“I never saw such bushes,” Nit said, as she began filling her own pail. “We can pick them all summer long.”
“Not so long as you’d think. There’s the bears. Then if we get an early snow, the bushes freeze, and a petrificated berry isn’t worth eating.”
Nit made a face in agreement, then examined the berries in her hand to make sure she hadn’t picked a bad one.
The two worked quickly in the hot sun, Nit stopping every so often to eat a handful of raspberries. By the time Nit had filled one bucket, Hennie was almost finished with her second one. The old woman hurried to top off the bucket, then rose and stretched her back and asked, “Would you eat? I made us butter-and-sugar sandwiches, and there’s pickles and hard-boiled eggs. I thought berries would do for the hereafter, but I guess we’ve already ate our fill.”
The two women carried the pails to a spot shaded by a cliff and sat down on boulders left behind eons ago by a glacier. Nit scratched the lichen on a rocky outcrop with her fingertip, holding the gray flakes to her eye to study them. Then she picked up an orange rock that was imprinted with the black outline of a leaf, its veins making a delicate tracery, like lace. “I had me a scrap of material like that once,” Nit said.
“It’s a fossil,” Hennie told her. “That’s a real leaf that got laid on the rock back when these mountains were young. You take it with you for a curiosity.” Hennie laid out the dinner on napkins and placed the rock in the bottom of the empty pail.
“Would you have it?” Nit asked.
“Lordy, I’ve got me too many rocks to count, ore samples that Jake brought home, mostly. I never could bear to throw them out. You’ll find near’ every house in Middle Swan has its collection of ore.” Hennie handed Nit a sandwich, and the two leaned back against the rock wall and ate their dinner, handing the canteen of water back and forth. Hennie wondered if she ought to get rid of her ore samples, along with the other useless mining debris she’d accumulated over the years—drill bits, miner’s candlesticks, Jake’s leather hat that he wore underground, his pick and shovel, his lunch bucket. That was all junk that Mae would have to throw away someday when Hennie was gone. But it would hurt Hennie’s heart to get rid of the things now. She’d leave them locked up in her house when she left Middle Swan.
“I never saw so many of those flowers. What do you call them?” Nit asked, pointing to a clump of blue and white blossoms.
“Columbine. In spring, there’s more of them up here than you can stir with a stick. They’re almost past blooming now.” She wondered if Fort Madison had columbine. Most likely it did, although not mountain fields full of them.
“I guess they’re the prettiest flowers I ever saw, pretty as their name.”
“Jake found this place—just this time of year. He was out one morning with his pick and shovel and was so tickled at all the raspberries he saw that he ran back to Middle Swan and taken Mae and me up here, said he’d hit paydirt.” Hennie smiled to herself. “But I knew before we started out that it was a bit of foolishness, because you don’t take a lard bucket with you to carry ore. I always said this berry patch was one of Jake’s best strikes.”
She chuckled at the memory. She and Jake and Mae would go there on a Sunday, after church—back when Hennie attended services—and pick the raspberries. Once, when Mae had stayed at home, Hennie and Jake had gone raspberrying by themselves and fooled around up there, not realizing until they were finished that their skin was stained red from where they’d lain on raspberries that had spilled out of the bucket. Hennie glowed at the recollection that her marriage had been good in that way. She hoped the girl’s marriage was just as fine, then told herself what the young couple did together was none of her business. Still, that business could be a good thing for a young girl, could help the girl bear her troubles.
Nit opened her sandwich and licked the sugar sprinkled over the butter, then stuck the two pieces of bread back together and bit off almost a quarter of the sandwich. Hennie watched the girl, amused. Hennie herself took tiny bites, chewing carefully. As a girl, she’d been taught fine manners—always wiped her mouth with a napkin instead of her sleeve, chewed with her mouth closed, didn’t talk while she ate. Once, Hennie might have been accused of putting on airs in that rough camp, where miners drank their coffee from saucers and stirred their meat and potatoes and root vegetables together before leaning over their plates and using spoons to shovel the mixture into their mouths. But Hennie was gracious, never commented on anyone’s poor table manners or adopted affectations like Monalisa Pinto, who stuck out her little finger when she drank her coffee. Over the years, more than one woman had watched Hennie eat and copied her, and it might be said that table manners in Middle Swan were a good deal better than they would have been without Hennie Comfort’s influence.
