"I thought I told you to keep them boots dry," Jewel thundered at Aurora's stupidity. The girl just smirked; she'd let her boots get soaked on purpose to slow them down. She was tired of taking orders, tired of this horrid trek; it would be better to go back to the asylum than to put up with this misery any longer. At least at Brookehaven she'd have the comfort of the laudanum, which was nearly as good as opium.
"I guess we'll just have to wait until they dry out," Aurora said loftily.
"Oh, no, we won't," Fancy spoke out quite clearly, thinking of a pair of wet shoes long ago. "I'm afraid we can't do that, Aurora; we can't afford to lose the time that would take."
Aurora's cursing, as she sloshed along in the wet boots, did Jewel's heart good—the kid had a real inventive repertoire.
That night, Fancy saw Aurora sobbing silently over her badly blistered feet. Fancy untied the girl's bonds and looked at the swollen skin and open sores from walking all day in the wet leather.
"Would you like me to help you?" she asked her daughter carefully. "I know of a remedy we might be able to find around here that could soothe those blisters."
Aurora looked up and nodded; she didn't seem hostile for a change, just miserable.
"Why did you do this to me?" she asked in the voice of a hurt child.
"I didn't," Fancy answered softly. Her heart ached for the girl's pain and for her lack of understanding. "You made your own choice, Aurora. I just didn't save you from the consequences this time."
Fancy got up to leave.
"Don't go," Aurora said hastily. "I'd like to know what I could do to fix my feet—I don't see how I'll even keep up with you tomorrow."
Fancy nodded; it took all her self-restraint not to be more sympathetic. She found some willow bark after considerable searching and showed Aurora how to boil it into a decoction. The remedy would kill the pain, she knew, and help speed healing.
"You ain't given up on her yet, have you?" Jewel whispered to Fancy later, when Aurora was finally asleep.
Fancy shook her head. "I have to hope, Jewel. I learned from living in the wilderness, maybe she can, too."
"Just don't get your hopes up too high, honey. You learned because you had a heart to learn with, Fancy. I ain't seen no indication Aurora ever thinks of anybody but herself." Jewel patted her friend on the shoulder comfortingly.
Fancy turned her face toward her in the fireglow.
"You've been some good friend to me, Jewel. Saving me years ago from those men, risking your life for me... stuck out here next to nowhere, freezing cold, no way home but the hard way."
Jewel snorted and rearranged her limbs, seeking comfort on the frozen ground. "Wouldn't have missed it for the world, kid. It ain't everybody gets to do the things your friends get called on to do." Fancy took the chiding good-naturedly and settled her own body in to rest.
Chapter 129
Judge Horace Krasky grinned as only a rich man with three nubile young ladies, about a third of his age each, on his arm could. Nellie had chosen her two accomplices from the newest crop of girls; they were green enough so they didn't ask too many questions, just as long as they got well paid.
"You run a lovely sporting house, Nellie," he said, patting the woman affectionately on the rump. "It's always good to keep the competition lively in your line of work."
Nellie snuggled in close to the judge, and hoped she'd decided rightly. That fast-talkin' little dwarf said what they were up to would cook Krasky's goose for fair—if it didn't, she would be unemployed, and the little feller would have a lot to answer for. It was a good thing she'd gotten a promise in writing that she'd be paid what they'd promised if the plot blew up in their faces.
Nellie, Evelyn, and Mariah, hand in hand, led Horace Krasky up the stairs to the room that had been especially prepared for him. He'd consumed enough of Nellie's whiskey to make the ladies fearful he might pass out before being able to make good on all the amorous promises he'd lavished on them during the lengthy evening.
"Goddamnedest pretty women!" he slurred as they led him to the bed and tugged playfully at his trousers. The good judge spent a fair amount of time in Leadville's whorehouses, all of it unpaid for because of his position in the legal scheme of things. There was nothing he liked better, after a long day on the bench, than a bottle of bourbon and a romp with a willing bride of the multitude, or two, if luck provided such an opportunity.
Revived by the spirit of merriment he sensed in the girls, and by the bouncing breasts Evelyn had freed from the restraint of her corset, Krasky, who felt randier than he had thought possible at the foot of the stair, lurched in the direction of those enticing playthings. All three ladies were quite naked now except for some strategically placed black lace garters and stockings.
"Oh, Judge!" Nellie giggled provocatively. "I'll bet you can't catch me!"
"I'll bet I can," he mumbled as he clambered across the bed.
When he finally caught the girls, in a welter of scrambled limbs and certain unmentionable parts, it made quite a picture.
At least that's what Here Monroe thought when he photographed it from the doorway of the closet, where Gitalis had helped him install his new camera. Maybe the judge would like a copy of it to use on his campaign poster next time an election year came due. Here wanted to ask the judge if he'd like a few extra prints to scatter around town, but the man was in too much shock, and far too busy trying to pull his pants on, for lucid conversation.
