The fraud had been easy to detect, but David was impressed that I had done so. I was impressed with his pleasant manner and the fact that he treated me more like a colleague than as a member of the steno pool.
That night, David was waiting for me at the employee entrance with a box of Mrs. Stover’s Bungalow Candies. He had noticed I was not wearing a ring and took the chance that I was unattached, he said. Then he invited me to dinner, and since it was Mother’s and Henry’s bridge night, I agreed. He suggested the Brown Palace Hotel dining room, but it was stuffy and expensive, and I believed David was a law clerk, since attorneys did not spend their time looking into bank records, but sent their underlings instead. So I told him that as he was new in town, he should visit the Manhattan Restaurant, which had steaks so tender that you didn’t need a knife to cut them. The restaurant was much cheaper, too, although David didn’t need to know that. When the owner, Richard Pinhorn, greeted me by name, I was pleased to think David might be impressed. Later, he told me he’d thought I might have worked there, probably in the kitchen.
“Let’s have the porterhouse steak for two,” David said.
“Oh, I’m not that hungry.” The steak cost $1.90.
“I am, and I’ll eat part of yours if you don’t want it.” He placed the order. “And we’ll both take the green-apple pie with cheese for dessert.” I thought he’d probably have to live on soup for a week to pay for the three-dollar dinner. I did not know that David’s salary was sizable, and that even if it wasn’t, he could have tapped his trust fund.
We said only a little about ourselves that night. David did not correct my impression that he was a clerk, and I did not apprise him of the fact that Henry was president of the bank. Instead, we talked about moving pictures and books.
“Have you read The Beautiful and Damned? It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best work, you know,” David said.
“It’s good enough, but This Side of Paradise is much better.”
“Are you always so opinionated?”
“I try to be.”
“Good. A girl who knows her own mind is interesting.”
David talked about an exhibit of contemporary art he had seen in New York, and I told him about the Colorado Rockies. David once said the nicest thing I ever did for him was to introduce him to the mountains. By the end of the evening, I was stuck on him and thought he was fond of me.
“Well shucks. I’ve left my car at my apartment,” David said when we left the restaurant.
It sounded to me as if he’d made that up, self-conscious that his car was a jalopy, or because he didn’t have an auto at all. “Oh, I always take the streetcar,” I told him.
David was too much the gentleman for that, so he called a taxi. He started to get into the cab with me, but I didn’t want him to see the Marion Street house, because he might think me a wealthy dilettante whose family connections had gotten her a job—which was exactly what I was. So I insisted on going home alone. David paid the driver and then held the door long enough to ask, “Won’t you meet me for a Saturday movie matinee?” Of course I said yes.
On Saturday, David apologized. “I’d been hoping we could make a day of it, but I’ve accepted a dinner engagement with a business associate tonight. It won’t be nearly as much fun as being with you.”
As I hadn’t expected to make a day of it and had planned on dinner with Mother and Henry, I told him that was perfectly all right. We saw The Custard Cup at the Isis, and afterward, we walked over to the Loop Café, where we had hot tea and baked apples. We let the time get away from us, and when we finally realized it was quite late, David agreed to let me take the streetcar home this time. He walked me to the stop and when the trolley came along, he held my hand and said, “So long.”
Mother had planned a dinner party that evening for several of my friends, including some boys who were considered quite eligible. She was concerned that, at twenty-two, I had not found anyone special. But though the boys were nice enough, they now seemed limited when I compared them to David. And that was exactly what I was doing when David walked into the living room with Henry. I was thrilled and rushed over to Henry, who said, “David, you’ve already met my daughter, of course.” Henry winked at me. David turned and recognized me, and his jaw dropped.
“Am I the business associate you are dining with, or is Henry?” I asked him.
David grinned and replied, “Is this what you westerners call being buffaloed?”
