When the village gossip reached my ears, I fell into a soft moaning but then quickly denied the idea to my informant as impossible. But when I was by myself, I moaned aloud.
For years, my fond hopes had built such castles-in-Spain for Silver—with her dark prettiness and her unusual talent, no future could be too roseate for her—and now I was beside myself with worry. The Matchless had been mortgaged again, this time for $9,000 with an interest rate of 8%, and I was having more trouble with the lessees. There was no money with which to send Silver away.
“What course should I take?” I asked myself in desperation.
Before I could come to any decision, matters gathered to a drastic head. A few nights later, Silver set off for an Easter Monday hall in a lovely silk dress I had made her and a fur-trimmed coat (since at 10,000 feet altitude the spring nights are like icy winter). The party was to be given for the nice young people of the town. She went with two boys who were sons of substantial Leadville families.
But when Silver came in, it was eight-o-clock in the morning and she was drunk. Her dress was disheveled and she had no coat. The lovely blue silk dress was torn and dirty. And she was alone!
“Silver, what on earth has happened?” I cried. But she was too incoherent for me to make head or tail of her story. Fearful that she would catch pneumonia from exposure, I stirred up the fire in the stove and got the temperature of the cabin to the perspiring point. I put her to bed and she was soon sleeping it off.
But when I went to town for the mail, the news was all over town—a sordid story involving a saloon keeper. In a flash, my mind was made up.
“Write to your Uncle Peter,” I said that evening at supper, “and ask him for enough money for you to go to Denver and get a job on a newspaper. There’s no opportunity for your talent in this town and no chance to meet a man really worthy of you.”
I was much too proud to appeal to Pete, myself, after our quarrel, but on several occasions I had permitted Silver to do so. In justice to Pete, I must admit he always responded—and I always felt he was trying to make up for the way he acted at the time of Tabor’s collapse.
Silver left for Denver shortly after. For a while, she made good as a reporter on the Denver Times, and, later, in Chicago she wrote a novel, “Star of Blood.” But good fortune did not last. When she was out of money and a job, she wrote to me in Leadville.