“I was all right early on, but by the time I came home, the street wasn’t froze anymore, and the mud was deep enough to swallow me up,” Nealie explained. “Charlie told me a story about a man in the street in mud up to his neck.”
“And he was sitting on a horse.” Mrs. Travers waved her hand dismissively. “They tell it every year during runoff. It’s 1881, and Georgetown’s been here for twenty years. You’d think we’d have decent streets by now.” She paused. “So you waited on the corner until Charlie Dumas came along. Am I right?”
“You are.” Nealie didn’t look up, although she knew Mrs. Travers was staring at her. The widow had taken a personal interest in Charlie’s courtship and had told Nealie she’d best make up her mind soon or Charlie would find himself a girl who was not so particular. “I’d be real sorry to lose you, but I have to admit he’s a good man. He treats you like the Queen of Turkey,” she’d said.
“Then marry him yourself,” Nealie had retorted.
“I would, but he’s not partial to a woman old enough to be his mother. Besides, he means to marry you if he has to tear the stars out of heaven.”
Nealie had laughed, since she was good-natured and fond of the woman who was almost a mother to her.
Nealie wouldn’t have left home if her real mother had been alive. They had protected each other. But her mother had died, and after a year, Nealie had fled the farm in Missouri. She could have gone up the river to Fort Madison, Iowa, or even Galena, Illinois, but her pa likely would have found her and fetched her home—dragged her back was more like it, because she wouldn’t have gone willingly. So instead of running off to one of the neighboring towns, Nealie had saved up the coins she’d earned sewing for neighbors and working as a hired hand during harvest, supplemented them by stealing the money her father had put away for next year’s seed, and one day when she’d been sent into Hannibal for supplies, she’d purchased a train ticket to the place everyone was talking about—Denver. And then because she was afraid her father would follow her even there, she’d bought a ticket to go forty miles farther to Georgetown. She’d never heard of the place, but she’d always been partial to the name George. She’d thought it was a sign.
When she reached Georgetown, Nealie was bewildered. The depot was crowded with bearded men in muddy boots, talking and gesturing, noisy as schoolboys. Here and there stood frightened women, their hair covered by dirty squares of cotton, clutches of crying children clinging to their skirts. Those women babbled in languages Nealie didn’t understand. She saw men in tailored suits and starched shirts, soft felt hats on their heads, and she turned her face from them, because she had seen such in the gambling halls in Hannibal. And she knew to stay away from the women who were dressed in flashy clothes cut low in the front, their hair arranged in fanciful swirls. One of them looked over the girl and smiled through lips that were tinted an unnatural red, but Nealie didn’t smile back. She knew well enough about prostitutes, because her father had prophesied that if he didn’t beat the devil out of her, Nealie would become one of their sisterhood someday.
And then there was Lidie Travers. Nealie hadn’t noticed her, although the woman had seen Nealie as she climbed aboard the train in Denver, probably taken by the young woman’s odd looks. The woman had watched the girl, who looked like someone’s daughter or perhaps a bride. She saw Nealie step off the train in Georgetown and look around, lost, because until that moment, Nealie had not considered what she would do once she reached her destination. Her plan had been just to get away. The girl wondered if she could afford a room for the night, and she removed from her pocket the little string bag that served as a purse and began to count her money.
Just then, a man who’d been looking over the crowd spotted Nealie and moved toward her, all but hidden from her behind a fat woman who was shoving her way through the throng. As the man reached Nealie, his long fingers grabbed her purse, and he slid away through the disembarking passengers. Nealie was too startled to cry out, and the crook was nearly gone when a strong hand grasped his arm and wrenched it behind his back. “Thief!” Mrs. Travers called in a loud voice. “He stole this woman’s purse.” She held him, because Mrs. Travers was a strong woman; lifting iron pans and carrying trays of food had toughened her arms as much as if she’d worked with a hammer and drill. Within seconds, the purse snatcher was surrounded by a crowd of men, because even in that rough town, a robber was despised, especially one who preyed on women.
Two of the men hustled the thief off to jail, and Mrs. Travers returned the purse to Nealie. “It’s best not to be so public with your money,” she warned. “A place like this attracts the worst men there is.” Then when the girl looked alarmed, Mrs. Travers added, “The best men, too, but sometimes you can’t always tell the difference.”
Nealie thanked her. “Georgetown sounded so nice, the name and all.”
