Before Luther Morrison had his office cleaned out, Josh Forrest knew that he had made the right decision. Elizabeth, hoping to work in California—but on the extremely remote possibility that she might get to work in Nevada—had studied the land use and mining laws of both states. She had made herself familiar with current Indian treaties although she knew they really meant nothing. Anytime a white man wanted Indian land, the government forced new treaties on the Indians so a thorough study on the subject was futile. Indian policy changed as rapidly as new settlers or miners moved into an area.
Josh found that Elizabeth was thoroughly versed in regulations regarding the use of government lands. She was legally very well prepared for her new position.
Elizabeth had even studied the latest material available on mining engineering. She was aware of new safety laws being passed in some states and was able to suggest some changes in procedure that would be safer and therefore allow the company to avoid later legal difficulties. Her suggestions not only made some procedures safer but also more productive.
Josh had known Elizabeth since she was a child and he knew her to be intelligent and dependable—qualities Luther Morrison certainly did not have. He did not know, however, that he was getting a bona fide legal scholar who had a practical, down-to-earth turn of mind. Josh was ecstatic.
Elizabeth had an amazing ability to absorb information, interpret and apply it and have it written in a scholarly legal brief in a matter of a few hours. For the first time since his father had put him in charge of the Carson City division, Josh had competent legal advice right in the next office. He did not have to depend on the large legal staff the Forrests kept in San Francisco. As a matter of fact, within months members of the San Francisco staff were wiring Elizabeth for her opinion on some of the company’s more weighty legal matters. Josh was proud of himself. He had taken a chance. He had hired a woman lawyer in a time when such a thing was unheard of. It had worked out far beyond his wildest expectations.
It certainly made his life much less complicated. Nevada was a new state and Carson City was growing rapidly. Both were creating new laws and regulation, many of which affected the manner in which the Luke Forrest and Sons Silver Mining Company did business. Josh could now get advice within minutes. Luther Morrison had fumbled around for days and then Josh was usually told by the San Francisco staff that Morrison’s information was useless. All of that is not to say that there were no problems. For the first month or so of her tenure as corporate attorney, Elizabeth met with general community disdain. Women with whom she had been friendly now snubbed her. On the street, in the stores and even in church there was staring, pointing and snide muttering. There was even a Sunday sermon entitled, The Christian Woman—In the Home, Nurturing Her Children, and On Her knees in Prayer. Some folks threatened to take their money out of the Carson City Forrest Bank. They told Herbert Hatcher that if he couldn’t control his own daughter, they didn’t see how he could control their money. Herbert told them to go right ahead. He didn’t like doing business with damn fools anyway. The bank didn’t lose any accounts.
Luther Morrison had brought several frivolous law suits against the company. He was angry and was mortified that he had been replaced by a woman. Each time they went to court, Elizabeth made a fool of him but he was obsessed. He had to destroy this woman and wasn’t astute enough to realize that he was far from being in her league. Even after several humiliations and reprimands by Appellate Court judges, he was driven by his fractured ego to prove his imagined superiority. He continued to file suits and only when he was threatened with a contempt charge and Travis Butler was threatened with an investigation into his competence did the harassment stop.
The Appellate Courts became necessary because Travis Butler always found for Morrison. He would not listen to Elizabeth and he would not read her briefs. It would have made no difference if he had. He wouldn’t have understood them anyway. After several reversals and the threat of the investigation, at Bill Thorn’s instruction, Travis began always to find in Elizabeth’s favor. Luther had stopped his frivolous suits but any time Elizabeth had to go to court, she won. Travis still did not read her briefs but he was under strict instruction from Thorn not to let any of her cases go to the Appellate Court.
Carson City was the capitol of the State of Nevada and Bill Thorn did not want to attract too much state attention to Ormsby County affairs right now. Once Dodd was out of the way, He’d have plenty of time to deal with this uppity woman.