“Nora had nothing to do with it,” Henry told him. Then he explained it all to me. “David wrote the bank a letter about the girl who had uncovered some improprieties in an account of ours. He thought I ought to know that she had averted an embarrassing situation for the bank. He even thought I should give her a raise. Your mother suggested we invite him to dinner.”
“And what about the raise?” I asked.
“Would you really prefer it?”
Whether we were more embarrassed by Henry’s cloak-and dagger matchmaking or the banana oil we had fed each other, I didn’t know. Both of us were glad that the little charade was over, although we couldn’t have kept it up for long.
David was an immediate hit with Mother and Henry, as well as with my crowd. “He’s as handsome as a man in an Arrow Collar advertisement,” Caroline told me. David was not tall, but he was athletic and had an engaging smile. Two of my girlfriends made a play for him, but David confided to me that they were “dumb Doras.” Besides, from the beginning, it was clear to both of us that we were a couple. We went to the parties and tea dances and dinners, but what we both liked best were the times we went for long drives by ourselves. David did have a car, as it turned out, a Cleveland Roadster, and he liked to drive fast. David was restless.
On the weekends, we headed west up the dirt road to Central City, an old mining town, where we peered into the windows of boarded-up houses. We drove over the mountain to Idaho Springs on the Oh My God Road, and when we got punctures, I helped David patch the tires. “Any other girl would sit on a rock, looking at her wristwatch,” David said.
We explored the old mine workings and picked up curios. Once, I spotted a bent iron candlestick and showed it to David. “The loop at the top lets you carry it over your finger, and you shove it into the rock with the spike at the end. Or kill rats with it,” I explained.
I threw it back onto the mine dump, but David claimed it, and after that, it became our mission to search the dumps and glory holes for candlesticks. “Want to know how you find a miner’s trash heap?” I asked one day. “You stand in the doorway of a cabin and toss a rock, like this.” I made an easy throw and watched the rock fall. “That’s the dump.”
“It makes sense. You can’t blame a fellow for not taking out the trash in a blizzard,” David said, squatting down near the rock. “This is a regular miner’s midden.” He held up a whiskey bottle that had turned purple.
“At this altitude, the sun turns them that color.”
Over the months, we picked up candlesticks, picks, gold scales, buttons, once a solid gold locket with a woman’s picture inside. David had it repaired and gave it to me for my birthday.
A few of the mines were still in operation, run by one or two men. We walked along the narrow-gauge railroad tracks to the workings and stood in the shadow of the gallows frames, as the mine tipples were called, talking to the miners. They were always polite, courtly sometimes.
“How is the madam today?” one asked me, touching his leather cap.
We invited him to share the picnic lunch that Hattie, Mother’s cook, had packed—a hamper of fried chicken, potato salad, pickles, cookies. We spread a quilt in an aspen grove, and the miner removed his cap and said a little prayer. “When you live in these mountains, you develop religious facilities,” he told us.
“Have you found gold as well as God?” David asked.
“Here’s your blossom rock,” he said, tapping an outcropping of ore with a chicken bone. “I’ve done drudgery work on it, and it might amount to pay dirt,
though the assay makes a hard decision against it.”
“What would he do if he found it—pay dirt?” David asked me when we had given the miner the remains of the picnic and gone on our way.
“Spend it. In a few years, he’d be right back here.”
“Isn’t that what he wants? It’s the search that matters. It’s always the search,” David said.
David liked to listen to the tales these old-timers told. One of his greatest assets was his ability to listen seriously to even the giddiest talk and to find gold among the dross. The prospectors found in David a kindred spirit, for David had dreams, too. At the time, they seemed to be for wealth and recognition, and perhaps a chance to make the world a little better place. Those were the things he talked about, at any rate. But as time went on, I realized he wanted something else, although I didn’t know what it was.
Often we stopped to visit with my grandmother’s brother and his wife at their little house in Georgetown. They had no children, which might have been why they were especially kind to me. There were stories in the family that Uncle Billy had been an outlaw, which was difficult to believe, because he was gentle, and he and Aunt Emma seemed to be such an ordinary couple, honest as gold. Uncle Billy was even the treasurer of the First Presbyterian Church in Georgetown.
