Forgiving Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Forgiving

  LaVyrle Spencer

  Copyright © 1991 by LaVyrle Spencer.

  Excerpt from Bygones copyright © 1992 by LaVyrle Spencer.

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  TO STEVEN AXELROD

  my agent

  Steve, you’re the best!

  Many thanks to Nita Celeya and Fred Brian for providing helpful background information while I was researching this book.

  L.S.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Dakota Territory, September 1876

  The Cheyenne stage was six hours late, putting Sarah Merritt into Deadwood at ten P.M. rather than in the late afternoon. The rig rumbled away and left her standing in the dark on a muddy street before a crude saloon. Several crude saloons. An entire streetful of them! The noise was appalling—a mixture of shouts, laughter, banjo music and brawling. And the smell—ye gods! Did nobody pick up the animal dung? Horses and mules lined the hitching rails; nearby, one of them was snoring.

  Sarah backed up and squinted at the sign overhead. Eureka Saloon. She glanced down at the place—a frame building, unpainted, roughly constructed and crowded by a similar structure on the left and a log building on the right. The door to the Eureka was closed, but through its window murky coal-oil lantern light tumbled down a set of wooden steps leading directly from the building to the mud, without the benefit of a boardwalk.

  Sarah glanced down at the trunks and bandbox sitting at her ankle, wondering what to do. Before she could decide, three gunshots cracked, a mule brayed, the door of the Eureka flapped open and a crowd of rowdies burst from inside and stumbled down the steps into the street. Sarah snatched her bandbox and scuttled to the shadow of the saloon wall. “Kill that claim-jumper, Soaky!” someone bellowed. “Fix his face so only his mama could love him!”

  A fist smacked against a jaw.

  A man stumbled backward and somersaulted over Sarah’s trunks, picked himself up and vaulted at his opponent without noticing over what he’d stumbled. The rabble milled this way and that, shouting, brandishing their fists and beer mugs. A man thumped into the side of a mule, which brayed and skittered sideways.

  “Kill the sonofabitch!”

  “Yeah, kill him!”

  Two onlookers clambered onto Sarah’s cowhide trunks to get a better view.

  “No! Get off there!” she shouted.

  When she moved, one of the drunken revelers spotted her.

  “Mother of God, it’s a woman! You hear me, boys, it’s a woman!”

  The fracas ended as if a firebell had clanged.

  “A woman...”

  “A woman...” The word was passed from one man to another as, like fog, they crept close, hemming her in.

  She stood with her back to the saloon wall, the hair on her nape prickling, clutching the ribbons of her bandbox while the men gawked at her skirts, hat and face as if they’d never before seen a female.

  Summoning a note of bravado, she greeted, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Silent, they continued gawking.

  “Could anyone tell me where to find the home of Mrs. Hossiter?”

  “Hossiter?” a croaky voice repeated. “Anyone heard of a woman named Hossiter?” The crowd mumbled and shook their heads. “’Fraid not, ma’am. What’s her husband’s name?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, but my sister’s name is Adelaide Merritt, and she works for them.”

  “Nobody named Merritt around here. Nobody named Hossiter either. Can’t be more than twenty-five women in the whole gulch, and we know every one of ‘em, don’t we, boys?”

  A murmur crescendoed and faded.

  “What’s your sister do?”

  “Domestic work, and she distinctly said the name of her landlady was Mrs. Hossiter.”

  “Landlady, you say?” A spark of deeper interest perked up the fellow’s voice. He spread his arms wide and pressed back the throng. “Here, boys, don’t crowd the little lady, let her move out into the light where we can see her better. My name is Shorty Reese, miss, and I’ll do what I can to help you find your sister.” He doffed his hat, took her elbow and drew her to the foot of the steps where the lantern light ranged from the open door. By it she noted he was middle-aged, with dirty clothing, seamed face and one missing tooth.

  “If you’ll let me through, those trunks are mine. I have a picture of my sister. Maybe one of you will recognize her.”

