Forgiving by LaVyrle Spencer
Noah observed with a rancorous eye, then left his chair up front and made his way down the crowded aisle. As he eased through the knot of men around Sarah she looked up. Their eyes met. He gave a curt nod, she returned it and he moved on.
To Noah’s intense dismay he found himself thinking of her in bed that night, the way he’d last seen her, surrounded by all those men, who fawned over her like besotted pups. Men could be such fools when faced with a woman shortage. Why, hell, she was about as eurvy as a twelve-year-old boy, and she wasn’t even pretty. Her face was too long and her nose too thin. Those spectacles made her appear bookish, and there was something distinctly off-putting about looking a woman in the eyes at the same height as your own.
She had good eyes, though. When she took those glasses off and set those bright blue eyes on you, you felt it clear to your toenails.
And Ma had one thing right. Sarah Merritt was bright. And gutsy to boot. How many women would attend a city council meeting, much less stand up before a roomful of aldermen and bombard them with criticism on their town, then offer suggestions for its improvement? Certainly the editor of any town newspaper had the power and the means to become a leader. But for a woman to do so...
Her temerity startled him.
The following morning dawned gloomy and cold. Noah awakened, peered at the window and drew the covers up tightly beneath his chin. He heard the clang of the iron range below as Mrs. Roundtree built a fire. From an adjacent room came the sound of snoring and he stayed a while longer in his warm cocoon.
Now why in the Sam Hell was he thinking of Sarah Merritt again?
He put her from his mind, sat up and stretched, donned his trousers and boots and made the trip outside. Back in his room, he washed and shaved with icy water—so icy that it drew his belly nearly to his backbone. He wet his hair, parted it on the side and combed it back uselessly. It seemed to have a will of its own. By the time it dried it would be sprigging up all around his hatline.
The smell of frying meat and boiling coffee drifted up from below and the house grew warmer. Footsteps sounded in the hall and down the stairs. Noah donned a red flannel shirt, a black leather vest, pinned on his star, left his gunbelt hanging on the back of a chair, and went down to breakfast.
Two steps into the dining room he came to a dead halt.
Sarah Merritt was seated at the table, taking a bite out of a biscuit.
Their eyes collided and her hand lowered. Slowly. Around her the other boarders stopped eating. She stared at Noah for several seconds, swallowed, then wiped her lips with a napkin.
“Well...” He continued toward the table. “This is a surprise. Good morning, everyone.”
“Good morning,” they chorused—all but Sarah Merritt. He seated himself in his usual chair, directly across from hers, and reached for an oval platter of meat. Only then did Sarah echo, quietly, “Good morning.”
Mrs. Roundtree swept in from the kitchen—a buxom, red-faced woman with a mole the size of a watermelon seed on her right cheek. She set a bowl of fried potatoes on the table. “I believe you two know each other.”
“Yes,” Noah replied. “We’ve met.”
Sarah found her voice. “You live here?”
“Ever since Loretta opened for business.”
Loretta filled Noah’s cup from a blue granite coffeepot. “Miss Merritt moved in yesterday.”
“What happened to McCooley?” Noah asked, glancing up while the coffee gurgled into his cup. Yesterday morning a tinsmith named McCooley had been sitting in Sarah’s chair eating his breakfast.
“Got lonesome for his family and went back to Arkansas. I thought it’d be nice to have some female company around this place, so I told Miss Merritt she could have the room.”
Noah got himself busy spreading jam on a biscuit, cutting his meat.
Tom Taft, at Noah’s left, said, “We were just talking about the play at the Langrishe. Miss Merritt says it’s good.”
“You stayed for it?” Noah asked her, making an effort for propriety’s sake at being civil.
She picked up his lead and answered, civilly, too, “Yes. I thought I would write a review of it for my next edition of the paper, let the outside world know we do have a touch of culture here in Deadwood. Jack Langrishe’s troupe is, after all, one of the most renowned and respected in America. I found Flies in the Weed very well done. Have you seen it, Mr. Campbell?”
“Yes, I have.” He glanced up and found her face as red as his own felt.
