Posted 07-07-20
Updated 09-12-22

By Christopher Leeson
.

Wednesday, December 27, 1871

The Belle of Eerie, Arizona: Epilogue; Chapter 8
Posted 07-07-20
Updated 09-12-22
By Christopher Leeson
.
Wednesday, December 27, 1871

That night, in a half-dreaming state, Myra slept only fitfully, still hearing her mother’s words speaking from those self-damning pages. At breakfast, the niece avoided the aunt's glances and neither made any effort at conversation. Afterwards, the girl sulked outside to perform her morning chores.

Later, with the work caught up, Myra lingered outside. Seated on an empty keg and swept by the north wind’s chilly breath, she stared blankly at the southern ridge’s treeline. The same questions kept running through her mind. How well had she known her parents? It was suddenly like they had suddenly become complete strangers. She held good memories, but these didn’t fit in with the reality of the old days. Worse of all, she wasn't sure of the answer to the all-important question: did she still loved them?

Myra tried hard to understand why she was so confused and feeling so raw. She wasn’t really condemning her parents for thieving. In fact, Myra wished that she could have been out robbing right then. Was it knowing that the corpse of Thomas Mifflin was buried on this property bothered her? She wasn’t sure about that either. Myron had himself come very close to killing now and then.

No, it wasn’t the thieving and it wasn’t the killing that bothered her. It was that she had grown up with a wall of secrets between herself and her parents. That whole part of her life had turned out to be nothing better than a fragile spider’s web of lies. Since the day before, every cherished memory she had clung to had become tainted, as if by walnut juice.

Her parents, she'd been forced to understand, hadn’t been special; they had been like everyone else. They'd had some good in them – she couldn’t deny that – but they had a bad side, a hidden side. What was left of that previous life now? Was it still a living thing, or had it become like a plant pulled out by its roots. She had been left standing on an illusion with nothing left to hold onto.

And what about Irene? Myra guessed that her aunt believed that her sister and brother-in-law must have gone to Hell. How else could see look at it, after reading the Good Book and listening to Reverend Yingling’s fiery sermons at church? He preached that if one died with an unforgiven sin on his shoulders he was going to be pitched into the flames. Myra was left wondering what to think. She kept hoping that God didn’t exist. He couldn’t judge anything, couldn’t punish anything, if he was nothing except a character made up for a story book.

If there was no God, there was no devil. If there was no devil, then her parents wouldn’t be suffering like prisoners inside a medieval torture chamber. They’d now be mere dust blowing mindlessly across the prairie. Myra wasn’t afraid of dying and turning into dust. That was how the Bible stories had it -- that everyone started out as dust. Would that be so terrible? It sounded a lot like going home.

But these streaks of thought were bringing her no peace. She strained hard to try to think about something else, and suddenly her mind entered a new groove. There was gold on this land, she knew.

Where had her pa hidden it? Had he placed it into Thomas Mifflin’s grave? Myra shook her head. Absolutely not! Her dad would never have wanted to open that grave again once it was closed.

So, logically, what else would he have done?

Myra reasoned that her father would probably had taken the body straight back to the wooded ridge behind the barn. He would have looked for a burial spot screened by brush and trees, so that no one could have seen him working.

Myra reasoned that the gold would have to be buried to the right or to the left of the grave. The ridge was steep and the wooded area under it was narrow before it opened into a field. Abruptly, she gasped with excitement. Her father would definitely buried it to the left of the grave. The side to the right of it would have put it close to Tully Singer’s property. In those days, the boundary line was in contention and a court action might have awarded Tully the strip of land with the gold on it. That was something that her dad would have recognized.

So, in all likelihood, the gold was somewhere to the left of the grave. Myra’s mother had written that she and her pa had gone back numerous times to retrieve ingots and that meant they couldn’t’ be buried deeply. That wood lot was tough digging, so her folks would have looked for a soft spot of ground, probably using a long, strong probing rod. She could search for such spots using a similar rod and a hammer. Of course, they might have instead put the gold into a natural rock hole or hidden it under a pile of stones.