  They stepped back and allowed Sarah to open the buckles of one of her trunks, from which she produced a sepia daguerreotype of herself and Adelaide, taken five years before. She handed it to Shorty Reese. “She’s twenty-one and has blond hair and green eyes.”

  He turned it toward the light, cocked his head and studied it. “Why, this is Eve,” he pronounced, “one of the upstairs girls at Miss Rose’s, and she don’t have no blond hair. Her hair’s as black as the end of Number Fourteen stope.”

  “Eve?”

  “That’s right. Ain’t this Eve, boys?” The picture was passed around.

  “That’s Eve, all right.”

  “Yup, that’s her.”

  “That’s Eve.” The picture returned to Sarah. “You can find her up at Rose’s, the north end of Main Street on the left. You mind my asking, miss, if you plan to work as an upstairs girl, too?”

  “No, sir. I plan to start publishing a newspaper.”

  “A newspaper!”

  “That’s right, as soon as my press arrives, if it hasn’t already.”

  “But you’re a woman.”

  “Yes, Mr. Reese, I am.” Sarah returned the picture to the trunk and buckled the straps. “Thank you very much for your help. Now if you could point me in the direction of a hotel, I’d be ever so grateful.”

  “Help her with her trunks, boys!” Reese shouted. “Let’s get her over to the Grand Central!”

  “No, please... I...”

  “Why, it’d be our pleasure, miss. We don’t get a chance to see a lady hardly at all. Like I said, can’t be more than a couple dozen of the fairer sex in Deadwood, if that.”

  Though she little relished making her entrance into Deadwood in the company of the Eureka Saloon’s clientele, she had no idea how she’d carry two trunks to the hotel on her own. It struck her, too, that as a newspaperwoman, she would be prudent to avoid alienating any of the townspeople on her first night in town. This was a gold town. Gold spelled money, and money meant rowdiness. Any one of these men could be the owner of the lot she might want to buy, or the building she might want to rent, or a member of the town board, for that matter.

  “Thank you, Mr. Reese, I appreciate your help.” She found herself buffeted along by the noisy lot, who hoisted her trunks onto their shoulders and escorted her to the other end of the block.

  “You’re in luck,” Reese said, climbing the steps of a tall, false-fronted building with the first boardwalk she’d seen. “The Grand Central just opened last week.” They took her right inside, across a Spartan lobby to the desk where they formed a circle around her, grinning, while presenting her to the night clerk. “Got a customer fo
r you, Sam. This here’s Miss Merritt, just came in on the Cheyenne stage.”

  “M–miss M–Merritt.” His face grew scarlet as he extended a hand which was limp and moist as cooked cabbage. He was a chinless little man with round spectacles and an effeminate manner, dressed in a brown plaid suit with his hair parted in the middle. “I’m happy to m–make your acquaintance.”

  “This is Sam Peoples,” Shorty filled in for Peoples, who was too flustered by her appearance to supply his own name.

  “Hello, Mr. Peoples.” His blush made him look combustible and for a moment he forgot to withdraw his hand. Self-consciously, Sarah withdrew hers, unaccustomed to creating such a stir.

  “She’s gonna start up a newspaper.”

  “A newspaper—my, my. Then we’d better take good care of her, hadn’t we?” Peoples forced a nervous laugh. He dipped a black pen and extended it her way while revolving the hotel register to face her. Signing, Sarah felt the entire gallery of men watching.

  When she finished she gave Peoples a smile and the pen.

  “Welcome to the Grand Central,” he said. “That’ll be a dollar fifty for the night.”

  “In advance?”

  “Yes. In gold dust if you please.” He touched the gold scale at his elbow and left it nodding.

  She stood straight as a lodgepole and fixed her eyes on the clerk’s spectacles. “Mr. Peoples, I’ve just spent six nights and five days on the stagecoach from Cheyenne. Given all the robberies that have been happening along the stage routes, do you honestly believe I’d be fool enough to carry my money with me in the form of gold?”