“What did you think of it?”
“I liked it, too.”
“Well, at last we find something upon which we can agree.”
Their eyes met again while he chewed and swallowed a mouthful of food.
“Maybe more than one thing,” he mused.
“Have we agreed on something else?”
“The points you raised last night at the city council meeting. I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for putting in a word about the need for a jail.”
“There’s no need to thank me. It’s the truth.”
“You were very convincing.”
“I should be, don’t you think? I have firsthand knowledge.” She cocked her left eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see you get every improvement you asked for.”
“It’s been true throughout history that wherever men go first, they reface. Then the women come along and refine.”
Once again he was impressed by her eloquence.
“You really intend to act as organizer for a school raising?”
“Absolutely. I thought I’d begin by writing an editorial about the need for a schoolhouse, and for land to build it on. If nothing turns up, I have an idea of whom to solicit for a land donation.”
“Busy, busy,” he said wryly, lifting his coffee cup.
“But without the board approving the funds to pay a teacher it will all be useless.”
“I’d guess a teacher’s salary would be—what? Five dollars a day and found?”
“Seven. We’d want a good one.”
“Seven I should think we could manage. Fines alone bring in good revenue, plus licenses.”
“Yes, I know about both from personal experience.”
To Noah’s surprise a faint glow of mischief shone in Sarah Merritt’s eyes. Without her glasses, they glinted like polished sapphires. The meal continued while they talked of the other reforms—the street cleaner, lamps and lamplighter, the boardwalks. By the time breakfast ended, Noah realized they had dominated the conversation to the exclusion of the other men at the table. Pushing back his chair, he admitted with some amazement that he’d conversed with Sarah Merritt for a full thirty minutes and had come very close to enjoying every one of them.
CHAPTER
7
Sarah’s second issue of the Chronicle expanded to two pages. The first included the headlines: EDITOR OF CHRONICLE JAILED AND FINED; COMPLETE LAW LIBRARY EXPECTED IN DEADWOOD SOON; CAPITAL NEEDED TO BUILD STAMP MILLS; PROSPECT GOOD ON BEAVER, BEAR, SAND CREEKS; WILD GAME SCARCE AS BUFFALO, ELK, DEER RETREAT WESTWARD; BREWERY OPEN IN ELIZABETHTOWN; DUTCH LOVERS OPENING AT BELLA UNION THEATER; LANGRISHE TROUPE’S FLIES IN THE WEED CRISPLY AMUSING.
Elias Pinkney’s ad ran on the second page along with Sarah’s report on the city council meeting and an editorial about the need for a school. In it she suggested that if even a small portion of the gold funneling into the brothels of the badlands was channeled instead into a church/school fund, the building could be up in no time. She requested that all children be officially registered at the newspaper office so an accurate census could be obtained.
The Chronicle office got busier. Merchants came in to place ads. Mothers came in to register children. Miners came in to report their prospect. Everyone came to buy copies of the paper itself.
October made an angry entrance. One unseasonably bitter, snowy day early in the month, Sarah was leaving the building as a rider on a piebald horse drew abreast of her steps. The stranger drew
“A doctor... ma’am... I need a doctor.”
“We have seven of them. Up the street—Rathburn and Allen have tents on your left. Bangs and Dawson are in log buildings on your right, farther up. Henry Kice is in a tent around the corner on your right.” She didn’t bother naming the other two, who’d take more time to reach. “Can you make it, sir?” He appeared on the verge of tumbling from his mount.
“Thank you,” he mumbled and, bobbing over his sad-dlehorn, urged his horse on.
She watched him turn right toward Henry Kice’s.
Later that day she went to Kice’s herself, wondering if the stranger had suffered a gunshot wound, and if so, under what circumstances. A stagecoach robbery perhaps?
Henry Kice said, “No, he’s just a gambler from Cheyenne, name of Cramed. Got a bad case of lung congestion complicated by poison ivy. Undoubtedly the sudden change of weather caught him on horseback between Cheyenne and here and he caught a dilly of a cold. I ordered him to bed. I think he checked into the Custer Hotel.”
