Montana Dreaming

by Judy Duarte

  “That was taken in front of the town hall,” Tildy explained.

  Brad brought the picture to Emily so she could study it, too.

  “We’ve been trying to find records from back then,” Emily offered.

  “It’s easier to find stories,” Tildy responded.

  “What kind of stories?” Brad asked.

  For the first time all evening, Tildy hesitated. “The kind of stories that are passed down in a family.”

  Emily could see Brad’s focus intensify as he set the picture on the coffee table and seated himself once more. “Can you tell me about them?”

  “I thought you wanted to know about the history of Thunder Canyon. There’s a legend—”

  Before she went off on a tangent, he intervened. “Caleb’s ancestors are part of the history of Thunder Canyon, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, but there are some things people don’t talk about much.”

  “Such as?” he prodded.

  Gently Emily asked, “Isn’t it better for true history to come out rather than something that’s made up just because it sounds better?”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Tildy’s gaze met Brad’s. “My grandmother used to tell me stories. She wasn’t the type of woman to spread rumors.”

  “What stories did she tell you?”

  Again Tildy hesitated. Finally she admitted, “That Amos Douglas wasn’t the pillar of this community everyone thought he was. He abused his wife, and Catherine was afraid of him.”

  Tildy’s statement landed in the room with a thud, and Emily realized the Douglases might not be what they seemed. She held her breath and waited for Tildy to tell her story.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I guess I should start at the beginning.” Tildy’s gaze swerved from Brad to Emily. “I’m still not sure I should be telling you any of this.”

  “If it relieves your conscience any,” Brad interjected, “I had already heard the rumor that Amos abused his wife.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Tildy asked.

  “The old prospector, Mickey Latimer.”

  After Tildy thought about that for a few moments, she gave a shrug. “Stories came down to him, too, but like me he kept quiet. Now I don’t think he remembers what he tells people and what he doesn’t. What else did he say?”

  “Not much else. When I asked him about the gold mine, he would just repeat, ‘Women have the power.’”

  “I don’t know about that. Women in general had a tough time of it back then. And many times they had to hide their true character.”

  “I don’t understand,” Emily said.

  “My grandmother and Catherine Douglas were friends—confidantes, as they called it back then. Catherine told Grandma things she never told another living soul. She put up a good front, and few people saw through that. My grandma always told me, though, that Catherine lacked the courage to change her life.”

  “You mean by leaving Mr. Douglas?” Emily asked.

  “Precisely.” Tildy pointed to the picture on the bookshelf. “Over and over again my grandmother offered to take her in, but she simply said Amos would hurt my grandma and her family if she did that. Catherine wouldn’t bring that harm on them. She was probably right. Amos was a scoundrel. He was wealthy and had a lot of power in these parts. And there wasn’t an ounce of kindness in him. The way he got that gold mine was immoral.”

  “So he did own it?” Brad asked.

  “It wasn’t that simple. I don’t know if you’ve heard talk about Lily Divine.”

  “Her picture hangs in the Hitching Post.” Brad looked totally intrigued now.

  Tildy wrinkled her nose. “Yes, it does, and I’m not sure how all that came about. But I do know she wasn’t a prostitute or a madam.”

  “What was she?” Emily prompted.

  “She was a lady trying to find her way in a world of men. She was smart and she was one of the few women to own land. She owned that mine.”

  At their stunned silence, Tildy continued, “She had also inherited a house from a madam. There were prostitutes around, of course, and lots of times the johns mistreated them. When that happened, Lily would nurse them back to health again.”

  “I can see how she’d get the reputation of being a madam,” Brad muttered.

  “The women in town knew the true story. But as I said, women weren’t as vocal then as they are now. Pretty soon other women besides prostitutes came to her. Women who were being mistreated. But times got tough, and in order not to lose the hotel she had built across the street, she had to mortgage the gold mine property. She’d known Amos Douglas had his eye on the abandoned Queen of Hearts mine. She knew she couldn’t get a loan through the bank, but she might be able to get one from Amos and she did. Only there were strict terms involved and when she missed one payment, he foreclosed.”

