She finally pushed her fears aside when she looked around the train car and noticed that the other passengers were all well-dressed, respectable-looking people like her. She took her seat and stared numbly out the window. At the first stop, she sent Evan a telegram telling him she would wait for Daniel in Butte. But she nearly changed her mind later in the week when the train crossed into what was considered the West.
She hadn’t expected it would take her six days to reach her destination, especially after her brothers had bragged that she’d be riding most of the way on the fastest train in the world. They were misinformed. The transcontinental railroad used the same trains as the other railroads; it was touted as being the fastest way to cross the entire country simply because it didn’t stop in every town for passengers. But she’d had to change trains twice before getting on the express train. Then she’d had to change again in Utah for the branch train that continued north to Montana—and each of those stops had required a sleepover while waiting for the new train, which amounted to a day wasted at each stop and funds wasted at hotels. She would have to start counting every penny.
Violet felt as if she’d entered a different world after the last change of trains. The easterners who had traveled with her this far and had kept her nervousness at bay were continuing on to California, while she was traveling north. When she looked out the window, she saw wide-open spaces, untouched forests, lakes so big she couldn’t see the opposite shores. Fascinated by the landscape, she might have enjoyed this trip if she weren’t making it alone and hadn’t become such a curiosity to the new passengers, who appeared to be cowboys, farmers, and ragtag men who talked excitedly about getting rich in Butte. Had her father felt as excited and optimistic as these men when he’d come west? He would have been confident of success, so maybe he had.
Arriving at last, Violet could never have imagined a town like Butte, Montana. Her schooling hadn’t prepared her for the American frontier. She’d studied European history and the wars that Britain had fought against America, but the English weren’t interested in the western half of America, which they considered primitive and uncivilized. She’d learned from one of her fellow passengers that Montana wasn’t even a state, merely a U.S. territory.
But for a frontier town, Butte was larger than she’d expected, filled with all manner of businesses and numerous hotels, even entertainment halls, though most of those appeared to be saloons. It was nothing like the two cities in which she’d grown up. The buildings were mostly made of wood and no higher than two stories. Late on a Saturday afternoon, it was incredibly crowded and, even worse, incredibly dusty, with so many people walking and riding through the streets. Most of the men were in work clothes. She saw only a few sporting derby hats, but the men weren’t wearing suit coats. The women were plainly dressed, except for a few she was shocked to see in gaudy, low-cut gowns. There was too much to take in, so she didn’t try. She just made her way to the nearest respectable-looking hotel, paid for a room, and, bone-weary, went right to sleep.
The next morning she was anxious to start searching for her father. After finishing a small breakfast in the hotel restaurant, she asked the attendant in the lobby whom she should talk to about finding a missing person. He gave her directions to the sheriff’s office. She stopped at the telegraph office first to see if there was word from her brothers. There wasn’t, so she sent a telegram to let them know she had arrived in Butte, and told the clerk where she was staying so any replies could be delivered to her.
The streets weren’t as crowded this early in the morning. There were only a few wagons delivering goods. The miners who had filled the streets yesterday must have left town or were sleeping off their revelries. Twice last night she’d been woken by gunshots.
How on earth had her father managed in this town? Charles Mitchell was a gentleman born and bred, always meticulously dressed. She hadn’t seen a single man in a suit yesterday and not one today either. The only men she saw were in work clothes or in pants, shirts, wide-brimmed hats, and gun belts. It was the gun belts that made this place so foreign to her, and made her so eager to leave it. She hoped she’d find her father today and could be on a train back to Philadelphia tomorrow with good news for her brothers.
A man was sitting in a chair on the porch of the sheriff’s office. He appeared to be sleeping with his head resting back against the wall and his hat pulled down low over his face. She tried not to disturb him as she stepped past him and went inside.
“Sheriff?” she said to the man seated behind the desk. He was middle-aged and clean-shaven, neatly dressed in a leather vest worn over a shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
The man glanced up from the newspaper he’d been reading and set it aside. “No, ma’am. The sheriff’s gone fishing with his brother, does every weekend. I’m Deputy Barnes. What can I help you with?”
“My father, Charles Mitchell, is missing. He came here a few months ago. The information I have is that he staked a claim in this area. Is that how you say it?”
“Good enough.” The deputy grinned. “And what makes you think he’s missing?”
“Because his habit was to write home often, but he hasn’t sent another letter since he informed us he arrived here and began mining. Too much time has passed since then. We fear he may be hurt—or worse.”
He looked solemn now as he said, “That I can find out immediately.”
He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a ledger. He turned a few pages in it before he glanced up at her again. His new expression made her heart sink.
“The sheriff usually deals with bad news, but obviously this won’t wait till he’s back,” he said in extreme discomfort. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Your pa died two weeks ago. He was known in these parts as Charley, not that anyone knew him all that well. I recall now that Dr. Wilson let us know about it. He fills in when Dr. Cantry goes away. Your father had been Doc Cantry’s patient for more’n a month and never regained consciousness after an accident that happened at his mine. Another mine owner brought him to the doctor. He’s the one who found him. I think their mines are in the same area.”
Violet started to feel faint, and the deputy helped her to a chair. She heard his words; they just weren’t sinking in yet. Dead? Her brothers were going to be as crushed as she felt. She’d been so sure she would see her father today. She couldn’t believe she’d never see him again! He was really dead?
A handkerchief was being waved in front of her face. She realized she was crying. It had been so long since she’d seen her father, yet she still had so many memories of him, walks and picnics in the parks, him teaching her and her brothers to swim in Springton Lake, boat rides on the Delaware River, and the four of them gathered in the parlor where he would read stories to them with her leaning against his shoulder and the boys sitting at his feet. The memories overwhelmed her. This news overwhelmed her. What was she to do now?
“Callahan, the man who brought your father to town, was checking on his condition whenever he came down from the hills,” the deputy was saying. “Even left money for a funeral if it was needed. He got back to town a few days after your father died and was buried in the graveyard on the edge of town.”
She was so numb! He couldn’t really be dead. It could be a mistake, some other man with the same name. . . .
“Dr. Cantry might be able to tell you more. And Morgan Callahan—well, never mind him.”
“Why?”