Whistler in the Dark (16 page)

Emma walked into the print shop, glad to escape the August sun. Mother was looking over trim lines of type in the press. “Good job, Tildy!” she exclaimed a moment later.

Tildy flushed. “Thank you, Miz Henderson. I tried ever so hard.”

“I knew that anyone who spends her evenings reading a spelling book would make an excellent typesetter,” Mother said. “All right, Mr. Troxwell. You can ink the type now.”

“Mother!” Emma said.

Mother looked up and blinked. “Oh, Emma! How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough,” Emma said, but she smiled.

Mother nodded at Emma's attire. “You must be going riding with Jeremy. That's about the only time I see you in your Reform Dress.”

“I usually don't need bloomers to help out around the print shop,” Emma protested. “And we agreed—”

“I know, I know.” Mother waved a hand. “It's your choice— Oh, Mrs. Carter! Did you come by to discuss an advertisement? I understand you're selling pies …”

Emma stepped over to say hello to Tildy, who was wearing her own Reform Dress. “How do you like your new job?”

“It's wonderful! I never thought I'd be helping print a newspaper!” A look of awe slipped over her face.

Emma knew that Mother was happy to have Tildy, and Mr. Troxwell, too—especially since Mule Tom had headed back to the goldfields. Still, Emma couldn't help putting a sympathetic hand on her friend's arm. “I heard about Professor Swallow's report. I'm sorry. I wish there really
had
been a rich gold vein running through your land, instead of just those few nuggets.”

Tildy shrugged. “Emma, it really doesn't matter.”

“Good.” Emma squeezed Tildy's hand, then turned to watch Mr. Troxwell inking the rows of type Tildy had positioned, his scarred face set with concentration. “How are you?” Emma asked, when he paused.

“Real good, Miss Emma,” he said. “But I got to finish this job now.”

“Then I won't keep you. I think that's Jeremy, anyway.” Emma waved and hurried outside.

Jeremy was riding a gray mare named Cloud. “Mind riding two-fer-one?” he asked. “Pa needed the other horses today.” He held his left foot free of the stirrup so that Emma could step up and swing behind the saddle.

Emma centered herself on the mare's broad rump. Jeremy had been giving her riding lessons all summer. She had abandoned the idea of riding sidesaddle the first time she lost her balance and promptly slid to the ground. “You'd have better balance if you rode astride,” Jeremy had pointed out. “And since you've got that skirt-and-trousers getup …” Emma had given in, and she'd learned to love the freedom of pounding through the valley on horseback.

As Jeremy turned the mare north, Emma grabbed his arm. “Crackers! I forgot my hat. Can we stop back at the boardinghouse?”

“Sure.” He paused to let a bullwhacker pass. “You know, I'm surprised you and your mother still live at Mrs. Sloane's after—what, more than two months?”

“I've got a plan about that.” Emma lowered her voice. “Miss Amaretta wants a house, with a kitchen she can cook in, but she can't afford it. My mother can't afford it yet, either, but most of all she doesn't want to have to cook or keep a house tidy. So I'm figuring—”

Jeremy hooted, “Your mother and Miss Amaretta sharing a house?”

“No, really! They argue from habit more than anything else these days.”

“It could work, I guess.” Jeremy reined the horse to a stop in front of the boardinghouse. “Hey, I've been meaning to ask you. Remember that rock I gave you? Did you ever bust it open?”

Emma flushed. “Well … actually … no.”

Jeremy snorted. “We're going to do that right now,” he announced. “Or no ride.”

Emma crossed her fingers as she hurried up the stairs. She
thought
she had tucked the silly thing into the top dresser drawer. Yes—thank goodness, there it was. She examined the lumpy gray stone. She still thought it was as ugly as Twin Pines!

Rock in hand and straw hat in place, Emma let Jeremy take her around to the forge. The blacksmith was replacing the iron rim on a farmer's wagon wheel—an operation that involved a fire pit, glowing iron, brute force, and a clear sense of timing—so Emma and Jeremy slid to the ground and waited in the shade beside his shack.

“You think your ma'll still need me, now that she's hired Tildy and George?” Jeremy asked. “Pa said I could help with the newspaper sometimes, even after that new teacher gets here and school starts.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Aren't you tired of it yet?”

