy. A comedy might encourage a certain pretty redhead to start
smiling more.
But
why should he care how cheerful she was? Myron had been impossible to like. But still, as annoying as he was, George hadn’t hated him -- at least not venomously.
On the
other hand, young Severin wouldn't mind at all if Myra ended up living a good
life. Miss Olcott was at about Chapter One in her book of life, and he couldn’t help wondering what lay in store for
her. But, most of all, he wondered how was he supposed to interact with her from
now on.
All
these were hard questions – questions that the boy needed to work through very carefully over the long nights of the coming
winter.
THE
END
Chorus:
Jane's the one I find best looking;
Cat House Wilma, hot and purdy,