The conspiracy to kill Dodd was not going well. What Bill thought would be a simple matter, over in just a few days had stretched into weeks. Pick Fillion’s rough, crude behavior, filthy appearance, and sinister attitude belied his intelligence and cunning. Pick had heard rumors of major graft going on in the county and he wanted in on it. He agreed to kill Dodd but not at Thorn’s price. Pick demanded five hundred dollars up front and twenty-five dollars a month—forever. After several days they were still negotiating. Bill insisted on a one time payment. He was currently at two thousand dollars and worried that Pick might get suspicious because he was willing to up the ante so quickly.
There was also growing dissension and mistrust among the members of the conspiracy. Bob Quinlen was beside himself. He felt he was no longer in charge of the orphanage. Actually, he was in charge. He just couldn’t run it as he had for years—for his own greed rather than for the protection and care of children. Dodd was now making regular weekly visits. Quinlen was now having to live off his county-approved salary. He could no longer skimp on food or care and cleaning personnel. Before the doctors started nosing around, he was able to keep a full eighty percent of the county budget for the care of children for himself. That and his cut from the sale of children had made him a tidy living. He now considered himself a pauper.
Quinlen hated and feared Bill Thorn. Quinlen knew that he was no saint but there was something really evil about Thorn. Quinlen thought often about killing Thorn. Thorn would no longer allow him to sell children. He would no longer allow children to be sent to Douglas County. Thorn even insisted that Quinlen keep the orphans cleaner and better fed than perhaps Dodd would have. Bill Thorn wanted nothing to attract state attention until Dodd was eliminated.
Dodd was even more a problem now. Doc Bloom had resigned as County Health Commissioner. He gave no reason for the resignation but Dodd knew that he found it very difficult to be around children. Any child he saw brought to mind the horrifying deaths of his own. There was too much pain and now that Dodd was here, Doc Bloom saw no reason to subject himself to it.
Doc Bloom had recommended Dodd as his replacement. That gave Dodd the power to go into the orphanage any time he wanted and he frequently went in unannounced. Quinlen was about to have a nervous breakdown but Thorn continued to insist that nothing attract state attention until Dodd was eliminated. Then, Thorn assured Quinlen, things would be back to normal and they’d be back in high cotton—the euphemism for affluence in his native Mississippi. Quinlen didn’t believe Thorn and imagined all kinds of vile deaths for him. The idea of Quinlen killing Thorn or anyone else for that matter, however, was ludicrous. Quinlen had tremendous ego but was completely devoid of backbone.
Quinlen was not the only problem. Luther Morrison was now drinking heavily and there was a general fear among the conspirators that he would talk in one of his drunken stupors. Travis Butler discovered that he still had a tinge of conscience. He had had a simple but good home and he became horrified at the thought of the fiery hell he had been taught would be his eternal home if he were to go through with this evil thing. He started going to church. He quit drinking and patronizing whores, and of course, he no longer took his cut of the money for the children that were no longer being sold. He was convinced that in reforming he could balance the heavenly scales. Bill Thorn became worried that Travis’s newfound religion would lead to a public confession of his sins. He need not have worried about that. Travis was too frightened of Thorn. He would not talk. Anyway, he had gone over Bill’s head, Travis Butler was negotiating directly with God.
Bill Thorn himself was suffering. He had lost his cut of the sale of children, he thought it too risky to sell children out of the county—a drastic intrusion into his finances—and he had to worry about the stability of his coconspirators. He had no intention of paying Pick Fillion anything but Pick was smart. If Bill continued to up the ante so quickly, Pick would get suspicious. Thorn was known to be a tough man. He could not appear too easy. Bill had to make it appear as though he were weighing each of Pick’s demands heavily.
Bill was anxious and frustrated. He wanted to get this over with, but he could not choose another assassin. Pick was already privy to the plans. He could not kill Pick without drawing unwanted attention to county affairs. Pick was too well known. He was not well liked but he was a celebrity of sorts and his murder would stimulate too much curiosity. Bill had no choice but to deal with Pick.