  Brad’s gaze met Emily’s and they thought about the promissory note that Caleb held in his possession.

  “One payment and that old buzzard took the deed for the mine from her,” Tildy related again indignantly.

  “So Caleb does own it.”

  “It would seem so.” Tildy sighed. “But I haven’t told you the rest of the story.”

  Already on the edge of her chair, Emily found the history fascinating.

  “One night, after all that happened, Amos went on a particularly bad rampage and Catherine got the brunt of it. She was pretty badly beaten. She didn’t want to go to friends or relatives because she was afraid Amos would hurt them in some way, too. Even knowing what happened with the mine, she went to Lily because she thought she was her last resort. And Lily didn’t turn her away. That woman had a kind heart. She nursed Catherine back to health and tried to convince her to leave Amos. But so many women in that position do the same thing—they stay. Catherine said she had to go back home. She didn’t feel she had a choice. She told Lily she’d be grateful to her till her dying day, but then she returned to her husband.”

  “How sad,” Emily murmured.

  “I’ll say it was. When I was younger, I would go through that old trunk up in my attic and think about the life women had back then.”

  “What’s in the trunk in your attic?” Brad asked.

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you. When Amos died, Catherine became rich in her own right. Of course, she left everything to their son—everything except her personal possessions. Her will stipulated that they go to my grandmother. So up in the trunk I have some of her clothes, pictures like that photograph over there, combs she wore in her hair. I keep her antique jewelry in my jewelry box, and I’ve worn it all my life. My grandmother gave it to me when I was a teenager. I’d be glad to get it if you’d like to see it.”

  “I’d love to see it,” Emily said enthusiastically.

  “This trunk,” Brad mused, “you say it’s in your attic?”

  “Yes, it is. I’ve been wanting to give it to the historical society, but my niece hasn’t found time to bring it down and I certainly can’t get to the attic anymore.”

  “Would you mind if Emily and I look through it?”

  With narrowed eyes, Tildy studied them both closely. Then she smiled. “You seem like upright young folk to me. Go ahead. By the time you return I’ll have the jewelry out and more hot water for tea.”

  After Tildy showed Brad and Emily to the stairs, she instructed them, “If you go into the smallest bedroom, last one on the left, you’ll see a closet. Just open the door and the stairs to the attic are in there. Be careful. They’re narrow.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Brad assured her.

  In a matter of minutes Brad and Emily found their way to the attic door. At the foot of the stairs, Brad flicked on the light switch.

  He went up first and led Emily to a corner where an old trunk sat. The attic smelled musty, and there was a layer of dust across the trunk.

  “No one’s been up here in a while,” Brad said as he examined the latch.

  The trunk looked to be made of wood with leather stretched
on top. It had hand-sewn edges. “Amazing.” Brad ran his hand over it. “The historical society would treasure this.”

  After Brad lifted the lid, they peered inside. The trunk was about five feet long and three feet wide. Inside, clothes and photographs were tumbled together as if in its trip up the stairs everything had gotten mixed up. On the left side of the trunk, the material lining the inside was torn.

  “Maybe someone could restore this,” Emily murmured.

  Seeing tears other places, Brad shrugged. “They might have to reline it.”

  Seated on the floor across from each other, they went through everything piece by piece. Emily held up a blue dress that had faded to purple. Its neckline was low cut, its sleeves full and puffy.

  “What do you think?” she asked with a coy smile.

  “I think you would have been the belle of the ball.”

  Brad’s voice was low and deep and sent a thrill up her spine. There had been so much distance between them since she’d told him she wasn’t pregnant over a week ago. Each day her love for him was growing and she wanted to be close to him, not have a wall between them. Yet that wall was protecting her.