They captivated David with their tales of the old days in the West. “Why, a man couldn’t walk down the streets of Leadville at night without he was attacked by footpads. There were more outlaws than honest men.” He turned to Aunt Emma for confirmation. “There were women outlaws, you know.” He winked at her.
She gave him a wry smile. “You’d not want to cross one of those.”
“Oh no.” Uncle Billy took her hand. “After all these years, she still makes my heart glad,” Uncle Billy told us, and I thought I wanted a husband who would say that to me after such a long time.
Aunt Emma was embarrassed at his show of affection, but later she told me, “Your uncle was the handsomest-made man I ever saw. I thought he hung the moon.” She paused. “I still do.”
Driving home, I told David, “They ought to move out of the mountains. The coming of the leaves is hard on old people.”
“They won’t,” David said.
And they didn’t. They stayed on until they died. “Emma and I have lived side by side for forty years,” Uncle Billy told Mother when she invited him to live in the Marion Street house after Aunt Emma passed on. “The good Lord didn’t let me keep her, but her memory’s here.” So he stayed on in their little house, sleeping with a very tired heart, until he died less than a year later. Uncle Billy left the Georgetown house to David and me. When David and I divided up things in the divorce, he insisted the house was mine, although it had been a place of refuge for him.
Once, when David and I were dating, Uncle Billy showed him a pair of slats that a miner had left in the barn. “Snowshoes,” Uncle Billy said. “That’s how we used to get around in winter.”
“Skis,” David said. “I’ve seen pictures of them.”
Uncle Billy helped David strap the long boards to his feet and showed him how to propel himself across the snow with a pole. David poled himself to the end of the street and back, then called, “Come along, Nora. You’ve got to try it.” He strapped the skis onto my feet, and I attempted to push myself along, but the skis were heavy and my legs wouldn’t move. “Try, try,” David said, a little frustrated, for he expected me to be as good as he was.
I finally pushed myself a yard or so and fell down, laughing.
“You’re a game girl, but this will never do,” David said. After we returned to Denver, he ordered skis for both of us, and we taught ourselves to use them. We pushed along the old mining roads, then turned around and followed our trails back to the starting point. Or we skied through the aspen trees, making our own trail. Once, we got caught in a blizzard and spent the night in a deserted cabin. There was a sign on the door that read NO TRESPASSING AND WHEN YOU DO FOR CHRIST’S SAKE SHUT THE DOOR.
We had a lunch and a thermos of hot chocolate in my knapsack, and a pair of lap robes in his, so we were in no danger of either cold or hunger. “But what about your reputation? What will your friends think about your spending the night in a cabin with me?” David said.
“Or a week. With any luck, the storm will last that long.”
“I mean it.”
“Do you think I would preserve my reputation if I stayed outside and froze to death?”
“I could hang the blankets across the middle of the room. You could stay on one side and I on the other.”
“Are you serious?”
At last, he saw the humor in the situation. We spent the night huddled together in the blankets, and by morning, the storm was over. We skied out through the fresh snow, which was such a dazzling white that it hurt our eyes. I told David, “I would risk my reputation just to see this.”
There was a Kodak of David taken on that adventure. I had been snapping pictures of the snowdrifts, and I turned and saw David kneeling beside the cabin, putting on his skis. There was one picture left on the roll, and I called to David to smile. He looked up at me with sheer joy on his face. The snapshot, which was on my dressing table throughout our marriage, was one of the few pictures of David that didn’t go into the dustbin when he moved out, because I knew the happiness on his face that day was real and that I had been a part of it. It seemed proof that our marriage was not always a sham.