Nit ate the soft middle of her sandwich, then looked at the crusts, debating whether to eat them. “What you told Zepha, about breaking the spell if she tears up the shirt for a quilt, is that true?”
Hennie chuckled. “Now, dearie, you wouldn’t want to make a liar of me, would you?” She added, “Did you ever hear such nonsense? Imagine, a woman thinking a man would leave her over a broken needle.”
“I don’t know,” Nit said doubtfully. “I swan there’s truth in what old women say. At home, there’s a granny-lady told me if I shook a new quilt out the front door, I’d marry the first man who came through that doorway, and was that so? Hello yes!” She chewed on a bit of crust and swallowed, then took another bite, because the bread was good. “Of course, I waited until I saw Dick turn in at the gate to shake the quilt, because he was the only boy I ever wanted to marry with.” The two women laughed.
“He’s a good fellow, your man,” Hennie said. She didn’t know Dick well, but she liked him. The way he treated Nit put her in mind of Billy.
“Dick didn’t blame me for losing the baby. I guess I’m lucky in that way,” Nit said, as Hennie covered the girl’s freckled hand with her own gnarled one. They were silent a moment, until Nit said, “You never told me much about Mr. Comfort.”
“Didn’t I?” Hennie looked off toward the Tenmile Range. “I guess there’s not so much to say. He was as good a man as ever was. And I loved him, yes. He loved me right back. I don’t suppose there was a better marriage in Colorado than what we had. Most of the time. The only thing I regret is he died too soon.” Hennie shook her head to rid herself of the sorrow in her heart, then looked out over the Tenmile Range a minute before she began her story.
It was nineteen and one that Jake Comfort was killed in a cave-in at the Silver Night, the mine that he and Humpy Moore leased. That mine was silvanite ore—“silver night,” they called it. Jake set the charges, and Hennie always wondered if he hadn’t counted them when they went off. Of course, it could have been something else, because the mine was a bailing-wire job. The timbering looked as if it’d been done by a one-arm cooper, and the pockety ore wasn’t stable. But most likely, it was the counting. The charges blew, and Jake worked his way into the back of the drift, and maybe he hit that last charge with his pick. Hennie heard it, heard the first ones go off, too, counted them and said to herself, “That’s not Jake, because he always sets one more charge.” Then a while later, she heard the last one.
She wasn’t worried, however, because Jake was always careful. She didn’t know a thing was wrong until Humpy and some of the miners working over at the Big Dog carried Jake down the trail to the house and put him in bed, right there in the room off the kitchen. Hennie always kept that bed turned down, just in case. Jake died there. He never woke up.
She didn’t have a chance to tell him good-bye, but then, in a mining town, couples said their farewells every morning—just in case. A woman counted herself lucky when her man stepped through the door of an evening. And Hennie had. Each night when Jake came home, she’d given a prayer of thanks.
Hennie always wondered if Jake had been drinking at the Silver Night that day, because he was bad to drink, and she knew well en
ough that when liquor was in, sense was out. Humpy told her Jake was stone sober, but he’d have denied the drinking even if Jake had been roaring drunk. Jake’s drinking was a grievement to Hennie, and she always felt she’d failed Jake, for wasn’t it a wife’s duty to look after her husband? But Hennie knew in her heart that nagging wouldn’t have done anything. Only Jake could have made himself keep away from the liquor. It was the war that made him that way, she thought. Yes, she blamed the war. Jake had seen too much of killing. He’d been at Shiloh and Gettysburg, but he wouldn’t ever talk about what happened there. Might be it would have helped him if he had, might have stopped him getting liquored up. He’d wake in the night crying, “Blood, blood!” and Hennie would hold him until he went back to sleep. Sometimes, he’d grab on to her and beg, “Don’t leave me. Don’t ever leave me.”
“Why, what in the world makes you think I would?” she asked once, but he didn’t reply, and she didn’t ask again.
Jake never went on a bender around Hennie and Mae. Instead, he’d slip out to the Gold Pan or the Prospector and drink for three or four days, and he’d be good for nothing for a week. Then he’d dry out and promise he’d never touch a drop again, and he wouldn’t, not for a month or two, sometimes six months, once a full year.