“No! I think it's fun.”

“Well … I suppose investigating a big story can be exciting.”

“Like Mr. Spaulding causing so much trouble!”

Emma shook her head. She hadn't seen the land agent since the sheriff had taken him off to Golden, the territorial capital. Spaulding was still in jail. “Yes. But mostly it's boring. I don't want to spend my life setting type, or even writing articles.”

“So what
do
you want?”

Emma looked down the street, picturing the lush valley beyond Twin Pines. Asters and gentians were blooming now, and Jeremy promised that soon the aspen trees would turn as gold as candles. “Art is what I really like.”

“Did you ever think about doing engravings for the newspaper? You know, those fancy illustrations they have in the big papers back east?”

“I don't know exactly how they do it. It's complicated, I think.” Emma slapped at a mosquito, considering. “An artist makes the sketch, and then it gets copied onto a block of wood, and then someone has to carve away everything but the lines.”

“I'm pretty good with a jackknife, and a chisel, too.”

“Do you really think we could?” Emma felt a warm smile bubble slowly up from inside. “Well … crackers! Let's give it a try!”

“We'll start with something simple. Maybe a nice title block for the newspaper. What do you call those?”

“A masthead.” Emma nodded, picturing the words “The Twin Pines Herald” in fancy letters, perhaps with a mountain range sketched in the background.

Jeremy looked at her sideways. “You know, when you got here, I didn't figure you'd last long. I pegged you as a go-backer for sure.”

“I might have been, if Mother could have afforded to buy tickets home,” Emma admitted. She thought that over, waving at Mr. Torkelson as he strode ankle-deep through the muck toward his freight office. Twin Pines was a grubby little town, but … it was starting to feel like home.

Emma watched the blacksmith and the farmer hoist the heavy, red-hot wheel rim from the fire pit and drop it in place over the wooden wheel. The blacksmith doused it with a bucket of cold water and, with a satisfying hiss and sizzle, the rim shrank to make a tight fit around the wheel.

“Come on.” Jeremy motioned to Emma. He borrowed a hammer from the smith, then handed it to Emma and placed the stone he'd given her on the ground.

“Like this?” Emma raised the hammer above her head.

Jeremy snatched it from her. “No! Let me.” He gave the stone a careful rap, and it cracked open. He handed her the two halves. “See? It's a geode.”

Emma caught her breath. The stone was hollow, its interior lined with glittering crystals. She'd never seen anything so magical. “Are they diamonds?”

Jeremy snorted again. “Naw. They're just quartz crystals. But I thought you'd like it.”

Emma touched the crystals. Who would have guessed?

“Yes, Jeremy.” Emma grinned. “I like it very much.”

1867

G
OING
B
ACK IN
T
IME

L
OOKING
B
ACK
: 1867

The dress reform movement that inspired Emma's mother began in the 1820s—but 40 years later, a woman in trousers was still considered shocking.

In Emma's day, fashionable women wore long, full skirts with six or seven starched petticoats underneath. Altogether, a woman might wear 12 layers of fabric around her waist! A snug corset helped support the weight of all that material. Although elegant, such clothing was uncomfortable and sometimes impaired a woman's ability to move, breathe, and digest food.

Several people in the early 1800s designed healthier styles for women. These costumes all resembled the Reform Dress that Emma's mother wears—a knee-length skirt worn over trousers.

In 1851, leaders of the new movement for women's suffrage appeared in public wearing such an outfit—which they called the Freedom Dress. One suffragist wrote, “Women are in bondage. Their clothes are a great hindrance to making them independent.” Some suffragists used the costume to symbolize their campaign for women's right to vote.

Women brave enough to wear the Reform Dress found it practical and comfortable. A farmwife who wore a Reform Dress while helping her husband clear timber wrote, “Clothe yourselves in freedom's dress, despite the scoffs and sneers of the public.”

Like Emma, however, most people found the Reform Dress scandalous. Some accused reformers of acting “mannish.” Others laughed at them or decided they had “loose morals.”