Josh may have been ecstatic with his decision to hire Elizabeth but Dodd was beyond that. He experienced an almost immediate change in his relationship with Elizabeth. She now talked openly of her love for him and reacted tenderly to his expressions of love for her. Dodd thought he now knew what the barrier had been. Elizabeth had wanted desperately to practice law. In fact, she frequently expressed total elation with her work and, with disbelief, the fact that she never thought she could practice in Carson City. She had been sure that she would have to go to San Francisco or back east. Dodd believed that he saw her reticence clearly now. She had always loved him but she also loved the law. If she were never to have practiced she would have spent her life wishing she had. It would have been a lifelong barrier between them. What a woman she was. She had been willing to temporarily delay her love to assure a lifetime of perfect love. She still had not agreed to marry Dodd but Dodd was patient. He did not resent the delay. He loved her more deeply because it was he—really both of them—she was thinking of, not just herself.
Dodd felt a sense of satisfaction with the way things were going at the orphanage. He was, in fact, shocked by the abrupt turnaround. He knew Quinlen to be a coward but Quinlen really didn’t matter. Dodd’s keen insight, bolstered, probably, by his legal training, had allowed him quickly to realize that Bill Thorn was the real power in Ormsby County. Dodd saw the scoundrel behind the jovial, relaxed, and witty facade. It was Thorn’s rapid turnaround that puzzled and concerned Dodd most and kept him constantly alert for some treachery. Thorn had taken his fall from power much too passively.
Dodd, however, did not feel that his mission for children was complete. True, things were much better for children living in the orphanage. Now, those attendants with a heart had the upper hand and even those who had used their position of unsupervised power to torment the children were subdued. The children were no longer living in misery, filth, and danger, but they were not loved, and that pained Dodd. He didn’t know if it were possible for these children to know love but memories of a mistreated and unloved Pete drove Dodd to continue looking for a way.
But there was some satisfaction at the progress that had been made. He spoke of it often to Elizabeth. She loved this quality of concern and love for the helpless in him and she commented on how happy the progress must make him. Dodd would only say, “It’s a start.”
Even though things were much improved in the orphanage, Dodd still had a major concern. The treatment of children who were let out had not improved. Very few homes accepted these children as members of the family. Some, of course, did and those few fortunate children were loved and nurtured. But even though they were no longer being sold, most orphaned children were still bound by law to families and they were viewed only as a source of cheap labor. There was no supervision of these homes. That would have been Bill Thorn’s job but he would not waste his or his deputy’s time. Bill cared nothing for the wellbeing of children. He cared only for the money he could make from them.
Once a child was let out, that child was at the mercy of the family and most were treated as slaves or worse. Dodd often suggested ways of improving the situation for children but no one except Elizabeth and he seemed to care. He could not understand that. Some people might agree that it was too bad, but that’s as far as it ever got.
Now that Dodd was sure of Elizabeth’s love, he could not stay away from her. When his medical duties permitted, he spent all his evenings with her—much to the displeasure of Reva Potts. Reva missed her stories and she missed Dodd and in her childishly blunt but inoffensive way, she told him that. “Land sakes, man, I can’t think why you want to be just sittin’ with that teacher. Ain’t no reason for you to be over there anyway. She’s got all kinds of books. She can read her own stories.
“Ain’t I nobody? I ain’t got hardly no books and I can’t hardly read nohow. I love your stories and I love the feelin’ I get when I’m goin’ to sleep on your lap.”
Dodd took her in his arms, hugged and kissed her. “Of course you’re somebody. I just can’t find enough time to do all the things I want to do. I miss reading to you and telling you stories. I miss having you sit on my lap but Miss Elizabeth and I have to spend time together. We have to find out if we really love each other and if we want to spend the rest of our lives together.”