  “What’s wrong?” Brad asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Emily?”

  “I was just thinking about…us.”

  “And the fact that you’re not pregnant?”

  She nodded.

  He looked as if he were going to lean toward her then. He looked as if he might kiss her. Instead he turned toward the trunk once more. “We’d better finish with this or Tildy will think we stole everything and escaped through the window.”

  As they sorted through each photograph, they studied the old clothes, the faces, the buildings in the background. Emily found a hand mirror of tarnished silver, a lady’s parasol and a flimsy pouch made of silk hidden in the folds of a dress. Both the dress and the purse had once been green, but now they were faded and yellowed with age. The bottom corner of the purse was torn.

  About to lay it back inside the trunk, Emily heard something crackle. She ran her thumb and forefinger over the silk.

  “What is it?” Brad asked.

  “I don’t know. I think there’s something inside.”

  Prying open the drawstrings, she carefully slipped her hand in and pulled out another photograph. It was a cameo portrait of Catherine Douglas. Emily recognized her from the photograph downstairs. “She was a beautiful woman.”

  “And in the end apparently she got everything Amos owned.”

  “I wonder what happened to her? Tildy didn’t say.”

  Emily laid the photograph on top of all the others. “I guess we should repack the trunk.”

  Carefully folding one of the dresses, Emily laid it in the bottom and folded another on top of it. The billowing skirt raised dust. Her fingers brushed the inside of the trunk as she lifted her hand to rub her nose, but her watch caught on the material of the lining and ripped it more.

  “I’m ruining a historical treasure,” she moaned.

  “That lining is falling apart from old age.”

  Examining the new tear, worried about it, Emily thought she glimpsed something a different color than the wood. Hoping she wasn’t going to do more harm than good, she eased her finger under the torn material. There was an envelope sticking to the wood. She didn’t want to tear that, too, and she carefully extricated it.

  Brad had been studying the photographs, but now he glanced up. “What do you have?”

  “I don’t know. It must have slipped behind the torn lining.”

  The envelope was old, brittle and yellow. Emily expected it to be a letter, maybe one Tildy and her mother had missed when they’d looked through everything. Who knew how long it had been lost inside the lining?

  Reaching her hand down along the lining once more, she felt something else. It was thin, but she could feel its edge. Slipping her hand farther inside, her fingertips touched paper. Drawing it out, she saw it was a photograph of a man with a bushy mustache and a cowboy hat shading his brow. She had no idea who the man was, but wondered if it could be Amos Douglas. She showed it to Brad, and while he was studying it she opened the flap of the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper inside. It was folded in half.

  She saw Queen of Hearts. She saw mineral rights. Then she saw the transfer notice still in the envelope. When she spotted the line with the name of the landowner, she gasped. It was Lily Divine.

  “What’s wrong?” Brad asked.

  After Emily handed him the deed, she perused the transfer notice and the date. In amazement she said, “Catherine Douglas transferred the mine back to Lily Divine!”

  “Let me see that,” Brad demanded.

  After he examined all of it—Catherine’s signature, the official embossing mark—he gave a whoop of success. “We did it, Emily! We found the deed.”

  Before she knew what was happening, he’d taken her into his arms and hugged her. She lifted her mouth to his and he lowered his to hers. The musty attic seemed to be heaven on earth. Brad kissed her with the pent-up passion he’d been suppressing for days, and she kissed him back with the same overload of desire she’d been denying. Neither seemed to be able to stop the onslaught of needs unsatisfied as they kissed harder and deeper and longer.

  Then Brad was breaking away, looking down at her as if he didn’t want to end the kisses but knew he had to.

  “I’d better be careful with this.” He waved the deed in front of them. “It survived this many years—I don’t want anything to happen to it now.”

  No, of course he didn’t.

  “Emily?” his expression was suddenly sober.

  “What?”