The blizzard wasn’t the only danger. Once, we skied up an old road almost to the timberline, the farthest trek we had ever made, when I spotted a mountain lion ahead and a little above us. It was large and muscular, and its fur was the bleached yellow of mine tailings. “Oh God, David, hurry. Let’s go!”
David looked up and saw the lion, then gripped my arm. “Don’t move. Stay where you are.”
“And be eaten alive? Not on your life.”
“Stay!” David ordered me. “If you race off, he’ll chase you. He’ll think you’re dinner.”
“I am dinner.”
“Hold on. He may just go away.” David slowly slid toward me on his skis, stopping a foot away. “Don’t look him in the eye. You don’t want to challenge him.”
“Maybe we should curl up, so he’ll think we’re too small a supper to fuss with.”
“That won’t work. We’ll wait him out.”
The lion moved his head a little, watching us with eyes that were yellow and mean. He took a few steps toward us, hissing through yellow teeth.
“He’s not leaving,” I said as the lion began pacing back and forth. He did that for a minute or two, and then he stopped and crouched.
“We’ll have to scare him off. Hold out your poles, so we look big.”
“But he already knows there are just two of us.”
“Animals can’t count.” David moved a little so that our ski poles, held out at arm’s length, barely touched. “Now, make as much noise as you can, so he’ll think we’re going to attack him.” Suddenly, David began shaking his ski poles. “Get! Get for home! Go on!”
I jumped up and down, as much as I could on the skis, made faces, and cussed. “You ugly cat. I’ll rip your damn head off if you don’t get out of here.”
The lion stood his ground for a minute, while David yelled and I shrieked and carried on. Then David thrust his ski poles toward the animal, which turned and trotted up the mountain. When he reached the top of the trail, he stopped and looked at us again. David picked up two rocks and threw them at the big cat, and he disappeared.
“We did it, David.”
“Not yet. Getting back to the car is the hard part. You go first, but not too fast. I’ll follow.” I started off, looking back to see that David was directly behind me, protecting me. The lion would have to go through David to get to me. But we saw no further sign of the animal. We were exhausted when we reached the car and ripped off our skis. David pushed me into the seat, then secured the skis and poles before he climbed in. He turned to me with a look of exhilara
tion on his face. “That’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.”
“You’re nuts. We could have been eaten alive.”
“You were magnificent. Any other girl would have fainted. But you mugged that cat like a regular Lon Chaney.”
“Mugged?” I was embarrassed but had to admit that I was a little proud of myself. “Oh, applesauce!”
“Applesauce, my eye. You mugged him.”
Over the years, those adventures spurred David on to greater challenges, and I could not always keep up with him. So I did not mind when David’s college roommate, Arthur Ransom, moved to Colorado and the two of them climbed with the Colorado Mountain Club or hunted and skied with the other men in our set. David even joined a bird-hunting club, whose members sat all day in freezing duck blinds. That was not something I wanted to do, so I was glad women were not welcome.
I took to Arthur and his wife, Betsey, at once. Arthur, like David, was friendly, interesting, and fearless. And although Betsey was timid and got frightfully upset when Arthur went adventuring, she made fun of her fears and encouraged the boys, something I admired in her, since she had young children.
David was fond of Betsey, almost as attentive to her as he was to me, although I did not think anything of it at the time. The Ransoms did not move to Denver until some years after David and I married, about 1930, and by then, David’s daredevil streak was obvious. He used to laugh and say that if he had not been a lawyer, he might have had a career as an auto racer or a stunt flier or even a flagpole sitter. That was not entirely a joke.
We had dated for more than a year when David and I became engaged. From the beginning, we had assumed we would marry, but we were having such a swell time that we were not in a hurry. David was thoughtful and romantic. Still, he did not propose with roses and candlelight, as I’d expected, but in an offhand manner, which came as a surprise. We had gone to the mountains to see the aspen, which had turned a glorious color, the leaves spilling onto the ground like golden coins, and decided to prowl through the Georgetown cemetery, where we read the tombstones.
New Mercies Page 13