Wes Jarvis and Gitalis had a busy day following the judge's indiscretion. Wes told the bank auditors about a $250,000 shortfall he thought they might find in their cash deposits, and turned over to them in proof the money Henderson had given him. Gitalis was busy distributing a certain photograph of Horace Krasky, in flagrante, to the newspaper office and to as many of Krasky's political opponents as he could find.
Jarvis filed a complaint, via circuit rider, with the federal judge in Denver, charging Madigan with Chance's murder. Gitalis witnessed an affidavit signed by Jonathan "Caz" Castelmaine stating all he knew about Chance McAllister's death, and both men filed a complaint with Sheriff Harley, stating that they knew for a fact that Fancy McAllister Madigan and her daughter Aurora had been abducted against their will for the purpose of foul play.
When the day was done, the two old actors had a feeling that by the time Congress finally voted the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, Henderson, Krasky, and Madigan might have more to worry about than selling short their silver stock.
Chapter 130
As they trudged in a zigzag pattern across the mountain, Fancy tried to instill some lesson from the past into Aurora. The girl was not an enthusiastic pupil.
They stole a horse from a small isolated camp they passed by. Fancy and Jewel decided to take only one of the two animals corralled there so the family wouldn't be left stranded.
"Take them both," Aurora urged, angry that they'd be so stupid—two horses could carry all three of them.
"These people are poor," Fancy snapped in exasperation. "And far from help. They'd be in terrible trouble if we left them no horse at all. As it is, we'll have to find a way to repay them if we get out of here."
So nobody rode, but having the horse meant they no longer had to carry all their possessions on their backs, and that was a considerable relief. Fancy walked behind the animal and covered his tracks religiously.
Jewel listened to Fancy's efforts to teach Aurora and even pitched in from time to time, but from what she could see the lessons mostly fell on deaf ears.
"You ever pray, Aurora?" she asked unexpectedly one day.
"No, I don't believe in God."
Fancy's heart sank at this fresh evidence of her failure as a mother; her own relationship with the Almighty might be shaky and unorthodox, but it was a relationship, nonetheless.
"Well, you should, you know. Got to exercise your soul, just like your body. Got to say thanks once in a while for what you've got, too. I pray all the time."
"But you're a w
hore," Aurora said viciously.
"So was Mary Magdalene," Jewel replied, thinking of Dakota with love.
The long trek in freezing temperatures was sapping their strength; Fancy and Jewel each could see the toll the hardships were taking in the other. Their fingers had been scraped raw from wrestling recalcitrant brush and branches into shelter, and while the animal meat they'd managed to procure assuaged their hunger, it provided severely unbalanced nourishment. They were always thirsty, and each morning, now, they awoke feeling stiffer and colder than the day before.
The men were getting close, Fancy could feel it with all six senses. If they caught up, there was no telling what would happen to any of them; the imminent danger made her feel bold about her daughter.
"I've decided now's the time to finish this fight between us, Aurora, once and for all," she said stonily as they settled in for the night, weary and footsore. "There's nothing left to lose that I can see, and those men are closing in, so God only knows how much more time we've got together." At least she knew her daughter's head was clear of opiates now, so perhaps some part of what they said to each other would sink in. If not, at least she'd know she'd tried the best she could.
"That's just fine with me," Aurora responded, her tone matching Fancy's. "I have a lot I've wanted to say to you for a very long time."
Fancy eyed her daughter's haughty expression with resignation and replied, "Be my guest."
Aurora looked quickly at Jewel, then back at her mother. Jewel seemed intent on whatever busywork she was up to, and Fancy seemed willing to listen. Aurora was feeling mean from discomfort and welcomed the chance to attack; she'd been storing up her weapons for enough years to have an overflowing arsenal.
"First and foremost, you don't know how to be a mother... and you never did," she said acidly. "I wanted a mother like the other children had, soft and homey, and always there when I needed her to be. You were always too busy getting famous or being taken out by rich men to even know I existed."
Fancy sat down wearily, but said nothing, so Aurora gathered momentum.
"I wanted a father, too, in case you didn't notice. Not some stinking lie you made up to cover the tracks of your fornication. Did you know, I used to make up stories to tell the other kids in school about where my father was, and why he never came home to visit. He was always off somewhere, on some exciting adventure, in some new country.... After a while, nobody believed me anymore."
Aurora looked to her mother to see her response, but Fancy was sitting with her knees drawn up and arms around them, her chin resting on her folded arms. She didn't seem inclined to reply, so the girl continued.
"I was never first on your priority list, you know. Never once in all those years you were so busy making a name for yourself. And Christ! How I hated all those adoring men of yours. Except for Jason, of course. He was good to me. But then you left him to go to Leadville, the second worst place God ever made."
"What's the first?" Fancy asked, curiously.
"Where we are now!" Aurora snapped without hesitation, and Fancy nearly smiled. Jewel, listening, turned her head away to keep from laughter. The kid should only know some of the hellholes she'd been in, if she thought Leadville was lousy...