Myra now realized one other thing. Most of Grimsley's trespassing had been done down by that ridgeline. Could the neighbor possibly learned some information that made him focus his search on that spot?

Myra wanted to go gold-hunting immediately, but reality grabbed her by the ankle. Her aunt would never let her keep stolen gold. If Irene figured out that Myra was looking for it, she would put a stop to it. The redhead couldn’t let her aunt frustrate her. She had to have that gold, otherwise the years ahead of her would be empty and pointless.

Abigail Myra Olcott considered her options. The best way to avoid Irene’s suspicions would be to win her trust. Myra had to make her less suspicious. That meant acting more friendly and cooperative. She’d have to talk like she liked the farm and wanted to keep it. The less watchful her aunt became, the more private time she would have for gold-seeking.

Then she remembered another obstacle. Under the restrictions of the magical spell, she couldn’t leave the farm without permission. Even if Myra found the gold, she couldn’t run with it. She’d be stuck until Irene took the spell off. That would probably be when she turned the farm over to her. But would she actually keep her word?

Probably. Irene was that kind of person.

This bad situation she was in might have to go on for three more years, until the age of twenty-one. That was a long time. But if the promise was kept, she'd get her aunt to move into Eerie, or some other town, so she could treasure-hunt to her heart's content.

Myra began feeling more optimistic. Wasn't this like making her parents' wish come true? They had wanted a prosperous life for their son. They had wanted Myron to be important and respected. Well, Myra thought, nothing made a person important and respected than flashing plenty of gold.

Myra, standing up, looked back at the farmhouse. This farmstead, with all its sad memories, would have to be home to her for the next three years. She'd be poor and working hard all that time. But the prize could be a very big one and she thought she could go the course.

It made her feel good thinking that she was going to be doing something that would gladden the heart of her folks.
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Thursday, December 28, 1871

George Severin pitched just one more forkful of hay down the chute for good measure. All through this day's chores, his thoughts had been drifting back to a certain face -- the pretty-as-all-hell face of Abigail Myra Olcott.

But every time he let himself think about her, he had to ask himself who and what was she?

Just then, a sound on the other side of the loft door made the youth look over his shoulder. It was the cats – eager and hungry – meowing up a storm. Through the gaps between the barn boards, someone was out there feeding them table scraps. Then the loft door was opened by his sister Rosedale.

“Easy, kitties,” she was saying to the cats behind her, “you'll get all get fed!”

George chuckled, saying, “If those critters weren't so dumb and lazy, they'd be out catching mice and rats, not begging for milk and crusts.”

“That's cats for you,” was the only the defense that his sister felt like offering on behalf of the feline pack.

The youth jabbed his fork upright into the hay and slid down from the stack, landing boots first on the soft litter. Straightening up, he crossed over to the door.

“You’ve been awfully quit since the Christmas dance,” said his sister.

George grimaced. “I guess there hasn’t been much to talk about these days. New Years Day is coming up, but after that it’ll be the long haul of winter.”

“I thought that you liked winter better than you do the summer heat.”

“Well, I’ve like this winter so far. We had a little snow for a change. Pretty.”

His sister smiled. “I know what else you think is pretty. You were dancing up a storm with Myra. I’d have thought that you’d still be bragging about it.”

His shrugged. “Brag to you? What good would that do?”

“Are you saying that you’ve been talking to the boys about Miss Myra?”

He shrugged again.

“You know, Myra did okay dancing,” the girl continued. “She'll do even better next time. Have you asked her out to the New Years hoedown yet?”

“I'm not sure I should.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’ll only say no.”

“How come?”

“She’ll say no just because it’ld be me doing the asking.”

“Isn’t she starting to like you?”

“That little Eastern gal is a hard one to figure out.”

“Maybe she is,” Dale conceded.

“Say, Stockings, “does Myra ever strike you as being somehow – out of the ordinary?”

“In what way?”

“In any way.”