Reva was shocked. “You ain’t thinkin’ on marryin’ that teacher, are you? I didn’t think teachers got married. I didn’t think they was regular folks.”
“Miss Elizabeth is a regular person—a very special regular person—and, yes, I am thinking about marrying her.”
“Well, I swear!”
Dodd did try to make more time for her. Reva loved and was deeply loved by Mrs. Looney and the girl was given as much time as Mrs. Looney could spare. But the little girl also craved a man’s attention. She had never known love and now that she had it, she wanted all she could get. At eight years old, she didn’t understand that courting, doctoring and running a boarding house were very consuming endeavors.
Reva was well-loved but she was not getting the attention she deserved. Dodd had mentioned that to Lillian on one of his occasional visits. After that, Lillian made a point of having the girl over once or twice a week. Reva would play with the boys, listen to the stories read or told by Lillian or Josh and when Josh was free in the evening and Reva was there, it very quickly became taken for granted that Josh’s lap was Reva’s property. It did take a while to get that through to Caleb. With a little side counseling from Lillian, however, Caleb grudgingly extended to Reva temporary squatters rights on what, until now, had been his private domain.
Actually, all of the boys became very fond of Reva. She was feisty but fun, and she loved them—not just liked them, but loved them. Their parents’ love was just there. It surrounded them and was as natural as breathing. But they had remembered Reva from school as a frightened, very angry little girl who didn’t trust anyone. Now, she was not only willing to trust them but to love them. As young as they were, they each seemed to realize that Reva was giving them a rare gift.
While it may have crossed Lillian’s mind, there was no thought that the Forrests would adopt the girl. Neither Mrs. Looney nor Reva would hear of that. Reva loved the Forrest family but Mrs. Looney was her mama. Reva had found a home.
As a child growing up in Boston, Edna Looney never envisioned herself as keeping a boarding house. Her family was not wealthy but they were more than comfortable. Edna had married well but not to the satisfaction of her family. Daniel Looney was Irish Catholic, an unequal yoking so far as her Puritan-Congregational relatives were concerned. But Daniel was a handsome young captain in the United States Army with a very bright future and she loved him. Both felt strongly about their religions. They did not want to fall in love but they were powerless to control this portion of their destiny. Each maintained their religion and agreed to deal with the matter of the children’s faith when that time came.
It never came. Daniel was sent west. Daniel and Edna did not see it as a dangerous assignment. Where they were going, the Indian problem was almost completely solved. It was to be an adventure and a solution to the animosity they were living with from both their families. The assignment, like their love, seemed to them to be a gift from God.
Daniel was killed while on maneuvers. His galloping horse stepped into a prairie dog hole. The leg sank in to the knee and abruptly stopped the animal’s forward motion. Inertia caused the horse to do a kind of gruesome somersault. Daniel’s neck was broken under the heavy body.
Both families in Boston saw Daniel’s death as God’s punishment for the couple’s sin of marrying outside the ‘true’ church. Edna had loved Daniel deeply. She did not want that love sullied by the bigotry of their parents. She would not return to Boston.
Daniel’s death benefit from the army bought the house. The town was growing rapidly and business was good. Edna was a good cook, a good hostess, and a good businesswoman. She had worked with Herbert Hatcher to make herself very financially comfortable.
She was only thirty-three years old and a handsome woman. She had had many opportunities to remarry but she could not let Daniel go. Outwardly, she was a poised, happy woman. She was certainly well respected in the community. But the child she and Daniel had talked of so often and had desperately wanted but didn’t have threw a private pall over what was otherwise the good life.
Reva had removed that pall. For Edna, this was another gift from God. Perhaps Reva was the reason all the rest of it had happened. Edna thought those kinds of things but dwelt mostly on her good fortune and her love for the child.