Three days later Cramed’s cold and poison ivy were both worse. A week after that, five additional cases of “poison ivy” were reported in town, three of them by residents of the Custer.
Sarah’s headline asked, IS POISON IVY CONTAGIOUS?
Then Cramed died.
Sarah decided it was time somebody took some action. She stopped in the marshal’s office one morning after Josh came to work and reported that his sister Lettie had fallen ill overnight. Campbell was at the rear of his office, speaking with a burly, bearded man Sarah recognized as Frank Gilpin, a local blacksmith. (It appeared the town was about to get a jail.)
Campbell looked over his shoulder when Sarah closed the door. He and Gilpin turned. Gilpin smiled and doffed his misshapen cap. Campbell came forward.
“Scouting for news this morning?” he asked.
“Could I talk to you when you’re free, Marshal?”
“Of course. You know Frank Gilpin?”
Gilpin joined them, bringing the smell of body odor and a jovial if disjointed greeting.
“The young lady writes the newspaper, yes. Hello, so good to see you. We read about the jail, what you write, and Noah has me here. We see how many bars he needs and if these stingy miners got enough gold to pay for them, yes?”
She smiled and nodded, unsure of what she was concurring with.
“I go, leave you two to talk. Noah, you tell me yes or no, I make the bars in three, four days.” Gilpin added something in a foreign language—presumably a farewell—and left.
“So you’ll get your jail soon?” Sarah remarked.
“Hopefully after the November town meeting. Just finding out what it’ll cost. Is that what brought you in here?”
“No. Another matter entirely. Tell me, Marshal, what do you know about smallpox?”
“Smallpox?” He frowned. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to write an editorial and I don’t want to start any panics the law would frown upon. One run-in with you was enough.”
“The poison ivy?” he asked.
“Exactly. Lettie Dawkins just broke out, plus five others, and Henry Kice is asking us to believe it’s poison ivy. Rathburn, meanwhile, is claiming one of the other cases is the great pox.”
“Syphilis?”
She nodded. “Could it be that Kice made the wrong diagnosis and is afraid to say so?”
“And Rathburn too?”
They considered silently awhile.
“What are the chances of two of them being wrong?” Campbell asked.
“I don’t know. I only know poison ivy isn’t contagious, and a young girl like Lettie wouldn’t have syphilis. So what is it?”
“You think we have the start of an epidemic?”
“I’ve done some questioning. All the cases have started the same—three days of fever followed by a generalized eruption. One death already.”
“Smallpox...” Campbell breathed and ran a hand over his curly hair.
“It might not be, but suppose it is. The entire gulch would already have been exposed.”
“What do you suggest?”
“That every qualified doctor in the diggings be called upon to consult together and present a determination about the nature of the disease. If the consensus is smallpox, we must send for vaccine points immediately, by Pony Express, and build a pesthouse for the afflicted. Also we must arrange for some sort of isolation shelters for those who’ve already been exposed but haven’t broken out yet.”
“Where would we get the money?”
“The funds would have to be solicited from the citizens, and anyone who is financially able to contribute but declines would have his name published in the newspaper. I’ll need your permission, of course, before I do such a thing.”
“What is the incubation period of smallpox?”
“Ten to sixteen days.”
“How long ago did Cramed come to town?”
“Thirteen days.”
“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”
“No.”
“George Farnum should know.” Campbell broke for the coat pegs on the wall. “I’ll tell him and call on the doctors immediately. Don’t print anything until one of us gets back to you.”
It was after five P.M. when Campbell entered the Chronicle office with a drawn look about his mouth. Patrick was picking through the wood engravings, searching for a border design, and Josh was sweeping around the woodbox at the rear. Sarah turned at the sound of the door opening and left her chair immediately. She met Campbell some distance from the others where they could speak without being heard.
“It’s virulent smallpox,” he said in an undertone.
A skitter of apprehension zipped through her. She removed her spectacles, pushed a thumb and forefinger against her closed eyes and whispered, “Lord, have mercy.”