  Peoples’ face turned brighter and he glanced helplessly at the men. “I’m s–sorry, Miss Merritt, I’m just the n–night clerk here. I don’t own the hotel. But it’s our p–policy to accept only guests who pay in advance, and gold dust is our legal tender out here.”

  “Very well.” She set her bandbox on the desk and began untying its ribbons. “All my money is in the form of Wells Fargo certificates. If you can cash one into gold dust, I’d be happy to pay in advance.” From a black organdy pouch she extracted a one–hundred-dollar certificate and offered it to Peoples.

  Again, he glanced at the men, his face crimson. “I don’t keep that k–kind of gold around either. You can c–cash it in the morning at the bank, however.”

  “And in the meantime?” She fixed him with a determined stare.

  One of the onlookers said, “You gonna let a lady sleep on the street, Peoples?”

  “Mr. Winters g–gave me orders.” The more flustered the clerk became the more he stuttered. “Sh–she c–could sleep in the 1–1–1–lobby, but it’s the b–b–best I can d–do.”

  “Lobby!” A leather pouch landed on the desk beside the gold scale. “Take it out of there.” Another pouch joined it—“Or out of here”—and another and another until there were nearly a dozen lying on the high counter.

  Sarah turned to the men behind her, with a hand spread on her chest. “Thank you all so much,” she said sincerely, “but I can’t accept your gold.”

  “Why not? There’s plenty more where that come from, ain’t there, boys?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “El Dorado!” They punched the air in hallelujah and let out a roar. Several of them hoo-rahed, lifting their beer mugs, then took swigs.

  Sam Peoples selected a pouch and carefully weighed out the gold—at twenty dollars per ounce, a dollar and fifty cents’ worth scarcely looked like enough to have created this embarrassing contretemps. When the pouches were reclaimed by their ownèrs, the gold proved to have come out of the sack owned by a tall, lanky man with thinning dark hair and a bleary-eyed smile. He had a prominent Adam’s apple, watery red eyes, and he wove back on his heels as if struck by a wall of wind.

  “Thank you, Mr.—?”

  The man continued weaving and grinning in his alcoholic euphoria.

  “Bradigan,” Reese told her. “His name’s Patrick Bradigan.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Bradigan.”

  Bradigan listed toward Sarah wearing an expression like a scratched cat, his squinting eyes scarcely registering what he saw.

  “I shall repay you tomorrow as soon as I’ve visited the bank.”

  He gave a floppy salute and someone stuffed his gold pouch into his pocket.

  “Where can I find you?”

  “Least I can do fer a pretty lady,” Bradigan mumbled.

  “Bradigan tipped a few tonight,” one of his cohorts explained. “He won’t know the difference whether you pay him back or not.”

  They would have carried her trunks upstairs to her room but for the protests of Sam Peoples. “You’ll w–wake up all my customers! Gentlemen, pl–please—get back to the saloon where you belong.”

  “All your customers are still in the saloons!”

  “Then get back and j–join them.” He sent the boys shuffling off with a doffing of hats and a chorus of goodnights for “the pretty little lady,” which Sarah was not. She was five foot ten in her stocking feet, with plain brown hair, a nose she considered a trifle too long and lips too thin to be remarkable. She did have passably attractive blue eyes, vivid and thick-lashed, still nobody with all their faculties would mistake her for pretty. She was a long-faced woman who in all her life had never attracted as much male attention as during the last quarter hour.

  “I’m giving you a room on the third floor. It’s warmest up there,” said the ingratiating Peoples, carrying the first of her trunks. He led her through a building whose primary recommendation was size. Big it was, but raw in every sense of the word, without a plastered wall in evidence, not even in the lobby, where the windows were bare of curtains and the only spots of brightness were provided by the china cuspidor and the calendar behind the desk, sporting the picture of a waterfall. The floors were constructed of bare pine planks, still emitting the smell of newly milled lumber. The walls were of green studs still oozing sap, between which the clapboard siding showed, replete with knotholes that seemed to peer back like empty eye sockets.