Reva blossomed in the love of Edna Looney and the Forrest family but she was the object of another love of which she never became aware. Mattie Potts was once the favorite on whore’s row. Now she was dissipated by opium and consumption. She lived alone in a one room shack at the edge of the business district of the growing city. She spent her days sitting at the window, hoping. She was sure the happy little girl who sometimes passed that window on her way to school or to the Forrests’ was the baby she had so arrogantly taken to the orphanage almost nine years ago during her self-centered glory years. Mattie was then interested only in the money and the attention. Now she was dying alone and in poverty. Doc Bloom gave what care he could and saw that she had food, but he could not take away the horror and regret of knowing she would die unloved. She had relinquished any right to a daughter’s love and that, more than the weakness and pain made her death, when it finally came, an agonizing one. Edna Looney did not tell Reva who had given her the locket or that the picture inside was her grandmother. Perhaps when the girl was older.
Another little girl, this one in north central Nevada, was also blossoming under the love of a newly formed family. Becky functioned with her family, and increasingly with people in general, as though she had been a Roker all her life. She reveled in the love of her parents and her brother as well as her older siblings’ families but she also reveled in her style of living. She loved her home. She loved her pretty clothes and she loved her feeling of self-respect.
Becky, even though she had never known anything different, always felt belittled by how she was made to live on the mountain. Her mother had tried to give the shack some dignity, to keep it clean—to make it a home. It was Deak in his drunken insanity who would not allow her to do those things. Deak had become hatred embodied and, while he could treat others with disdain, he would vent his hatred on Becky’s mother. He beat her. He ridiculed everything she did and he forced her to live in the degradation that he was.
Cow with Calf was a proud woman. When her father had sold her to Deak, it was her intent to run away as soon as the opportunity presented. But she found herself with child before that opportunity came. She had nowhere to go. She could not go back to her village, and the whites would not help her. She had no choice but to stay with Deak. It was her intent, when she felt Spring Flower was old enough to help in living off the land, to go with the girl into the California mountains. Perhaps one of the tribes there would take her in. Those final events on their mountain, however, came too soon. Cow with Calf would have been pleased and comforted if she could have seen the manner of her daughter’s life now.
Becky took joy from everything. When she was taught to sew and knit and crochet, her artistic nature and her love of beauty allowed her to create items of quality and beauty that belied her few years. She was, of course, the best student in the school but she used her skills, as she did with Pete and Austin, to help and support other children. Austin was no less loved but Becky’s zest for life made her the light of Jess and Harriet Roker’s lives.
It was time for the children to be getting home from school but it was also obvious from the galloping of the horse and the rattling of the wheels that something was wrong. Jess ran from the foaling stall and Harriet ran from the kitchen. Austin was alone in the buckboard. Becky should have been with him. Austin was death white—so frightened that he could not speak. He could not even cry. It took almost ten minutes in Jess’s arms before Austin could gasp out, “They took her. Them two Indians took Becky.”
Jess gave Austin to Harriet and they cried together in each other’s arms. Jess, in his typical stoic manner, saddled his horse and told Cleaver to bring ten men and a hundred steers to the Indian village over in the red rock country. Cleaver went to do Jess’s bidding and Jess rode to the east. Harriet had learned long ago not to question him. She knew of the danger but she also knew that if there were any way to get past the danger and get the girl back, Jess could do it.
Chief Water from the Rock did not look up. He had been told that Jess Roker was coming and he did not want to have to look at him. The two men knew each other well. For fifteen years they had fought over the land that Jess now ranched.
“Does my old enemy come to laugh at me and the dishonor of my people? We have been herded like your cattle into this corral you white men call a reservation.”
“I am not your enemy, Water from the Rock.”
“You are living on my land and I am living in this corral and you say you are not my enemy?”
“We were warriors, swept by fate into a battle neither of us wanted.”
“You did not want it? In that battle you took my land.”
“Who can say why my God and your Great Spirit do what they do? It was in their minds that the white man was going to live on this land. We were only their tools. Water from the Rock was a brave warrior. Jess Roker tried to be a brave warrior. The gods chose the winner, not the white man’s strength or the red man’s lack of courage.”
