Searching for Silverheels Read Free Page B

angry that she had gotten the better of me. As I gathered dirty dishes from the other tables, my mind kept turning the question over. There had to be a logical explanation. I was sure the men had loved her, but if they had, wouldn’t they have known her name?
    I carried the dishes to the kitchen, where Mother had a kettle steaming on the back of the stove. Willie had brought in a bucket of cold water from the pump before he left, so I filled the sink with a mixture of the two and began washing dishes. When I returned to the front with a tray of clean coffee cups, Josie was gone, but her question and her infuriating smile of victory lingered behind her. As soon as I thought of that smile, anger jumbled my thoughts all over again. There had to be a good reason—an answer to her question. There just had to be!
    I wiped down the tables and swept the floor and was donefor the morning. I would have an hour to myself before the lunch train rolled through. Though tourists weren’t coming to the mountains, the new zinc boom brought on by the war meant enough passengers on the trains to keep me rushed off my feet at lunchtime. Usually, I went outside, but today I climbed the back stairs to my bedroom above the café.
    I pulled the handful of dime novels and penny dreadfuls from my shelf and spread them across the bed. There were a few that told tales of fur trappers, explorers, or sea captains, and I set those aside. The rest were tales of beautiful heroines, threatened by cruel men or dangerous animals. In their darkest hour, they were always rescued by a brave and handsome hero, and they would swoon into his strong, protective arms. I imagined what George’s arms would feel like if I were to swoon into them. “Oh, George,” I would say. “Oh, Pearl.”
    The fantasy slipped away and I frowned. The heroes always knew their heroines’ names when they went to profess their undying love. Always.
    Still, that didn’t mean the miners didn’t love Silverheels. But what did it mean? I picked up my favorite book and paged through it. The heroine had been an orphan who had fled a cruel orphanage. Only at the end, after being rescued, she learned who she really was—an heiress stolen at birth from her loving parents. She herself had not known her real name.
    I set the book down, an idea forming in my mind. A womanin trouble, on the run, would not reveal her true name, would she? A woman fleeing a cruel home or a dark past?
    My thoughts were interrupted by my mother calling me back downstairs. I found her in the kitchen, her sleeves rolled up and beads of sweat on her brow as she sliced loaves of bread for the dozens of sandwiches we would be serving the lunch crowd. Behind her, heat radiated off the stove, where a ham sat cooling, freshly out of the oven, and a pot of stew simmered.
    â€œSorry, Pearl, but someone just came into the café, and I need to get these sandwiches made. Can you see to whoever it is?”
    I stepped through from the kitchen to the café and stopped short.
    â€œIt’s about time!” Josie barked at once from a stool at the counter. “Where have you been, girl? Off mooning over some boy?” She grabbed a cup from the tray I’d brought in earlier and set it pointedly on the counter in front of her. I plastered a polite smile onto my face and picked up the coffeepot.
    â€œHas that been sitting there since breakfast?” she said, narrowing her eyes at the pot. Of course it had, since I hadn’t yet come down to brew a fresh pot for lunch.
    â€œI’m not paying my hard-earned money for the stale slop you couldn’t foist off on someone else.”
    â€œYes, ma’am,” I said. I turned away from her to go dump the pot and refill it, but stopped when she clanged her cup against the counter.
    â€œWell, don’t waste it, girl. I’ll take what you’ve got there while I wait for the fresh pot to perk. But I expect it on