Dale showed a thoughtful face. “I guess so. She mostly likes to talk about what she’s reading, but she doesn’t read the stuff that most girls care for. And she’s not much interested in fashion, though I’d have thought that an Eastern girl would excited about clothing and fancy manners. Myra’s rough and tumble. I think she’d be a terrible tomboy if her aunt let her get away with it.”

“Yeah,” her brother agreed, “she’s something else, that’s for sure.”

“Do you suppose she got to be that way because she’s an only child?”

“Maybe.”

“You know,” continued Rosedale, “I don’t think she made many friends back home.”

“Why?"

"She acts kind of tense when she’s socializing.”

George met his sister’s glance straight-on. “What do you really think about Myra? Do you like her?”

“Wellll,” the farm girl began slowly, “I guess I do. She's not the warmest young lady I ever met, but there's something interesting about her.”

He cocked his head. “What do you mean, ‘interesting’?”

“There's something about her that draws a person to her. I don’t know what it is. She's a serious-minded type and maybe she could be a school teacher someday. How about you, Fish Hooks?” Dale asked suddenly. “Do you like her?”

Her brother rested his arm upon the middle cross board of the loft door. “I’m not sure what I feel. All I know is that Myra doesn’t like me and she hasn’t from the minute we met.”

Rosedale pursed her lips and nodded. “I noticed. But I don’t think she hates you, either. A lot of girls are shy with boys. Sometimes shy people cover up by acting mad. What makes me really mad, though, is not being able to ask a boy to go walking, or to take me to a picnic.”

George smiled. “Better not get too forward with the boys, gal, or else folks will start calling you a hussy. But if the shoe fits.…”

“Oh, you!” his sister exclaimed, scooping up a handful of hay to throw at him. It wasn’t easy to hit a target throwing loose hay and hardly any of it reached its target.

Still grinning, her brother asked, “Which boys do you like the most? Or are there so many that you can't remember them all?”

She scowled. “A girl can't talk about things like that, not even to a brother. But if you want some advice, you should treat girls differently. I could teach you how to make a girl like you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Chicken! I could so teach you.”

“Teach me what? Why most girls act like ninnies?”

She grinned. “Do you mean that about all girls? I bet you don’t think that Myra is a ninny.”

“I don’t know what she is. She makes everything topsy-turvy when she’s around.”

Dale nodded. “She does. Why do you suppose that’s so?”

“Umm. I've got my theories.”

“What sort of theories?”

“I’m not telling you anything. You’d just go running to Miss Olcott to spill the beans.”

The girl knitted her brows. “If I did, it would be to help you! A good way to get a girl to notice you is to say or do something that gets her mad.”

Young Severin shook his head. “So that’s what it means to treat girls better? Making them mad? I think I make her mad often enough. Whenever she spots me, she moves away.”

Dale came closer and pretended to sniff for bad odors. George pushed her away playfully.

“Well, if you don’t have the nerve to make her mad,” suggested Rosedale, “take a shot at being nice. Once she starts feeling easy with you around, she’s bound to be more friendly.”

George scowled. “I don’t want to be any girl’s friend. If a girl starts thinking of a boy as a friend, she’ll never let him be anything else.”

“You’re silly!”

“Oh, yeah, Little Sister, you’re a whole lot sillier than I am.”

She lifted her chin. “Hey, don’t call me that. You're only a year older than me.”

“But I'm a lot less silly.”

“Oh, pshaw! You're twice as silly as I ever was, even on my worst day!”

“Says who?”

“Says me!”

“Whatever a silly person says, it doesn’t matter!” George answered back.

“Well, I just bet we’ll find out which one of us is most silly one of these days,” the girl declared, her hands on her hips.

“I guess we will,” George said, grinning with effort. With that, the youth went outside.

He descended from the loft balcony by way of a short ladder and entered the ground floor of the barn. The hay he had thrown down formed a pile of hay under the chute and this he spread around among the managers using a hay fork. That wrapped up his morning chores and he decided to settle his mind by taking a walk until the dinner bell rang.