“Why do you talk to me so? Do you mock me? I am a broken man. As you have said, the gods have broken me. I can do nothing. You need not talk to me of bravery or courage. You are free to talk to me as do the other whites—as though I were a troublesome child.”
“There was a time when you could have killed me. Do you remember it? There was a time when I could have killed you. I remember it. I do not know why you did not kill me but I knew I had no right to take the life of one the Great Spirit made so brave. I believe you did not kill me for the same reason. Because we saw that we are alike, we knew we were brothers. I do not come as your enemy. I come as your brother.”
“I do not need a brother who steals my land.”
“What was in the mind of the gods mere warriors could not change. It was in their minds that the white man was going to live on this land. If it were not I, it would be some other white man living on your land.”
“You are right, my brother. Yes, I call you brother—not because I love you but because you are right. The Shoshone were once a great people but our time has past. We go with the buffalo—the Great Spirit only knows where. But, remember, my white brother, just as the time of the Shoshone has come and gone, the time of the whites will pass also. That also is in the mind of the gods.”
“You may be right, my brother. I cannot say what is in the mind of the gods. I come about the girl.”
“She is Shoshone.”
“She is my daughter. I love her, Water from the Rock, and I will have her or no Shoshone in this village will see the spring rain.”
“Is that the way brother talks to brother?”
“Does a brother steal a brother’s child?”
“She was not taken by me.”
“You are chief.”
“You must deal with the brothers of Cow with Calf. They have her.”
“I deal with Water from the Rock. Is it the Shoshone way to steal back what you have sold?”
“You know it is not the Shoshone way.”
“Then why does the chief allow his people to forsake their ways?”
“You are one to talk about forsaking ways. You white people have taken our ways from us.”
“Spring Flower is my daughter and I will have her.”
“I am told you bring cattle and just a few men. Do you think we sell our children like you whites sold the black faces?”
“Your people sold her mother.”
“Cow with Calf dishonored the tribe. She ran away from the warrior to whom her father sold her. It has always been the father’s right to sell his daughter to the warrior he has chosen to be her husband.”
“The white man had no right to sell the black faces and the Shoshone had no right to sell his children. Cow with Calf knew that before even the white man and the Shoshone.”
“Why, then, do you bring the cattle?”
“Is it not the Shoshone way to give a gift to anyone who gives a gift to the Shoshone?”
“It is.”
“I bring the cattle as a gift in exchange for the gift you are going to give to me. She is my daughter but I will accept her back as a gift from my brother. My brother will then accept the cattle as a gift from me.”
“My brother makes strange powwow. He does not ask. He tells. Can it be that my brother is a fool? If I chose not to give you a gift, you are few and we are many.”
“I have many brothers and each of them has many men. If you kill me or my daughter, they will come and they will bring the blue coats with them. No, your brother is not a fool and I do not believe my brother, Water from the Rock, to be a fool either. I will have my daughter.
“I did not tell the gods to make the white man strong and the Shoshone weak. The gods did as gods will do. I will use the strength the gods have given the whites to take my daughter if I must. If the Shoshone would rather have her dead or me dead, I tell you again, not one Shoshone in this village will see the spring rain.”
“Although I hate you, my brother, you speak the truth. I make you a gift of Spring Flower and I will accept your gift of the cattle. I am in poor position to ask, my brother, but do not let her forget she is Shoshone.”
“She will remember that she is Shoshone and she will remember that she is white. Both the Shoshone and the white live in her without hatred for the other. Perhaps one day Water from the Rock and Jess Roker can live without hatred.”
Becky had been frightened, but never hopeless. She knew her daddy. She knew he would come and she knew that she would go home. She rode in front of Jess secure in his hug and in his love. When they arrived home, Becky moved from the security of that love to the arms of Harriet and Austin.
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein