Those fields lay ripe now at the turn of September into October, checkering the vista below with a range of hues from wheat gold to corn green. In the distance stock grazed—the great Montana herd—its population swelled by additional horses brought out from town each day to eat their fill at contract price. Drovers on horseback rode the perimeter of the herd, with one eye on the animals and one on the spine of the hills for any sign of Indians. In the patchwork fields the reapers worked, plying their scythes, followed by the shockers, leaving behind squares of tan earth tied by darker knots of brown—the shocks—like yarn in a crazy quilt.
Scattered across the valley were the farms themselves with the faint fuzz of failing fires drifting from the cabin chimneys, smudging the vast blue welkin above. Modest-sized outbuildings dotted the distance and from these, cart paths led like webbing toward the common stockade, which appeared to be made of toothpicks in the distance.
Down among the reapers Noah drove his rig, along the pummeled route the herd took each day, emerging from the foothills into the flat gold of an oats field where men raised their arms in greeting and women with their hair bound in kerchiefs paused to shade their eyes.
“Hello, Zach!” he called once. “Hello, Mrs. Cottrell!”
True waved, too, with his good arm.
“Looks like Mrs. Cottrell is pregnant,” Noah remarked.
“Sure does.”
They rode on until they came to the field south of the Campbell place, where the family was putting up hay—Kirk, his wife, Carrie, and Noah’s younger brother, Arden. They were working with their backs to the approaching buggy, Kirk and Arden advancing side by side with their scythes swinging while Carrie followed with a curved wooden hay rake.
The three stopped working to watch the buggy approach.
“Anybody need a helping hand?” Noah called.
“Noah!... and True! Hello!”
They all came forward, smiling, dropping their tools and removing their gloves. “Well, this is a surprise.” Noah’s mother reached him first and rubbed her kerchief back off her hair before swabbing her face with it. “Holy Mother of God, what happened to you?”
Noah touched his eye. “I tangled with a woman.”
Arden affectionately whapped Noah across the arm with his leather gloves. “Who was she, Calamity Jane?”
Kirk shook his son’s hand, surveying the battle damage—“I’d like to see the woman that gave you this shiner.” Next he glanced at True’s slung arm. “The same one get you?”
True laughed and scratched his eyebrow with the edge of a horny index finger. “Not quite.”
Kirk Campbell was a tower of a man, with hands as big as bear traps and a grip to match. He sported a bushy orange beard, bushy orange eyebrows and a faceful of fiery freckles to boot. His eyes, amidst all that color, shone bright as the bluebells of his homeland.
Carrie, on the other hand, was dark-haired and gray-eyed, though her skin took the sun much better than her husband’s and had burnished over the summer. She was pudgy and pretty and only as tall as her sons’ shoulders.
“A woman, huh?” Carrie repeated.
“It’s a long story, Ma, but I brought True out here to recuperate for a week or so. Think you could feed him and keep him tied down?”
“Just watch me.”
Noah put his mother in the buggy and sent her back to the house with True while he took her place with the hay rake. There was a measure of contentment to be found in working behind his father and brother, stepping off the lengths of the field to the rhythmic shhhppp of their scythes, to the greeny smell of fallen hay, scooping it into a windrow with the rake tines vibrating beneath his hands. For a day or two he enjoyed it. But always it became confining and he longed for the commerce and company of town.
“So, have you decided to come back to farming after all?” his father asked.
“Just for today.”
It had been a disappointment to Kirk Campbell when his older son had decided to take the job in town instead of settling in the valley with the rest of the family.
“I suppose you know the Indians signed the treaty, Pa.”
“Yup. News reached us.”
“But you still have lookouts posted.”
“We do, but we “haven’t, had a raid since midsummer. Hardly ever see them on the ridges anymore. My guess is it’s a lot less risky living out here these days than it is living in town. By the looks of you anyway. I’d sure like to hear what you did to get that purple eye.”
So Noah told the story.
His father and brother exchanged inquisitive glances. Kirk asked, “How old is she?”
Arden asked, “What does she look like?”
At sunset, around the kitchen table, his mother asked, “Is she married?”
True answered, “Nope,” and stabbed himself another piece of bread.
“Did you bring us one of her newspapers?”
Noah said, “I did, but if I let you read it I don’t want any guff out of any of you.”
When Carrie had read it she pronounced, “This is a smart woman and an honest one. You could do worse.”
Noah nearly choked on his mutton stew.
“For Chrissakes, Ma!”
“You know I don’t abide cussing at the table. You’re not getting any younger, you know. How long do you think a single woman will last before somebody else snaps her up?”
“They can have her!”
“That’s how your father felt about me the first time he saw me. I laughed at his red hair and freckles and told him he looked like a frying pan that had been left out in the rain. Six years later we were married.”
“Ma, I told you, this woman is like a bad case of hives. She’s making my life miserable.”
“The next time you come out here bring her along. If you don’t want her maybe your brother would be interested in her.”
“I’m not bringing her out here! I don’t even like the woman!”
“All right then, I’ll go take a look at her next time we come to town.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Why not? I want some grandchildren before I die.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “Jesus!” he muttered.
“Didn’t I say no cussing at the table?”
Arden said, “Ma’s right. If you don’t want her I just might.”
“What’s the matter with you! You talk as if she’s the last pork chop on the platter and all you have to do is reach over and stab her with your fork.”
“Well, I could use a wife. I want a farm of my own,” Arden replied. “And now that the Indian Treaty is signed, a woman would be more anxious to live out here.”
“Then you’d better move to town and get in line, because half the men in Deadwood are eyeballing her everywhere she goes. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. The way she’s running that printing press I doubt that she’s the kind who’d want to be a farmer’s wife. Besides, she’s older than you.”
“I thought you said you don’t know how old she is.”
“I don’t. I’m just guessing.”
“Twenty-five, you said.”
“Thereabouts, yes.”
“Well, I’m only twenty-one.”
“That’s what I said! She’s older than you.”
“So what?”
This was the damnedest conversation Noah’d ever heard! What did he care if his mother came into town and looked over Sarah Merritt, or if Arden came and poked her with his fork? Let them do what the hell they wanted! He, on the other hand, would stay out of the woman’s way.
Which he did until three days later, the first Monday of October, when the first city council meeting—as prescribed by their new organizational policies—was scheduled to be held at seven P.M. in Jack Langrishe’s theater.
Since the theater troupe would begin a performance at nine, the council members met promptly at six fifty-five in hopes of clearing up all business in the two hours allotted.
Noah was standing in t
he center aisle between the rows of chairs, with his arms crossed, waiting for the proceedings to begin, listening to a conversation between George Farnum and a group of others. The subject, as usual, was the Indian Treaty and the recent news that Chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse refused to comply with it. “Spotted Tail promised the commissioners that he would be answerable for Crazy Horse making peace, but he says Sitting Bull has a bad heart and that no one could answer for him.”
“But the treaty’s already signed. The Black Hills belong to the United States now.”
“That won’t stop Sitting Bull. We took his last sacred lands.”
“Then it’s our duty to impress upon the money centers of the East the value of the gold coming out of these hills. Let them put pressure on the federal government and demand military protection for the Hills. I for one still worry about—”
Noah glanced idly down the aisle and lost the drift of the conversation.
Sarah Merritt was advancing toward the group, her notebook pressed to her ribs.
When their eyes met, his arms uncrossed and her footsteps faltered. Her gaze shifted briefly to his new Stetson as she continued toward the knot of men. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, passing within inches of Noah’s chest on her way toward the front of the auditorium.
She took a seat in the second row next to a miner whose name he couldn’t remember. The miner looked up and leaped to his feet as she nodded to him, then the man resumed his chair and sat gawking at her profile. Noah watched the back of her head as she opened her notebook, got out a pen and ink, donned her spectacles and sat still as a stork, waiting. She was dressed in the same fusty brown suit as always. Her hair was pinched into a tiny knot that stuck out no farther than a nose on the back of her head. A tight, prissy hairdo for a tight, prissy woman. Glancing around the theater, he noted with acerbity the majority of the men ogling her as if she were a single mouse in a roomful of cats.
When the proceedings commenced, he took his place at a table up front with the mayor, the aldermen and the town clerk, Craven Lee, who also acted as ex-officio treasurer. George Farnum called the meeting to order and business began. Craven reported the election results, including the establishment of this very council and the town ordinances. Next came his treasury report, then Noah stood to deliver his report on what new licenses had been issued, including that to Sarah Merritt for the operation of the town’s first newspaper. He avoided looking at her while reading his chicken-scratching, glancing her way only briefly as he resumed his seat. She sat correctly, spectacles downcast, taking notes.
After that, Noah sprawled back in his chair with his shoulders slanted and one forearm on the tabletop, trying to ignore her.
An issue was raised by the floor: the possibility of converting valuable cross streets into city lots. It was voted down.
A chimney rule was voted in: all future chimneys built within the city limits of Deadwood, South Deadwood and Elizabethtown were to have walls no less than four inches thick of brick or stone, completely imbedded in lime mortar and plastered on the inside with a smooth coat of the same.
A burning rule took effect: no shavings, hay or other combustible matter were to be set afire in any street, alley or thoroughfare nearer than twenty feet from any building, unless by direct permission in writing from the town council.
A dispute arose over the fixing of license rates. The lawyers and butchers in town protested that theirs were too high and should be lowered, and that those of the lucrative saloons should be raised. The rates remained unchanged.
Farnum asked if there was any more business.
Sarah Merritt stood up, removing her spectacles. “Mr. Mayor, if you please...”