Jake signed the pledge once. Somewhere, Hennie had a little album just like the ones schoolgirls kept for their friends to sign their names and write sentiments. Jake’s was a brown leather book with “Temperance Pledge Autograph Album” stamped on it in gold. He had signed it, and so had half a dozen others. The pledge might have done the rest some good, but it hadn’t helped Jake. That was because he’d signed it for Hennie’s sake. Hennie hadn’t asked him to, because she never held with such promises. She knew that Jake didn’t want to stop drinking, and signing his name in a book was just a fool thing.
Hennie stared off at the blue mountains of the far range, their peaks crusted with fringes of snow that would never melt. Then she looked down at her bucket and picked out an aspen leaf and a gray feather that were mixed with the raspberries. “My, I don’t know why I go on like that about Jake drinking. There isn’t a man in Middle Swan who doesn’t take a toddy now and then, and I myself put my tongue to it on occasion. Without the liquor, Jake Comfort was just almost a perfect man. In my mind, I never saw Billy getting old, but the day I married Jake, I knew he was a man for my old age—not that we ever got there together.” Hennie didn’t add that until her husband died, she’d believed that God had given her Jake for her lifetime, to make up for the deaths of Billy and Sarah and the half-formed babies He’d taken. She’d learned then that you couldn’t count on bargains you made with the Almighty.
Hennie was glad Jake had lived long enough to see Mae married, she said. “And he left me better fixed than most widows. He had a pretty good education, although I don’t know how much schooling he got. Enough to know to put aside the money he made from selling claims. He was a good saver. He wasn’t stingy, but he was savin’. He said all the Comforts were savin’. I’ve tried to be myself.”
So she’d never had to accept charity or take in boarders or do laundry after Jake crossed over, she continued. She wasn’t rich like Tom Earley, “But I have plenty of what I have, and it’s enough for me to live to be a hundred and two.” Hennie chuckled and leaned forward. “Now some would like to know what I’ve just told you about my money, because there’s been wonderment about it. So I hope you will keep the information intact and not notify them.”
Nit made a cross over her heart and promised. “I wouldn’t gossip about you for nothing, Mrs. Comfort. I’ve never said nary a word of what you told me of a personal nature, even to Dick.”
“I had that feeling about you,” Hennie said. She moved her knees a little to get out the stiffness, which meant she was about to stand up.
The girl knew that, too, and as she was enjoying sitting in the shade of the cliff and was not ready to finish the berrying just then, she asked, “Why didn’t you marry again? I expect there’s twice as many men here as girls, maybe more. Why didn’t you, Mrs. Comfort?”
“Lots more,” Hennie agreed, amused. She thought about the question for a time before she answered it. Why hadn’t she married a third time? She’d wondered herself often enough and never found a good answer. There were plenty of men who’d have had her, and she was fond of several, but the truth was, she’d never felt just right about any of the ones who’d come courting. She’d had two men she’d loved more than a cat loves sweet milk, and she wasn’t willing to settle for less. But she didn’t tell that to the girl. “Oh, who’d want me, except for some old batch after Jake’s money?”
Nit reached into her pail and tossed aside a green raspberry before she took half a dozen ripe berries that she lined up in her hand and fed one by one into her mouth, as if she were nibbling on a necklace of red pearls. “What about that Mr. Earley? He said he’d have married you if you hadn’t already got married to Mr. Comfort.”
Hennie laughed. “Go on with you. That’s just a way of talking.” The old woman felt her face grow red but told herself that was just the hot sun.
“Does he have a wife already?” she asked, not looking at Hennie, for she was surely prying.
“No, he never married.”
“You think maybe he’s a sissy?”
“Lordy, no.” Hennie didn’t elaborate, but she knew Tom liked women. He was never a wild hog, but he’d had a way with the girls. She’d seen him come out of the Willows often enough when he was young. She was walking past the hookhouse once and watched Tom turn out at the gate and, bold as brass, she asked him what he was doing there. Instead of being embarrassed, he laughed and replied that if Hennie didn’t know, she had no business living in a mining town.
