pupils at Atlas’ one-room schoolhouse would fall behind in their studies. Then she offered to make tea again, evidently failing to remember her earlier invitation.
Mrs. Treacher’s boarding house was back on the main street, and Tom Bledsoe drove them there in his buckboard, accomplishing a U-turn with it in front of his sister-in-law’s house. “She gets a fever now and again; ain’t bad like the last time, I reckon.”
Ellen, alone with Lizzie in the back of the buckboard, asked, “What sort of illness is it that Miss Diamond has?”
“Don’t rightly know, ma’am, and that’s fo’ fact. Last time Doc Severinson was in Atlas—”
“Doc Severinson?” Jack repeated, incredulous.
“Y’all heard o’ the Doc?”
“Forget it, Jack; it’ll only confuse things,” Ellen cautioned.
Jack nodded silently as Tom Bledsoe went on. “Leastways, ol’ Doc tol’ Margaret she oughta get herself down t’ Carson City for a good looksee with the docs they got down there. But, Margaret, she don’t cotton much t’ leavin’ her students fo’ no week or two.”
Ellen volunteered, “Maybe we can help, Lizzie and I.”
“I’ll tell Margaret, then, if’n y’all like.”
“Sure,” Lizzie volunteered.
Each “survival kit,” aside from things like aspirin, acetaminophen tablets, antiseptic cream, bandages, water-purification tablets and a good knife, contained a small gold bar. Ellen, Elizabeth and David each had such a kit. Within the attaché case were the diamonds and three additional gold bars. Converting one of these to current United States money at the general store—which, somehow or another, Jack Naile realized that they would come to own—provided them with enough cash for their immediate needs and then some.
A “suite” of rooms at Mrs. Treacher’s rented for the princely sum of twenty dollars a month, including clean linens, breakfast and dinner, which was called “supper.” Mrs. Treacher was, at one time in an apparently quite distant past, British. She was a well-spoken woman, but her speech was very plain, and her usage was peculiarly stilted. As a guess, Jack Naile assumed that she might have spent her younger years “in service” to some household in England or in the eastern United States, following a husband west. She wore a simple silver wedding band, but there had been no mention of a Mr. Treacher. Short, plump, rosy-cheeked, she reminded Jack Naile of some movie version of a “typical” Swiss or German hausfrau.
With accommodations arranged for the immediate future, there were other pressing concerns, funds or the lack thereof fortunately not among them. The ample gold supply that the Naile family had brought with them into the past would carry them through, as David gauged it, for more than a year, providing sufficient opportunity to eventually bring the diamonds to San Francisco and convert these into serious money.
No one thought to be hungry, and by afternoon Ellen and Elizabeth were back at the general store acquiring clothing and other necessities.
There was little in the way of ready-to-wear, most women apparently making their own clothing or engaging the services of the town’s solitary dressmaker.
Jack and David fared little better, finding themselves faced with two alternatives: poorly cut, boxy-styled vested woolen suits or heavy, canvaslike work clothes. “It’s a cinch Roy Rogers never would have shopped here,” Jack remarked to his son. They were trying to determine if any of the suits would be close enough in size to be a decent fit.
“I’m not going to wear shit like this for the rest of my life,” David announced.
“I know you’ve never thought a great deal of my sense of sartorial resplendence, but we can’t start the first Nevada nudist colony, so pick some threads that’ll make do for the time being. We can get down to Carson City after a while and find something better. We can order out of a catalogue, maybe. Anyway, once we own this place, we can stock it with clothes we’ll all like—or at least tolerate.”
David groaned, taking the most expensive suit of the few available. It was twelve dollars.
The Naile family’s “suite” consisted of two bedrooms— surprisingly clean—and a small sitting room. The outhouse was behind the boarding house, of course, but there were chamber pots (“Who gets to clean these?” Lizzie asked the moment Mrs. Treacher had left them). There was a room at the end of the second-floor hallway with a large bathtub. Lizzie was given first dibs on the tub, but said she wouldn’t use it unless her mother sat outside the door. Ellen agreed, but insisted on Lizzie doing the same for her.
Jack bathed last. It was safe to wear his Rolex