Fireblossom Read Free Page B

around the country during gold or silver booms. There was no telling what kind of father or home life awaited the Avery children in Deadwood. At the last moment, Susan had felt compelled to go with them.
    How very peculiar life was, Susan decided as she observed her beautiful granddaughter. Like Colleen, who had comported herself as a lady nearly from infancy, well-mannered Madeleine seemed bound and determined to enjoy fine things and cultivate a gentlewoman's sensibilities—often at the expense having fun.
    Susan O'Hara had her doubts about how deep Madeleine's refined streak really ran. After all, the child was the image of Patrick, her dear departed rogue of a husband. At twenty, Maddie was had a woman's beauty, with luxuriant hair the color of marmalade, sparkling emerald-green eyes, a mouth both wide and rosily sensuous, and milky skin with dustings of freckles. Maddie tried to tone down her looks by twisting her mass of waves into a prim chignon and disguising her curves with high collars and restrictive corsets. Still, Susan liked to think that there were smoldering embers deep within her granddaughter that would one day ignite. She hoped she'd live to see it.
    "Look!" shouted Benjamin, as their wagon heaved over the crest of the hill. "There's Deadwood!"
    Madeleine helped her grandmother come forward so that they could share this first view of their new home. The sight that met their eyes caused them both to gasp involuntarily.
    "Perhaps," murmured Susan, "there's been some mistake. That couldn't possibly be—"
    "That's Deadwood, ma'am," interrupted their driver, Hugo. He spit out a stream of tobacco juice. "It's too late to turn back now!"
    Below them, tucked into a twisting gulch crowned by cliffs of white rock and studded with burned stumps, lay a muddy, makeshift town. Deadwood seemed to consist almost entirely of half-built frame buildings, log cabins, and hundreds of tents. Maddie could hear the echoing shouts and laughter of men who appeared to be moving over every inch of the gulch. Miners.
    "Goodness," she whispered.
    "Doesn't it look tremendous?" Benjamin demanded.
    "Quite," Susan ran a soft, wrinkled hand over his unruly curls. "Just the sort of place a little boy dreams of living."
    "Do you suppose there are any other women there?" Maddie asked.
    "Oh, sure," Hugo assured her, winking. "Where there's gold, there's always plenty of women... if you know what I mean."
    "How delightful," Susan said as they started down the rocky, rutted road. "This promises to be quite an adventure!"
    * * *
    Stephen Avery, slim and erect in a stiff-bosomed white shirt, plaid vest, and gray trousers, stood outside the new frame building that housed the grocery store. The day was growing warmer by the minute; the stench of waste rose from the bog that was Main Street.
    Watching the handful of rickety wagons creak down the side of Deadwood Gulch, Stephen tried not to worry what his daughter would think of him for bringing her and Benjamin here. She was so much like her mother. He'd never have dreamed of uprooting Colleen from her beloved Philadelphia and the tranquil, refined life she had there. What had possessed him to do so to Madeleine?
    A thin rivulet of sweat trickled out from under the band of Stephen's bowler. He removed it, smoothed down his wavy black hair, and leaned forward to peer at the wagons as they approached Deadwood's Chinatown. The north end of the gulch was wide enough only for Main Street and Whitewood Creek, and the exotic-looking shop facades always startled people who were seeing their first Chinatown. The strong scent of incense pervaded the air. Stephen was watching anxiously when he saw first Benjamin, then Maddie climb out from under their wagon's soiled cover to sit beside the driver. Their innocent faces looked this way and that, taking in the ramshackle Chinese grocery, laundries, joss house, and restaurants. Even more startling, however, was the area of town that came next—the "badlands," a