“You’re here because you like the name?”
“I was always partial to ‘George.’”
Mrs. Travers laughed. “Some are here whose reasons for it aren’t any better. You don’t have kin in Georgetown? Friends?”
Nealie shrugged, watching the woman, who was not pretty. She wasn’t even handsome and never had been. But she had a strong face.
“Are you running away?”
“I’m seventeen. I can do as I please.” Nealie wasn’t seventeen, but she would be in six months.
“Oh, don’t you worry. I’m not for sending you back if you don’t want to go. I’m just asking. Do you have a place to stay?” Before Nealie could answer, Mrs. Travers said, “I didn’t think so. Well, I’ve got a room off the kitchen. You could sleep there a night or two till you get your bearings.”
“I’ll pay,” Nealie said. “I’ve got a little money left.”
“Save it. But if you’re of a mind to, you might help me cook supper.”
“For your family?”
“I run a boardinghouse.” She looked Nealie up and down. “I don’t suppose you came here to cook for a bunch of miners, but if it suits, I could give you room and board and something besides. You could help me until you figure out why it is you’re here.” It was doubtful that until that moment, Mrs. Travers had ever considered hiring a girl, but Nealie appeared strong and good-natured, and Mrs. Travers was a capable judge of character. She was practical, as well, and undoubtedly, she knew that a young girl waiting on the table would attract business. It was possible that Mrs. Travers also believed the girl might be good company for her. The woman was a widow with no children, and Georgetown was a lonely place, with few females and those who were there too overworked to sit down for a chat.
Lydia Travers had come to Georgetown five years before, after her husband died, the brute. She’d run a boardinghouse in Kansas City, not just an eatery like the Georgetown boardinghouses, but a place that provided beds as well as meals. She’d run it with Lute Travers, worked her fingers to the bone, while he drank up the profits, and fisted her, to boot. She was not yet forty, but she looked ten, fifteen years older, thanks to the poundings Lute gave her. Then he died, passed out in the street and drowned with his face in the mud, and Mrs. Travers sold the boardinghouse and moved to Georgetown, vowing she’d never take another husband.
Nealie thought over the proposition for so long that Mrs. Travers said, “Well, come and stay anyway. You don’t want to get mixed up with the likes of her, a sorry girl, if you take my meaning.” Mrs. Travers nodded her head at the woman in the fancy dress who’d smiled at Nealie.
“I know about such,” Nealie said. She added quickly so that Mrs. Travers wouldn’t think she was acquainted with them, “Their kind was at home. And I’d be obliged to accept your offer, missus.”
“Travers, Mrs. Lidie Travers,” the woman introduced herself. By then, the crowd had thinned out. Mrs. Travers picked up her bags and looked around for Nealie’s luggage.
“Oh, I don’t have anything but my extra dress, and I’m wearing it under this one,” the girl explained. “If Pa had seen me leaving w
ith a box, he’d have tied me up in the barn and switched me good.”
“How did you think you’d manage without so much as an extra handkerchief?” Mrs. Travers asked.
Nealie laughed at the idea. “I never had even one handkerchief, so I guess I can get along just fine without an extra. I didn’t think about packing, not that it would have made a difference. I never had much. I had to get away is all, just had to.”
The girl was so fierce that it was obvious she carried some secret. Perhaps she’d been beaten, or even worse. But Mrs. Travers only nodded and didn’t ask questions, because she had never been one to pry into what wasn’t her business. Perhaps she thought that in time, the girl would tell her where she’d come from and why, but until then, Nealie’s past was hers to keep.
Without a word, Nealie took one of Mrs. Travers’s bags from her, and the two walked out of the station into sunlight bright enough to hurt Nealie’s eyes. The sun warmed her back, and the air was so thin and dry that Nealie felt as light as a blade of grass. Sounds of hammering swept down from the mountains, and the distant boom of a dynamite charge made the girl jump. A fog of smoke from the smelters hung over the town, but that did not bother Nealie, because it brought only a little haze. She liked the bustle, the sense of importance.
And now, just two months after her arrival, Nealie felt more at home in Georgetown than she ever had on her parents’ farm.
SANDRA DALLAS is the author of nine novels, including Whiter Than Snow, Prayers for Sale, Tallgrass and New Mercies. She is a former Denver bureau chief for Business Week magazine and lives in Denver, Colorado.
Photo Credit: Povy Kendal Archison
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