While strolling across the adjacent pasture, Myra came to mind again. The girl had been around for only two weeks, but he felt as though he’d known her much longer. George had been thinking that there could be a good reason for that.

His theory would have aroused most folks to laughter. Or at least they would have laughed if they had been living in any other town except Eerie, Arizona.

The first time he’d laid eyes on the Myra Olcott, she’d spoken up and named him. How had she done that? And wasn’t it funny that Miss Olcott had shown up on the very day that Thorn Caldwell had gotten himself shot dead at the Gap?

And there were other details that didn't sit right. Not only Myra, but a horse had suddenly appeared at the Fanning place. Its saddle wasn’t the old one that was stored in the Fanning barn, so where had it come from? If a saddled horse had wandered in, it must have run away from somebody. So why hadn’t anyone reported a missing horse? He also thought it strange that Myra had ignored the idea that the bay could very well have belonged to her cousin. On top of that, Myra was able to ride danged well for a gal who’d supposedly just arrived from out East.

And why did Myra sometimes refer to Myron as Thorn? She had said that Thorn hadn’t written to her and George himself had never heard Mrs. Fanning use that nickname. So why did the girl use it? Moreover, the cousins had to be close to the same age and both had been named after the same maternal grandmother. A coincidence? And, to carry the coincidence farther, both apparently liked the same sort of reading material.

And why did Mrs. Fanning start behaving strangely from the very day that Myra showed up? Why would a proper church lady all at once become chummy with Molly O'Toole, the wife of a whiskey peddler? What had brought the farmer and the saloon-keeper together? Thorn’s death? Myra’s arrival? It didn’t follow.

And there were other odd details abut her arrival. Why had Myra come to town with only one dress to her name, without even a winter coat? Her aunt had claimed that she‘d lost her luggage in a stage accident. But if that had happened, why had every witness he talked to swear that no one of her description had ridden the stage that day? And if the girl hadn’t actually come in by coach, why were both she and Irene trying to make people think that she had? Mrs. Fanning seldom joked, and she never joked so pointlessly.

Even Deputy Grant had behaved strangely when he met Abigail Myra Olcott. Why had Grant allowed a grass-green gal from New Jersey to ride with him up into the Gap while he was out looking for outlaw loot? Of what earthly use could she have been to his job?

Then, too, why hadn’t Thorn Caldwell's body been located? The outlaws could have hidden it, sure, but why did they take the trouble to hide it so blamed well?

George had also been thinking about something else. What if there was a bigger secret at the Fanning farm? What if Thorn Caldwell was still alive and his kin were hiding him? Why, even Myra had let out a theory that he was alive.

Myra came across like a puzzle whose pieces didn’t fit together. For one, why had Mrs. Fanning, speaking at the memorial, supposed that an unrepentant sinner like Myron could be getting another chance at Heaven? Was she talking about Purgatory? He didn’t think so. Methodists didn’t believe in any such place. If Irene didn’t believe in Purgatory, where did she expect Myron’s second chance to come from?

And why had Myra been seen speaking to the sheriff, a man she could have only just met. Dan was an affable gent, but why would he have to lead her outside to talk at a private spot? What could Sheriff Talbot have wanted to say to a young newcomer? Or had it been Myra who'd needed to talk to the lawman? About what? And, a little later, George had seen the girl talking to Lydon Kelsey. George knew that Kelsey and Caldwell had been as thick as thieves, up until the latter left town. Why, he wondered, would a girl new to the community push away a neighbor while willingly speaking to a roughneck like Kelsey?

Every time George tried to talk himself out of his theory, he ended up right back at it. By the time of the party he had gotten so suspicious that Myra knew more about Eerie than she was letting on, he had tested her by mentioning Indian Head, a local landmark where a lot of young locals went to spoon. Myra had replied, “If you hang around up there, I'll have to keep shy of the place.”

It sure had sounded as if she already knew that there was a place called Indian Head. Neither she nor Mrs. Fanning had ever mentioned Myra taking any sight-seeing jaunts. And if she had learned of the local spot by conversation, when did she have a chance to do that? George had a good idea that Myra had stayed pretty close to the farm the whole week before.

