In the Shadow of the Mountains

by Rosanne Bittner

  Kirk breathed a little easier. After Bea’s initial reaction when they arrived, he was not sure she would even give this a try.

  “Well I’m sure General Larimer has plenty of land to sell to the right investor,” Byers was saying. “The lots are sold through the St. Charles Company. St. Charles is what we used to call this town before we renamed it Denver. At any rate, the money you pay for the land is reinvested in improvements to our city.”

  In the back of the wagon, the Kirkland children paid little attention to the conversation. Elly continued to groan about what a horrible, primitive place Denver was, curling her nose at the smell of animal droppings everywhere and carrying on about how there were “wild Indians” roaming about, probably ready to scalp and torture young white girls.

  Irene thought about the quiet Indian women she had seen working over campfires at the creek. Because of her father’s tales of Indians and stories of making friends with some of them, she often wondered about that wild-looking race, what their life was really like, if they were really as horrible as white people made them out to be. Her father seemed to have great respect for them, and she in turn had great respect for what her father thought was right and wrong. Her mother, on the other hand, had no use for Indians, or for people of Spanish descent.

  There had been a lot of Spanish people in California, and Irene thought them very gracious and mannerly. But ever since one young Spanish boy had stolen a silver candle-stick from her, Bea preached that they were inferior and not to be trusted. “They’ll smile at you and steal from you at the same time,” she often told her children. “They hate us, you know, because of the Mexican war. And young white women should stay away from Spanish men. Someday you’ll understand why.”

  The last statement always made Irene wonder. What was different about Spanish men? Did they carry some horrible disease, or were they secretly cruel and barbaric? The old Mexican who had taken care of their lawn back in San Francisco seemed friendly enough. Irene had liked him.

  The wagon began moving again, and Irene, Elly, and John watched as whores and bearded, poorly dressed men roamed the streets. They knew about painted ladies. They had seen some in San Francisco, and although they didn’t fully understand what they did, the fact that they were “bad” had been firmly burned into their young minds.

  In the distance Irene caught sight of a young Mexican boy chasing a pig, and an older Mexican man chasing the boy and shouting something in Spanish. She was surprised, not expecting to find Spanish people here. She had always thought they only lived in California, and in that country to the south called Mexico. They heard an explosion then, somewhere in the distant foothills. Irene knew it was someone blowing away a piece of mountain in search of gold.

  The trip to Colorado had been exciting, in spite of Elly’s complaining and crying most of the way. This new place was certainly bustling with activity, even though life here appeared quite crude. Irene didn’t mind. She knew her mother would have a nice house built for them in no time. The sad part was that she realized her father would be away much of the time. He planned to go into the mountains and look for more gold. She hated it when Kirk was gone. Life in the Kirkland household always seemed more joyful and relaxed when her father was there. Kirk knew how to laugh, but her mother almost never laughed. She seldom even smiled.

  She peeked outside again, smelling fresh lumber and listening to the sound of pounding hammers and scraping saws. Apparently Mr. Byers was at least right about Denver growing. There seemed to be new buildings going up everywhere, especially in this part of town, away from the Indians. There must be hundreds, maybe thousands of men milling about as far as she could see.

  She smelled fresh paint, and looked up to see a man painting a sign above a furniture store.

  Another Spanish man, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, was standing in front of the store. He glanced up at her from the sawhorse, where he was carving a piece of wood that looked like a table leg. Suddenly, unexpectedly, their eyes met. The young man watched the wagon as it lumbered past, until Irene moved back inside and sat down, embarrassed that he had caught her staring at him.

  It disturbed her that she thought him extremely handsome. The strange, new feelings she had felt when looking into his eyes made her wonder if she was being bad. She remembered her mother’s warnings to stay away from young Spanish men, which surely meant it was not proper to stare at one, and most certainly not proper to feel an attraction to one.

  She reddened at her own curiosity and indiscretion, glad Bea had not caught her looking; and she sat pondering what on earth was supposed to be so terrible about people of the Spanish race, or Indians, for that matter. Most of all, she wondered about her own new and changing feelings about young men. She never used to give them much thought. Her curiosity had seemed to start when she had her first time of month, and her mother, flustered and seeming embarrassed herself, explained in her own awkward way about what it all meant. She was becoming a woman now. She could have babies. She had to be more ladylike and discreet around young men.

  “And you must stop that embarrassing habit of riding a horse like a man,” Bea had told her.

  Irene hated learning to ride side-saddle, but if it was the only way she was going to be allowed to ride, then she would do it. She didn’t like angering her mother, but she had vowed not to give up Sierra and her daily rides, no matter what. Bea had wanted to sell Sierra before leaving California, and for the first and only time in her life Irene had thrown a crying fit until her mother gave in and let her bring Sierra to Colorado. The animal was tied to the back of the Kirkland wagon so that Irene could watch him and talk to him during the trip.

  She looked out the back of the wagon, but the freight wagons that lumbered behind blocked her view. She could no longer see the Spanish man. She leaned out to look at the mountains then, wondering if she could persuade her mother to let her go with Kirk to the mining camps. She would much rather ride with her father and visit the mines than stay home taking sewing and piano lessons. Besides, it would be a while before they would have a finished house where they could set up the piano again. Bea had insisted on bringing the heavy instrument over the mountains. It had been hauled alone in its own special wagon because of its weight, and Kirk had fussed and complained about its burden and the danger of carrying something so heavy. But Bea had insisted, claiming it could take weeks, perhaps months to get another piano once they reached Denver.

  At least it would be a while before the daily routine of schooling and lessons would resume. They had to get settled first, and that was just fine with Irene. She decided she liked this place called Colorado. She felt a strange link to this land, as though she, like her father, belonged here.

  Bea Kirkland was quick to create her own form of civilization within an uncivilized town, careful to keep her daughters home, away from the unsavory characters who roamed the dirt streets of Denver, where frequent fights and even murders took place. There was still no organized law and order, and everyone seemed too busy making their fortunes to care.

  Bea advertised for and found a woman to watch over the children and cook meals. Elsa Hansen’s husband had been killed in the collapse of a mine. Sarah Wells, who had been a teacher back East, was hired as a tutor. Her husband had already given up prospecting and was now a busy town blacksmith. Myra Cole, a lonely, middle-aged woman who had come to Denver with her husband, leaving her grown children behind, came to work for Bea as a housekeeper. Myra’s husband was gone most of the time, working in one of the hard-rock mines close to Pikes Peak.

  Other towns, such as Colorado City, Boulder, and Golden, were developing, vying with Denver to be the queen city of the frontier, as Denver’s promoters were calling their still-unfinished town. Kirk had helped pass the proposition to merge Denver and Auraria into one city, and already a petition had been sent off to Washington to include Denver in a branch line of a proposed transcontinental telegraph line.

  Bea was busy every day at the National Ban
k of Colorado, backed with Kirkland money; and she helped in the decision to establish a minting mill, in which Kirkland gold and the gold of other developers became gold coins. The federal government talked of outlawing local minting operations, but so far no action had been taken.

  There was never a dull moment for Bea or Kirk, who both welcomed being too busy to worry about their own relationship. Kirk spent most of his time in mountain mining camps, and Bea, temporarily setting aside her own dreams of a great mansion, supervised the building of not only the bank and the mint, but also the warehouses, which would hold more Kirkland merchandise hauled in by wagon train in the spring of 1860. She also helped form a Ladies Union Aid Society, planning social events that could be advertised in the Rocky Mountain News, making Denver appear to be a growing, civilized community, in spite of trouble in the streets.

  The country was on the verge of civil war, and although most of Denver stood staunchly for the Union, enough Southern sympathizers existed to make trouble, and fights became more frequent. Bea refused to let the “silly war” affect her plans. She dove into more development, hiring a contractor to build one of Denver’s first hotels, a three-story structure called, of course, the Kirkland Hotel.

  Seeing her last name on the sign in front of the building gave Bea great pleasure. Just as Kirk had promised, she was already known as one of the “great ladies of Denver,” and the money she and Kirk had brought to town was a source of envy. “First money,” Bea liked to call it. Other wealthy investors were coming to Denver, but the Kirklands were indeed a cornerstone of the city. For once Bea had to admit Kirk had been right about something involving the family business. He had also made some wise mining purchases and had set up two stamp mills, one near Pikes Peak.

  Mining engineers were coming to town, using Denver as a base for their operations. More than one hundred and fifty thousand people moved in and out of Denver in the first year Bea and Kirk settled there—merchants, jewelers, assayers, doctors, realtors, surveyors, people from all walks of life. Several restaurants, two small theaters and two schools were opened, although because Bea considered the streets still too dangerous for her children, she continued to have them privately tutored. Town lots, in which Bea and Kirk had invested heavily, jumped in value from tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars.

  In the spring of 1860, Bea hired men to farm several acres she had purchased south of Denver, directing them to plant potatoes. Kirk thought the project ridiculous, but in the fall they made a profit of thirty-five thousand dollars selling the potatoes to the thousands of hungry miners who paid ungodly prices for everything they used or ate.

  Denver’s biggest problem was that everyone seemed too busy getting rich to concentrate on law and order or to pool their ideas into making the town more organized and civilized. Bea and Kirk worked hard with Bill Byers to that end, but to no avail. The general goal of most was to get rich quick, and to hell with the city.

  By the spring of 1861, Colorado had officially become a territory. The first governor sent by the government, William Gilpin, an aristocrat from Pennsylvania, found a treeless, dusty town with littered streets lined with over seven hundred thousand dollars worth of construction, a good share of them saloons. A few lawyers had come to town, and although most people didn’t trust lawyers, Bea had the foresight to form a law firm bearing her family’s name. She hired two middle-aged attorneys from New York to start the new enterprise. They were family men with good reputations and proof of considerable schooling. Already, Bea could see that the Kirkland investments were becoming more than she could handle alone. She needed trusted men who could help her keep track of the income and outflow.

  She organized the various Kirkland businesses into one central company called Kirkland Enterprises, appointing herself and Kirk as co-chairmen, making sure she kept full rights to sign any and all legal documents, since Kirk was gone most of the time. Other businessmen soon learned to take her seriously, in spite of their belief that the business world was no place for a woman.

  It was not without some guilt that Bea realized she had practically no time for the children. She sat down with them nearly every night to explain what she’d been doing—all new developments in the family businesses—trying to instill in them the importance of the responsibilities they would one day inherit. She seldom had a word of love for any of them, or a question about how their day had been, or an inquiry about whether or not they were happy. There was only instructions in how to behave properly, how to represent the Kirkland name. Bea was simply too wrapped up in her work to see that the children neither understood nor cared about Kirkland Enterprises.

  John became more withdrawn, and Elly, who was allowed anything and everything she wanted, became even more unbearable. Irene was simply lonely, missing her father. She was allowed little time for riding, Bea saw to that. But Irene never failed to sneak in a few moments every day to go out and talk to Sierra, brushing down her horse, feeding and watering him. She had begged her father several times to take her with him to the mining camps, but always the answer was no.

  “Those camps are no place for a beautiful, proper young lady,” Bea insisted. “You don’t understand about men, Irene, especially when they’ve been up in the mountains alone for months at a time. And the women who live in those camps are not the kind of women you ever want to talk to or be seen with.”

  Her mother always glanced at Kirk when she repeated that, and Kirk always surrendered to Bea’s wishes. Irene still sensed a terrible loneliness in the man, even though he had come back to this land that he loved so much. Sometimes she feared her father would ride off alone into the mountains and never come back, and she wondered if her mother had the same fears.

  Bea Kirkland seemed to be working herself into a near frenzy building the Kirkland fortune, as though she was afraid someone would come along and take it all away from her, or that she might be left alone to fend for herself and the children. As Irene matured, she came to understand that things were not quite right between her parents, and she was becoming more and more confused about what love and marriage were supposed to be. Sarah Wells, their tutor, seemed very happy with her husband. She got a certain light in her eyes when she talked about him. It was a light Irene had never seen in Bea’s eyes.

  It was mid-1861 when Irene began to understand the seriousness of the trouble in town. Bea kept her children shielded from most of the difficulties. When it was necessary to shop, she took them to town in closed carriages under escort. One night, when the whole family was together for supper, Kirk brought up the need for law and order in Denver.

  “Things are getting worse,” he told Bea. “There’s been trouble with the Indians—white men attacking Indian women in the camps down along the creek.”

  “Not in front of the children, Kirk.”

  “You want them to be a part of building Denver, you’d better make them understand what’s going on,” he answered. “The people around here have no right treating the Indians that way.”

  Bea glanced at Irene, fifteen years old now and getting more beautiful every day. Again Irene saw the strange fear in her mother’s eyes. “The Indians should be urged to leave,” Bea answered. “It’s obvious the rest of us aren’t going anywhere, and if they insist on lingering here, these things are going to happen.”

  Kirk gave her a chastising look, and Irene knew the man did not approve of her attitude toward the Indians. “You know how I feel about them.”

  “Yes. All too well,” Bea answered, giving no further explanation. The two of them exchanged a look that only confused Irene.

  Kirk sighed and broke a piece of bread in half. “It isn’t just the Indians, either. It’s those bummers. Charley Harrison and those Southern sympathizers of his down at the Criterion Saloon are getting bolder all the time. Harrison is nothing but a crime boss in this town. Seems he’s using strong-arm tactics to take over other saloons and some of the whore—” he hesitated, “some of the questionable houses. You already know Harrison h
imself killed a man just for trying to sit in on his card game, and no one did a damn thing about it.”

  “Kirk, this kind of talk is going to get you hurt.”

  “I don’t care. Somebody has to do something. You want this to be a civilized town, don’t you?”

  Bea sighed. They rarely slept together anymore, and she knew that financially she could get along quite well without him, yet the thought of something happening to Kirk pained her deeply. In spite of her independence, he remained in an inexplicable, abstract way, her strength. “Of course I do,” she answered, glancing at the children then. “Kirk is right,” she told them. “You should understand what is happening. This is why I don’t want any of you going to town alone.” She looked at Kirk. “What are you going to do?”

  He leaned back, always looking uncomfortable and out of place in the hard, high-backed dining chair. “Some of us are thinking of forming a vigilante committee. Governor Gilpin isn’t doing a damn thing about any of this, so we’re acting on our own. The bummers have been threatening Byers for printing stories against them. We’ve got to take action. We’re thinking of calling ourselves the Committee of Safety. With no courts or other form of law, it’s the best we can do. I hope we can get rid of Gilpin and get a better territorial governor who will help us in these things.” He looked at the children. “This conversation is just between us right now. Understood? All three of you keep your mouths closed.” He gave Elly the longest look.

  “Yes, sir,” they all answered.

  Bea looked at him. “Be careful, Kirk.”

  He grinned a little. “I’ve fought bears and Indians. This won’t be nearly as bad. Besides, it’s not me alone. There are several others willing to go in on this.”

  “Do what you think is necessary.” Bea dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. “You’re right, of course. We do need some law and order around here. Perhaps by next spring, when Irene turns sixteen, we can have a coming-out party for her, and celebrate a safer Denver at the same time.”