wagons had precut lumber, windows, doors, and other building items, and the fourth had furnishings.
At the time of Dupree’s arrival there were no permanent structures in the mining camp, so the fact that he had the building material was enough to attract notice. But what really got the attention of the prospectors in the camp were the three beautiful women riding in the surrey with him. Though less than six weeks old, the mining camp, which called itself South Pass City, had nearly a thousand residents. It was now the third largest settlement in Wyoming, but the three women with Jay Dupree made up the entire female population of the settlement.
The men flocked down to the edge of the road and walked alongside the convoy, keeping pace with it and looking on in awe. Libby, Lulu, and Sue smiled, waved, and blew kisses at the men.
The shelters were tents, though many of the tents, including the saloon, had wooden floors.
Jay drove until he reached what he considered a suitable location. There, he stopped, stood, and called back to his drivers, “We’ll unload here!”
“What is all this?” one of the men from the gathered crowd shouted.
Jay held up his hands to call for quiet, then addressed the men who had crowded around.
“Gentlemen, I bring you greetings.” He paused for a second, and with a broad smile continued. “But greetings are not all I bring. I bring you also three of the most beautiful women this side of the Mississippi River. Take a look at them, boys. Am I exaggerating?”
He made a sweeping gesture to draw attention to the three women with him, and the men cheered loudly and lustily.
“As you can clearly see by the beauty of these women, they are not your ordinary soiled doves. And you’ll never find these girls keeping a crib, working in a bar, hustling drinks, or walking the streets. No sir. These ladies are beautiful, talented, intelligent, and gracious. Stand up, ladies.”
The three women stood up, smiled, waved, blew kisses again, and flirted outrageously with the men in the crowd.
“I’m sure you understand that ladies of this quality do not come cheap. They are reserved for those of the most discriminating tastes, those who are knowledgeable enough to understand that something worth having is worth paying for. They are reserved for you. So, there you have it, gentlemen, the three lovely ladies I have brought to help me run the Golden Cage. As proprietor of the Golden Cage, I promise you a place to come to relax, have a few drinks from my specially selected stock of beer and blended whiskey, enjoy a good meal, and spend some very interesting private time with one of these beautiful women.”
“What do you mean by very interesting private time?” someone called from the crowd. “I mean, you said they was intelligent, but I ain’t interested in any of ’em readin’ no poetry to me, or anything like that.”
The other men laughed.
“By private time, I mean just that. You, and the young lady of your choice, will retire to her room. Whatever you do there is strictly between you and the young lady. Now, propriety and common decency prevents me from spelling out exactly what you can do there, but I guarantee you, they won’t be reading poetry.”
Again the men laughed.
“Yeah, but what will we be doin’?” the man asked again.
“Mister, if you are in a private room with a beautiful woman, and you can’t figure out what to do, then perhaps you have no business going in there with her in the first place.”
This time the laughter turned to hoots and howls. “Jimmy, my boy, I tell you what,” one of the men said. “You pay for me, and I’ll invite you to come along and watch and learn.”
That elicited more laughter.
“Of course,” Dupree continued, “none of this can happen until we get our establishment built. I’m wondering if there are any carpenters among you who would volunteer to build it? Those who help will be given ten dollars credit toward drinks, food, or women.”
As Dupree knew there would be, more than a dozen men rushed forward to offer their services.
“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you,” Dupree said. “I think you will find everything that you need to begin construction in the wagons.”
In Green River, nearly every business had closed down for Roy Hilliard’s funeral. Hilliard had been an exceptionally popular man in the town. He was active in the Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, a volunteer in the Green River Militia, and a member of the Green River City Band. On the Fourth of July he had played a trumpet solo at the Green River Independence Day picnic.
Because of his popularity, the entire town turned out for his funeral, and the band, wearing black armbands, led the cortege from the church to the cemetery. Behind the band was the glass-sided hearse, brought by train from the St. Louis Carriage Company just two months earlier. Behind the hearse was a buggy, its wheels laced with black bunting. Cindy and Roy Jr. rode in the buggy. The rest of the town fell in behind and followed it to the cemetery.
Hawke attended the funeral, along with Dorchester and Pamela. In addition to Dorchester, there were several other ranchers present to pay their last respects to their friend.
When the hearse reached the cemetery, it stopped in front of an already opened grave, and the pall bearers —a mix of ranchers and townspeople—moved the black-lacquered coffin from the hearse to the grave, then lowered it by ropes. Cindy and Roy Jr. sat on folding chairs under a canopy. Father Cumbie, the vicar, stepped to the head of the grave and began reading from the
“‘Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
“‘In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?
“‘Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the pains of eternal death.’”
The vicar nodded at Cindy, and she and Roy Jr. stood up, then walked over to the mound of dirt alongside the grave. Cindy picked up some dirt and put it in Roy’s hand, then picked up a handful for herself.
The vicar continued, “‘For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God, in his wise providence, to take out of this world the soul of our deceased brother, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; looking for the general Resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’”
Cindy and Roy Jr. dropped dirt on the coffin, then, weeping, she turned away. Dorchester stepped up to her and, putting his arms around her, led her back to her chair.
Later, Dorchester brought her out to Northumbria for a meal and to relax after the funeral.
“I can’t get the sight out of my mind, of Roy lying dead while that horror of a man stood over him with his gun in his hand,” she said. “He was one of the most frightening creatures I’ve even seen.” She made a motion across her face with her finger. “He was disfigured by a terrible scar.”
Hawke, who had been quiet till then, looked up when he heard that. “Ethan Dancer,” he said.
“Ethan Dancer?” Pamela said. “What was he doing out there? He’s working for Bailey McPherson.”
“That’s a good question,” Hawke said.
“What will you do now, Mrs. Hilliard?” Dorchester asked.
“I don’t know. Go back to Pennsylvania, I suppose,” Cindy answered. She shook her head. “I really don’t know what else I could do.”
“What about money?”
“I have enough money for railway tickets back home. Once I get there, I will find something to do, some way to raise Roy Jr.”
“How about your cattle? How many head do you have?”
“We had five hundred head,” Cindy said.
“Why, at thirty dollars a head, that’s fifteen thousand dollars,” Dorchester said. “That should be enough to keep you and your son quite comfortable for a while.”
“I don’t have them anymore. When they took our land, they said I had twenty-hours to move the herd. All I could think of was poor Roy lying there dead. I mean, to come through the hell of Andersonville, only to wind up like this.” Cindy sighed. “Anyway, there was no way I could have moved the herd, even if I had tried. There was just simply no way it could be done.”
Dorchester shook his head in sympathy. “That’s too bad. If you could have gotten the herd here, I would have