Suffragists who wore the Reform Dress received so much scorn that most gave up the costume, fearing it would hurt their main goal of gaining women the right to vote. Public ridicule did not kill the dress reform movement, though. Some women wore the Reform Dress as they worked in the privacy of their homes or farms. And a few—like Emma's mother—believed that women would never be accepted as men's equals as long as their clothing prevented them from working and moving freely. These women found the courage to continue wearing their trouser costumes in public.

But by the mid-1860s, the dress reform movement had started to decline. The Civil War and the difficulties of rebuilding the nation afterward overshadowed other issues such as women's rights. American women didn't gain the right to vote until 1920—and it wasn't truly acceptable for them to wear pants in public until the 1930s.

During the Civil War, however, many women became involved in new ventures. Thousands kept farms and businesses running while men fought in the war. Some northern women, like Emma's mother, gained self-confidence and business experience by volunteering with the U.S. Sanitary Commission. This national organization worked to ensure clean and healthy conditions in Union army camps. Volunteers collected tons of food and medical supplies and raised more than $30 million, mostly by holding “Sanitary Fairs.” These grand bazaars featured donated items for sale, restaurants, art galleries, military exhibits, bands, and parades. The fairs drew huge crowds and made up to $1 million.

When the war ended, many women were content to return to their former roles as wives and mothers. But others, like Mrs. Henderson, enjoyed their jobs and didn't want to give them up. The sparsely settled western territories beckoned women and men eager for new opportunities.

At the time of Emma's story, miners had been prospecting in Colorado for almost a decade. New gold strikes still created excitement—such as the discovery of a few nuggets in a partially dug well in 1862—but the first frenzy of gold fever had passed. Many men still headed to Colorado, however, to look for gold or to work in established mines. Shopkeepers like Mr. Boggs, saloon owners like Blackjack, freighters like Mr. Torkelson, and other businesspeople all hoped to make their livings by providing services that miners needed. Meanwhile, families like Jeremy's traveled west looking for good farmland at affordable prices.

And wherever miners and farmers and businesses went, a newspaper editor was sure to follow. In 1867 one editor wrote, “American pioneers carry with them the press and the type, and wherever they pitch their tent, be it in the wilderness of the interior, among the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra or on the sunny sea beach of the Pacific, there too must the newspaper appear.”

Newspapers did more than publish the news. They gave a sense of stability to tiny communities struggling to get established. Promoters worked hard to “boom” their towns by sending guidebooks, picturesque maps, and carefully composed newspaper editions east to attract new settlers—just as Jeremy's father hopes to do. If a small town failed, as many did, people who had invested in land sometimes lost their life's savings. Unscrupulous speculators like Mr. Spaulding published wildly exaggerated claims about their towns, much to the dismay of the new settlers they attracted.

Most newspaper editors were men—but there were a few women, too. The earliest women editors usually learned the newspaper business from their husbands, as Mrs. Henderson did. Girls of Emma's age were sometimes hired as typesetters because their fingers were small and nimble enough to handle the tiny pieces of type.

Western newspaper editors experienced many of the problems Emma and her mother face in the fictional town of Twin Pines. They struggled to get newsprint and ink and sometimes improvised with makeshift materials. One mischief-maker stole an editor's press lever, just as Mr. Spaulding does. And in a few cases, readers who disagreed with what they read in a newspaper physically attacked the editor. More than one newspaper staff worked with rifles at the ready.

Despite such hardships, three Colorado women ran newspapers in the 1870s. In 1880 Caroline Romney had a press hauled to Durango, where she worked from a tent.

In the West, these women found freedoms they might not have had back east, where there were more workers than jobs. On isolated ranches and in tiny towns, women like Mrs. Henderson, Tildy Pearce, and Miss Amaretta helped create the new West. And like Emma, many of them came to appreciate the choices that living on the western frontier provided.

A
UTHOR'S
N
OTE

Twin Pines is a fictional place, but it resembles a number of small towns that grew in the Colorado foothills. Visiting the Colorado History Museum, the Golden Pioneer Museum, or Clear Creek History Park in Golden can provide glimpses of this fascinating time. And a walk through one of the Open Space parks, such as the City of Boulder's Doudy Draw, or Jefferson County's Elk Meadow or White Ranch Park, makes it easier to imagine the landscape as it was in 1867.