  “This means we’ll be leaving Thunder Canyon.” He seemed to be waiting for her reaction.

  The idea rolled through her and she felt shaken by it. Everything would change when they returned to Chicago. Everything. She wouldn’t even be his secretary anymore.

  Forcing a bright smile, she said, “You succeeded. Your father will be thrilled.”

  But that didn’t bring an answering smile from him. “Yes, I guess he will be. But Caleb won’t. He just lost a gold mine. Let’s put all this away and go down and tell Tildy what we found.”

  Ten minutes later, they were showing Tildy the document.

  “Land sakes!” she exclaimed, then sank into her favorite chair. “Lily Divine’s the owner. If that don’t beat all. My eyes aren’t too keen anymore, but I think that’s the year Catherine Douglas died.”

  “How did she die?” Brad asked.

  “There was an epidemic of pneumonia that year. One day she was perfectly healthy, a week later she was dead.”

  “Maybe she had the deed transferred and never had the chance to give it to Lily,” Brad surmised.

  “She probably thought she was righting wrongs done to both of them. If Amos swindled Lily out of the mine to begin with, and Catherine was grateful for the care Lily had given her, it makes sense.”

  “The deed will have to be authenticated, of course.” Brad added, “But I think we found the true owner of the Queen of Hearts gold mine. Do you know if she has any descendants?”

  “She does,” Tildy said with excitement. “Lisa Martin, her great-great-granddaughter.”

  “Do you know her?” Emily asked.

  “No, believe it or not, we’ve never officially met. I know who she is. She has a pet-sitting business.” Tildy examined the deed again. “This is so exciting. She just inherited a gold mine.”

  “Don’t go spreading that rumor yet,” Brad said with a wink. “The first thing I’m going to do is find an expert to have the deed authenticated. If it’s as old as I think it is, then we’ll inform Lisa Martin that she just inherited the Queen of Hearts.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” Tildy said to Brad. “Caleb Douglas is going to be mighty put out about this, and that’s an understatement.”

  “Caleb Douglas already has enough money and holdings to keep his descendants happ
y for a few generations. If they don’t go through it like water.”

  “A man like Caleb Douglas always wants more,” Tildy warned Brad. “Would you like to save the jewelry for another time?”

  “Yes. I think we’d better be going. Lisa Martin is going to owe you a great debt.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You could have tossed that trunk a long time ago.”

  Tildy gestured to Emily. “She’s the one who had the good sense to look inside the lining. That tells me she’s not deceived by outside appearances. You’d better hang on to this one,” Tildy advised Brad with a wink.

  Knowing she was blushing to the roots of her hair, Emily turned away and picked up her coat. Brad would be letting go of her, not holding on to her. She knew that in her soul.

  Less than a half hour later, Brad and Emily were closeted with Caleb in his den. Brad handed him the deed with the transfer notice.

  “This is a fake,” Caleb boomed.

  “I don’t think so,” Brad countered evenly. “Somehow it had slipped inside the torn lining of a trunk that dates back to the gold-mine era.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “Tildy assures us she inherited that trunk from her grandmother. She cherished everything that’s inside it.”

  “Then why’s it still in her attic?” Caleb blustered, looking as if he wanted to tear up the document in his hands.

  In a flash, Brad took the document from Caleb. Emily knew he’d seen the same intent in Caleb Douglas’s eyes.

  “I’ll hold on to this for safekeeping. Once we have it authenticated, we’ll know what to do next.”

  Paling, Caleb looked trapped. “Lily Divine was a prostitute.”

  “That’s not the story Tildy tells. She got that reputation because she helped prostitutes and watched over them like a mother hen, protecting them from abusive johns, caring for them when something bad happened. Apparently Lily Divine was a woman of character, ahead of her time. If this document pans out, her great-great-granddaughter, Lisa Martin, will inherit the gold mine.”

  “No,” Caleb interrupted forcefully. “That mine belongs in our family.”