“Mr. Earley seems to like you fine. He wouldn’t be after your money, because he’s already rich,” Nit insisted. “And if you married him, you could live in a big house with somebody to do the washing and have your own automobile, a Packard maybe, and a diamond ring.”
“So, you think I’m a gold digger, do you?” Hennie chuckled. When Nit protested, Hennie waved her off. “If you marry for money, every bit of it has wings and will fly away. I’ve seen that happen. Of course, that’s not to say Tom Earley wouldn’t be a fine catch even if he didn’t have a brownie to his name.” There’d been others who had wondered at Hennie and Tom not marrying, and sometimes, she had herself. “The truth is I’m not so sure it would have worked out between us, and it would have spoiled a good friendship. At my age, friendship means more than a diamond ring. Besides, I’m too old to be interfered with.”
The girl stared at Hennie, not accepting the answer, for at her age, a diamond ring meant a great deal. When Nit refused to look away, Hennie sighed. “I guess you can keep a secret, although if I tell you this one, I’m afraid you’ll think it looks unreasonable. I admit I don’t know the truth of it. But I’ve studied about it, and I believe Tom Earley loved one woman in his life and still does. I know when you’re young, it sounds like foolishment to think a body would spend his whole life mooning over a person he’ll never have, but I believe Tom Earley never got out of heart with her, whoever she was. Like I say, this is not a story to be repeated, for it’s only what I think, and maybe that makes me a fibber.”
Nit nodded, accepting Hennie’s conditions, then handed the old woman a handful of raspberries before settling in against a rock.
“There’s not much to say here,” Hennie warned her. “I think Tom Earley knew this woman before he came to Middle Swan, and he couldn’t marry her. I guess it’s enough for him to live with his whole life. Some men are like that. There’s not but one woman for them, even if she’s disappeared and gone.”
“Did she die?”
Hennie shook her head. “I believe she was already married and wouldn’t leave her husband. Or couldn’t. I think it was something like that.”
“Oh.” Nit frowned, thinking that over, for she was young and not wed long and unused to the complications
of love.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Hennie said.
Tom and his brother, Moses, and Moses’s wife, Jessie, came to Middle Swan from Mingo, out east in Colorado Territory, looking for gold, arriving not long after Hennie did. In the few weeks the Earleys lived in Middle Swan, Hennie and Jessie became friends. Jessie taught Hennie about herbs, because she was a doctor of sorts who specialized in women’s ailments. Not until Jessie moved away did Hennie realize the woman was an abortionist, but Hennie never thought less of her for that.
Jessie and Moses were wild and fun-loving, but there was an air of melancholy about Tom. When Hennie asked Jessie about it, the woman replied she thought Tom was sweet on the wife of a homesteader in Mingo. “I don’t know what happened with those two, but I expect it was something, because Tom just gave up his homestead, the crops in the ground, and came out here with us,” Jessie said. “She was a woman of refinement.”
Hennie thought that was so, because Tom once told her he missed talking about books and politics, the way he had with a lady in Mingo. Tom stopped often at the Comfort house, where he and Jake discussed mining, but Tom seemed to like better the times when Jake was away and he could speak of poetry and literature, while Hennie sat with her quilt squares. Once, after he’d observed Jake squeeze Hennie’s hand and kiss the top of her head and she’d returned the affection with a smile, Tom told Hennie that he knew he’d never find someone who loved him as much as she did her husband. “I thought I did once,” he said, and stopped.
“And what?” Hennie asked, for she was curious. But Tom didn’t answer.
Another time, he asked Hennie, “Why does a woman stay with a man who betrayed her?”
“Why do you ask?”
Tom caught himself and replied, “Oh, it’s something I read in a book.”
Tom and Moses didn’t find pay dirt in Middle Swan (although Moses returned a few years later and discovered the Yellowcat). So being restless, they packed up and went to Montana. But Montana was a bust, too, and Tom left his brother and moved on to the Comstock, where he found a little piece of ground that hadn’t been claimed and struck silver. One of the big mine owners threatened to sue him, saying the vein apexed on his property, and that meant he owned Tom’s claim. Instead of fighting, Tom sold out and used the money to start his own mining equipment manufacturing company in Illinois. He made more money mining the miners than he would have if he’d struck gold.
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