  The stairs, situated just behind the desk, led up to the mouth of a dark, narrow hall. Midway along it, a single coal-oil lantern hung from a wall bracket; on the floor beneath it sat a covered china slop jar. He led her to a room a third of the way down on the left and opened a door made of planks on a Z-shaped frame.

  “Water’s in the c–can outside the door, mornings only, and you can dump your sl–slop in the jar down the hall. Matches are on the wall to your left. I’ll be right back with your other trunk.”

  When he was gone, she found the tin match holder and lit the lantern beside her bed. By its smoky orange light she perused the room. Lord in heaven, what have I gotten into? The walls were as stark as those in the lobby, bare planks pocked by knotholes through which drafts blew. Overhead, the ceiling rafters showed. The window and floor were unadorned, the bed made of tubular brown tin, the ordinary table beside it holding only the lamp—no runner or doily, nothing to appeal to the feminine eye. Not even a coverlet on the bed, only the spruce green woolen blanket and a pillow which—thank heavens—had a muslin slipcover. She turned back the blanket and found muslin sheets and a real mattress stuffed with straw and cotton, and breathed a sigh of relief. There was a commode stand with a pitcher and bowl on top. She opened the door beneath and peered inside to find a covered china commode.

  She had just closed the door when Sam Peoples returned with her second trunk. “I haven’t eaten since noon,” Sarah told him. “Would there be anything to eat?”

  “Our d–dining room is closed, I’m sorry. But we’ll be open for breakfast.”

  “Oh,” she said, disappointed.

  He backed toward the door. “There aren’t many w–women in Deadwood, as you know. You’d best b–bar the door.” He indicated a heavy wooden four-by-four standing in the corner. “Good night then. May I say it’s a pl–pleasure having you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Peoples. Good night.”

  When he closed the door she
studied the crudely hewn wooden brackets on either side. The bar was heavy. She struggled to lift and drop it into place, then turned to face the room with a sigh. She dropped to the edge of the bed, bounced once tentatively and fell back with one arm crooked above her head. Her eyelids closed. Of Sarah’s five nights on the road, only two had been spent in beds. Two she’d slept wrapped in her own blanket, on the floors of log shacks serving as stage relay stations, and one on board the stagecoach itself, folded like a carpenter’s rule on the hard horsehair seat. Her last filling meal had been yesterday noon at Hill City, where she’d had bread, coffee and venison. Today’s fare had been bacon and cold coffee at breakfast, and at noon dry biscuits accompanied by water from Box Elder Creek. She’d taken her last bath in St. Louis nine days ago and smelled—she realized—like an old horse’s hoof.

  Get up, Sarah. Your day’s not over.

  Suppressing a groan, she forced her tired body to bend and shoved herself to her feet. The pitcher and bowl were empty. Out in the hall, the water tin was, too: mornings only, she remembered and went back inside to whack the dust from her woolen suit as best she could, recomb the sides of her hair and wipe off her face with a dry cloth. She replaced her hat, rammed the pin through her chignon, took her organdy pouch containing the Wells Fargo certificates, her father’s watch, and her pen and ink, and left the room.

  As she passed through the lobby, she startled Peoples, who advised, “Ma’am, you shouldn’t be out on the street alone after dark.”

  “I’ve traveled clear from St. Louis alone, Mr. Peoples. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Furthermore, my sister is someplace in this town and I haven’t seen her for five years. I intend to do so tonight if I have to wake her up to do it.”

  Outside, the din from the saloons still rattled up and down the thoroughfare. The boardwalks proved intermittent, built or not built at the whim of each lot-owner who’d erected a building. Striding down the center of Main Street, she made a mental note to write an editorial about standardizing the height and width of the boardwalks and making them compulsory for every building along Main. And streetlamps—the town needed streetlamps and a paid lamplighter to tend them at dusk and dawn. Ah, her work was cut out.