“Miss Merritt,” Farnum allowed.
Sarah’s blue eyes were bright with conviction as she began to speak. “During the week I’ve been here I’ve noticed several situations that bear rectifying. The first—and in my estimation, the most important—is the lack of a school. I’ve taken it upon myself to begin a census of the families in the gulch, and by my count there are twenty-two children of school age residing in the area. That is indubitably enough that their education should be of primary concern to all of us. Most of them were severed from institutions of formal education in the cities they left behind. Some of them are being tutored by their mothers, but not all the mothers are literate, which throws the burden—I say, responsibility—back on us, the general, tax-paying populace of this town. Add to those the six children still too young for school, plus the Robinsons’ infant, the first one born here on the Fourth of July, over whose birth I’m given to understand there was much rejoicing—and you can see the present need for a school. The future bears consideration as well. The signing of the Indian Treaty has already prompted safe passage of the first stagecoach into Deadwood. It, and soon the telegraph, combined with the news about the Peace Treaty, will bring even greater numbers of families here. I propose that by next spring, when that influx regenerates, we should have a teacher hired and a school established.
“Secondly, there’s the matter of the animal offal in the streets. Not only is it unsightly and odoriferous, it poses a health hazard. We all know where cholera comes from, don’t we? Our standards of sanitation are sorely in need of improvement. This town should hire a street cleaner and hire him now.
“Thirdly—though admittedly of minor importance—we might consider putting up streetlamps and combining the jobs of street cleaner and lamplighter into one.
“Fourthly comes the issue of boardwalks. Obviously no thought was put into their uniformity. Some of the businesses have them and some don’t. Main Street is aesthetically repugnant, to say nothing of inconvenient. To traverse it one is forced to either progress like a jackrabbit beside the businesses or resort to slogging through the offal down its center. In a town so dominated by males, this is no surprise. However, gentlemen, if you want to encourage ladies—with their heel-length hems—to live here, I suggest you consider remedying this situation. To this effect, I propose passing an ordinance that not only makes boardwalks mandatory, but standardizes their height.
“Next I approach the obvious need for a suitable jail. The lockup you currently use is appalling. You have blacksmiths in this town. Put them to use building bars and appropriate whatever funds are necessary for the construction of a decent jail. Even a criminal deserves light and air.
“Lastly—and little thought is necessary for all of us to agree on this—we need a church. I understand your feeling that it will be difficult to woo another minister out here after the unfortunate slaying of Preacher Smith in August, but it is imperative that we try, and that when and if we get one, we have land and means set aside for the building of a church. We might consider constructing one building to temporarily serve as both church and school.
“That’s all for now, gentlemen. I thank you for listening.”
Miss Sarah Merritt calmly took her seat, hooked her glasses behind her ears and resumed her note-taking, presumably covering the issues she had just raised. The members of the city council exchanged glances, dumbfounded by such articulate rhetoric coming from the only female in the room. In the gallery, necks were stretched so men could get a better view of the woman up front. The miner next to Sarah puffed up with reflected importance, just sitting next to her. Noah took a good gander at her himself, as amazed as the rest of his constituents.
George Farnum broke the spell by chuckling and rubbing the back of his neck. “Well now, Miss Merritt, that’s quite a bit of fat to chew.”
She raised her eyes. “Yes, it is, Mr. Mayor.”
“And we’ve got only so much money to work with.”
“But we live in the richest pocket of land in America. I’ve heard that when news arrived here about the Peace Treaty being signed, miners rejoiced by scattering gold dust promiscuously in the very streets.”
“That’s true, but most of them are single men without families. They’d undoubtedly raise objections to being tithed for the building
of a school. The land alone is going to come dear.”
“Ask one of your wealthier property owners to donate it, then organize a school raising. Better yet, I’ll organize the school raising. It will be easy for me since I have the newspaper at my disposal, and since I’ve already done the school census and know which families would be most likely to donate their time and muscle for the benefit of their children.”
“That’s very generous of you. And the land—do you have a solution as to where to get the land?”
“I’ve only been a resident of Deadwood for one week. No, I don’t. But I know education is paramount. It should not and cannot be delayed.”
It was decided the issues would be thrown open for public discussion at the next town meeting, and that the board would announce this in the Chronicle. Also, it was voted that the minutes of each town meeting be reported in the Chronicle in the issue immediately following such meetings.
When the council meeting adjourned, Sarah became surrounded by men. They swarmed around her like flies around a raw steak. Miners and business owners; clean, dirty, old, young, the more-favored and the less: none, it seemed, were unsusceptible to the fact that she was dressed in skirts. The crowd included Teddy Ruckner, Dutch Van Aark, Doc Tur-ley, Ben Winters, who owned the hotel where she resided, Andy Tatum and Elias Pinkney, who nudged his way through the press and appropriated her hand with an unmistakable air of possession.