“I’ve sent a rider to the telegraph crew. The lines are up about halfway between here and Hill City so the message will go out yet tonight. If there are vaccine points in Cheyenne we’ll be in luck. If not...” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“We’ll need quarantine cards.”
“Can you print them?”
“Of course. I’ll have Patrick typeset them right away. And some kind of notice to call the miners in for inoculation as soon as the points arrive. What about the infirmary?”
“George has called an emergency meeting of the council for tonight. He asked if you’d attend.”
“Absolutely.”
“Eight o’clock at the Number Ten Saloon. Both the Langrishe and the Bella Union have early shows scheduled.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Thanks.” He took one step away and stopped. “Oh, and keep Josh here tonight.”
“I’d already thought of that.”
For a moment their gazes held, grave with responsibility and worry. In that instant Sarah felt an accord with Campbell, tied as they were by this momentous discovery. She thought he was going to offer something reassuring. Instead he said, “I’ll see you later,” and strode toward the door.
Patrick and Josh had quit working, sensing something amiss.
“What’s wrong?” Josh asked.
“I’ll need you both a while longer tonight.”
“What is it?” Patrick said.
“It’s very bad news, I’m afraid. The doctors have determined that we have smallpox in the gulch.”
“Smallpox...” Josh repeated. He glanced toward home, back at Sarah. “You mean Lettie?”
“I’m afraid so, Josh.”
He headed for the coat tree, but she caught his shoulder. “No, Josh. You’ll stay here tonight.”
“I gotta go home. If Lettie’s sick she—”
“No. The safest place for you is away from there. I’ll speak to Mrs. Roundtree and see if you can sleep on the settee in her parlor until the vaccine points arrive. The marshal has sent for
Patrick simply bowed.
“But my mother...” Josh said worriedly.
“I’ll let her know. Now let’s get busy.”
When Sarah left the newspaper office the press was running. She went to Emma’s and spoke to her from the ground below the kitchen window. Emma’s face was wreathed with worry for her stricken daughter. Sarah could not help picturing Lettie, whose whole life lay before her, the girl’s beautiful face with its flawless skin, suddenly vulnerable to scars, at the very least.
The two women lingered after the most important messages had been imparted, each wishing to go to the other and exchange a hug of comfort. Instead they stood separated by the height of a building.
“She’ll be all right, Emma. I know she will.” With her head tipped back, Sarah sent her friend a look of commiseration.
“Say a prayer, Sarah,” Emma said plaintively.
“I will. And I’ll take good care of Josh.”
With a lump in her throat Sarah walked away.
At eight o’clock the emergency meeting convened in the Number Ten Saloon. Word had spread and the saloon was filled. All the members of the town council were present as well as the seven doctors from Deadwood and two others from the adjacent camps of Lead and Elizabethtown, which fell under the jurisdiction of the Deadwood City Council. Businessmen and interested parties had shown up also.
Before the meeting adjourned, the council had officially set up the Board of Health of the City of Deadwood, and they were given jurisdiction over all decisions regarding the control and treatment of the smallpox epidemic. Both Sarah and Noah agreed to sit on the board along with doctors from all three towns, the mayor and two leading businessmen. Before they left the saloon the groundwork was laid for the battle ahead.
A pesthouse would be built in Spruce Gulch, where all the afflicted would be taken. (Reaching this decision took three of the four hours’ meeting time while various factions argued about where the pesthouse should be, nobody wanting it in their vicinity.) The lumber for it would be appropriated from the sawmills, which would be given official notice by the marshal of the board’s priority status. All miners, merchants and businessmen able to contribute funds for the building of the shelter would be ordered to do so, contributions to be made to the town treasurer, shirkers to be openly listed in the Deadwood Chronicle. Volunteers would be sought to put up the building as well as quickly constructed shelters of brush and hide for the internment of the exposed. Volunteers would also be sought to nurse the sick. Dawkins’ Bakery and the Custer Hotel would be placed under quarantine until the board lifted it. The brothels of Deadwood would be closed (this to be enforced by the marshal) until all their residents could receive the vaccine and the general quarantine was lifted. A special issue of the Chronicle was to be printed the following day to announce these decisions.