And then there was the Christmas Day visit to his home. To George’s mind, Myra had looked bored when Dale was showing off the girlish things she was so proud of. Myra’s interests surely weren't typical of the everyday sort of girl.

But young Severin had a theory that seemed to string most of these oddities together. Unfortunately, it was a theory that he didn’t personally care for.

What if Myron Thornton Caldwell had robbed that stage and gotten shot, just like Mrs. Deeters had witnessed? Then, what if he’d stayed conscious while the outlaws were hiding the gold? Could Myron have still been left fit enough to ride his saddled horse down to his aunt’s nearby place?

If Thorn had arrived at the farm badly wounded, Mrs. Fanning would naturally have hurried him to Doc Upshaw. As a good friend of the O'Tooles, the doctor might have thought that the badly injured Thorn wasn’t going to make it, not unless he took the magic potion that only Shamus O’Toole could provide. It was, after all, the same potion that had saved the life of Elmer O’Hanlan. Would Mrs. Fanning have had any other choice but to go along with the idea, no matter how shocking the idea must have seemed to her?

If Myron had really become Myra, she probably wouldn’t have wanted the whole town to know about it. The aunt and her nephew – now a niece – would likely have concocted a story about Myra having just come to Eerie. But by then Shamus O’Toole was involved and Molly would probably have willingly pitched in to help Irene and Myra.

That would explain why Molly had gone to Phoenix to do shopping for Myra. In Phoenix she’d be less well known and fewer people would have wondered why a childless woman needed to buy clothes for a young person.

Pretty soon, Deputy Grant and Judge Humphreys – who would have known about the magical transformation – would have visited the farm to ask Myra about the robbery. As Myron, Miss Olcott would had been a witness with a lot of information about the gang. The deputy would surely have asked the girl to help him find the lost gold shipment, and Myra wouldn’t have had much choice but to agree.

The youth’s theory, if true, would also explain why Myra disliked him. Myron had hated all of his aunt’s hired men. The more he thought about it, the more sure George became that he was on to the truth. If Myra really was Thorn, she would be having a rough time of it learning how to live a very different sort of life. The thought of Thorn dealing with corsets and pantaloons for the rest of his life was an idea that should have been funny -- except that the whole idea was so powerfully strange.

The whole thing should have been amusing, but the youth didn’t want his idea to be true. Myra was attractive girl he wanted her to start reacting to him in the way that a regular girl would. Knowing what he thought he knew, he still wanted that. The fact that he wanted a relationship with her bothered him considerably.

As things stood, young Severin had inadvertently fallen into the role of co-conspirator with Mrs. Fanning in the keeping of Myra’s secret. If everyone found out about it, she’d be humiliated, a turn of events that George wouldn't want to be responsible for.

Young Severin, now at the end of the field, gazed away in the direction of the Fanning farm. He was thinking that every time he was going to be going over there from now on he would be part of Myra’s daft story. And it was one hell of a story!

Part of him didn't want to be involved in it. He had already considered ducking out and quitting his job. But that would make things harder for Mrs. Fanning. He liked the young widow and it made him feel good to be helping a person make a success of a hard job. And, somehow he felt sorry for Myra, even though everything that had happened had been Myron's own fault.

He grinned to himself. Being around Myra Olcott never seemed to be boring. But he’d knew he'd have to stay on guard against the nasty side of Myra’s character. On the other hand, he'd heard folks talking about how the Hanks Gang at the saloon had actually become likable young ladies. Maybe improvement in character was part of the magic. He wondered what Myra might be like if she sweetened up a little herself.

But George going back to the Fanning place with what he knew made him uneasy. How should he behave? He supposed that he should should step back a little from Myra, until she started to show signs of becoming more friendly.

He suddenly sighed. Was any of his thinking true? He actually hoped that none of it was true. Regardless, he pretty firmly believed that he'd have a lot to think about during the long winter nights ahead.

THE END