but you were right all along.”
The robin flew out of sight.
Letty sighed. “I guess it wasn’t you after all.” Then her chin began to tremble. “I’m sorry, Eulis. I’m as sorry as I can be. George Mellin was the man who killed you. If I hadn’t interfered in their life, you would still be alive.”
Tears were rolling down her face as she wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“I never could mind my own business, could I? Anyway, I wanted you to know that I never meant for you to suffer for what I did, and that the man paid and paid dearly.”
A breeze lifted the fringe of hair away from her forehead as she briefly closed her eyes. In her mind, she could almost see Eulis standing there, smiling at her in that slow, easy way he had. But when she opened her eyes, the fantasy was gone.
“Well, I guess I’ll be going now. If you get the time and aren’t too mad, I wouldn’t mind if you said a prayer for me. For a man who couldn’t read all that much, you were real good at praying.”
She stood then, glancing down one more time at the marker with his name. Her shoulders had slumped, but as she turned away and started back to the house, she straightened her back and lifted her chin. She’d been beaten down, but she owed it to Eulis to get up. She still carried his name, and even if she didn’t want to—even if it hurt her heart every day for the rest of her life—she was going to do right by him and make his name a name of which to be proud.
Two weeks came and went and Letty began to resume something of a daily routine. She went into town when supplies were needed, and with some help from her banker, Amos Trueblood, began keeping a decent set of books on her mine, which still showed no signs of playing out. For all intents and purposes, Letty Potter was worth more than she could spend in three lifetimes.
The flood that had washed all of the gold deposits out of Cherry Creek had long subsided, but new pockets were being found daily.
For some of the prospectors, it meant relocating a bit farther downstream, and for others, they rediscovered new color on their old claims.
Robert and Mary Whiteside had finally come down off the mountain, but their fate had drastically changed. Before, they’d been getting color almost every day, but now they had nothing. They’d had to ask for credit at Milton Feasley’s general store.
Mary had offered the suggestion that they go back to Philadelphia. Instead of giving Robert an excuse to pack it in, it had angered him. He’d taken it as failure on his part to provide for his family, and every day afterward without gold in the pan, he became more and more depressed.
Mary Whiteside had awakened this morning with a cramp in her neck and a centipede crawling on top of her blanket. She’d screamed in fright, as much as in anger for being put in such a precarious place. In frustration, she’d told Robert she wasn’t going to the creek this morning, and stayed in camp for the morning to put a pot of beans on to cook. Robert felt sorry for her and offered to go hunting to put some meat in the pot. Mary had pouted her way through breakfast, and when Robert left camp, she wouldn’t tell him goodbye.
Now, hours later, the beans were almost done and Robert still wasn’t back. She gave the bubbling beans a quick stir, then replaced the lid on the pot and looked up toward the woods. Robert should have been back a long time ago. She was on the verge of working up a new fuss when she heard a gunshot.
“It’s about time,” she mumbled to herself, and hoped he’d shot them a rabbit or maybe a squirrel.
She waited for a few minutes, but when Robert didn’t appear, she put a couple of sticks on the fire so it wouldn’t go out, and started into the trees. He was probably in there cleaning his kill now. If he had it skinned and gutted, she’d take it right back to camp and put it on a spit. There was a little salt left in the salt sack which would make the meat right tasty.
Humming to herself, she walked a few yards into the trees and was somewhat surprised