"Then you married that idiot, Chance, and started having babies and giving dinner parties and going to balls every night, and then there was nothing left for me at all. And I was empty inside and nothing ever felt good or made me happy... and I was so damned bored! And I wanted to hurt you like you'd always hurt me..." Aurora's voice had turned small and nasty. "So I made some fast friends, and I found out about what opium could do to make life better. The rest you know, I guess... except for how good it feels to smoke a pipe, how free and happy and full of hope it makes me... when I'm high on opium I feel I can do anything I want to!" She said the last of it defiantly, trying to elicit an angry response.
So this is Aurora's truth, thought Fancy. It was not so impossible to understand. Distorted, some of it. Unfair in part. But honest, at least, and clearly stated. And not all of it unwarranted.
"Is that it?" she asked finally; she'd heard a good deal of this shrieked at her when they'd been at Wu's. Obviously, it still festered. "Are there any other things you hate me for?" Aurora, emptied of ammunition, shook her head sullenly.
It was all so clear... and so very, very sad. Fancy wondered if Aurora's world would ever encompass anyone's pain but her own. She took in a long, slow breath and exhaled, straightening her spine as she did so; she would be no less honest in return than her daughter had been.
"I'm truly sorry, Aurora," she said, her voice low and uncertain of how to say what she meant to. "I'm sorrier than I could ever say, for all the things I've done wrong for you, in this life. I'm sure you don't believe how much sorrow I feel for your obvious pain... and how much I wish things might have been different between us. And I guess you'll never know how very much I longed for us to be friends, or how much a loss it is to me that now we can never be. But all that notwithstanding, I owe you no less honesty than you've given me." She paused a moment, to quiet her own heart.
"Life is more complicated than you yet know, Aurora. And infinitely harder. When I was about the same age you are now, I fell in love with a man—a dazzling, handsome gambler, who didn't know or really care that he held my future in his hands. When I became pregnant, I ran away from him, for a lot of reasons I doubt you could understand... sometimes I don't understand them all that well myself. But one thing I can tell you in absolute honesty, that it never once occurred to me then, that I would harm you by leaving him. Perhaps that was selfishness on my part, or maybe just youth and inexperience, but in some weird way I thought by doing what I did, I was saving us both from poverty, and from the fate of the other poor women and children I'd seen in mining camps, living and dying with nothing... nothing to hope for but a hard life and an early grave. You were so much part of me then, how could I ever have imagined that what was right for me wouldn't be right for you?" Fancy looked to her daughter for understanding, but saw only hostile bewilderment.
"That was stupid of me, I suppose. I guess you'd have to say I've done a lot of stupid things in my time... a lot of headstrong things." She paused again, wondering why she had never thought until now how badly her choices had injured Aurora. "The man I loved and ran away from was Chance McAllister."
"Chance was my real father?" Aurora asked, obviously shaken by the news.
"Chance was your real father."
Both mother and daughter remained silent for a long time after that. Finally, Fancy spoke again.
"I had talent and ambition, Aurora. I'd been rich and I'd been poor, and rich was infinitely better. Safer... I always longed to feel safe." The wistful note in Fancy's voice made Aurora look at her mother wonderingly; it was not the voice of one who knows It all. It was the voice of frailty like her own.
"I never felt I could really trust anybody to get for me what I needed, so I went after it all myself. I wanted to be the best mother and the best actress—later on I even wanted to be the best wife." Fancy smiled ruefully. "Someday maybe you'll understand how very hard it is to do all those full-time jobs." Fancy stopped a moment, then plunged on; Aurora began to speak, but her mother stopped her with a gesture.
"There's more, Aurora... more that I want you to know before we finish with each other. I've heard all you've said to me —the list of my own failings is a longer one than I knew, but I've listened and I guess I understand now what your quarrel is with me, and I even think parts of it are fair. I've told you I'm sorry for having hurt you, and that's entirely true... I am sorrier for that than for any of the other mistakes of my life.
"But I think you should hear something else besides my apology tonight, inasmuch as one or both of us may be dead tomorrow. I think you should hear who I am and what I feel, because you are not the only one here who has been hurt by life... that, my dear and angry daughter, is just what life is all about. You do the best you can with it, and you learn from the
hurt more than you ever learn from the happiness, and when you get as old as I am now, you try to face with some semblance of honesty what choices you've made, and you find to your dismay that some were right and some were very wrong. But you damned well have to have the guts to live with that knowledge without sniveling.
"So, I want you to know that in my heart, I don't feel guilty and I do not apologize to you or to anyone on this earth for the choices I've made, because I've paid the price for every one of them in spades. I can live with my failures, Aurora—even my failure in motherhood, which is a very hard admission for me to make, much harder than you know. I've paid for every mistake I've ever made, most times in blood. But I never meant for you to pay for them... and that's the part I regret."
With that, Fancy stood up and walked away, fighting memory and tears; Aurora watch her mother's retreating figure, looking slightly dazed by all that had been said.
"The likes of that conversation ain't been heard lately," Jewel said with a low whistle, as Fancy reached her. "Nought but blood and bone left, once you scrape off that much meat." Fancy simply nodded and brushed away her tears, angry at them; she had a lot of thinking to do tonight and more than a few wounds to lick before morning.
"She's not all wrong, Jewel," she answered, finally.