Free Searching for Silverheels by Jeannie Mobley

father and uncle are buried there in the cemetery,so I took my mother up every year in the spring to tend the graves.”
    â€œDo you still do that?” Frank asked. I’m sure he was thinking of what we had seen the day before—I know I was.
    Mrs. Nelson shook her head. “Momma moved to Denver about four years ago and I haven’t been up there since.”
    â€œSo when exactly did you see her the second time?” Frank asked.
    â€œOh, it would be maybe fifteen years ago, maybe a little more. Momma and I had made a day of it, tending the graves and then having a picnic a few miles farther down Buckskin Creek, in the big meadow there. It was getting on toward evening when Momma realized she had left her new gloves back in the cemetery. I went back by myself to fetch them. I was looking for the gloves, so I was walking along, my eyes on the ground, when I heard a sound. I looked up and there she was, no more than twenty feet from me.”
    â€œSo you got a good look at her that time?” Frank asked.
    â€œCertainly. It was toward dusk, but not dark yet. She was dressed all in black, as before, and wore a broad hat with a black veil. I couldn’t see much of her face, but our eyes met for a moment. There was something about those eyes . . .” She paused and shook her head. “Then once again, she fled. I called out to her to wait, but she kept right on going.”
    â€œDid you chase her that time?” I asked.
    Mrs. Nelson shook her head. “Momma was waiting for me, and we had to get off the rough part of the roads before it gottoo dark. But I did see what she had been doing. She had been there for the same reason as us. She had cleaned off a grave and left a neat bouquet of flowers.”
    â€œWhich grave?” I asked, goose bumps already rising in anticipation of the answer.
    Mrs. Nelson smiled. “Buck Wilson’s. That’s how I knew it was Silverheels. She was sweet on him, you know.”
    â€œSo why did you think she wasn’t a ghost?” Frank asked.
    â€œI suppose by then I was a little too old to believe in ghosts. Besides, she seemed perfectly solid. I figure she’d been alive and living in these mountains all along.”
    â€œDo you think she’s still alive now?” I asked.
    Mrs. Nelson shrugged. “Who’s to say? No one knows her name or just what she looks like. I’m not the only one who ever saw her in the cemetery, but no one’s ever caught her or gotten a good look at her face.”
    â€œBut you saw her eyes. What were they like?”
    Mrs. Nelson got a faraway look and shook her head again. “I can’t rightly put it into words. Sadness, regret. And something more, too.” She sighed and looked tired all of a sudden, so I changed the subject.
    â€œWhat about Buck Wilson? What do you know about him?” I asked.
    â€œNothing, really,” she said. “He must have been a dashing fellow to have won the heart of the beautiful Silverheels, though. So sad to think of a young love, dying so tragically like that.”
    â€œIs there anyone else around that might remember him?” Frank asked. “Anyone who still goes up to the graveyard at Buckskin Joe?”
    â€œI don’t rightly know,” Mrs. Nelson said. “Old Tom Lee had folks up there, but he’s moved down to Denver. Can’t think of anyone else, except that Veiled Lady who loved Buck Wilson.” She paused and cocked her head in thought, smiling. “You know, I’m glad I never caught her. It’s more romantic for being so mysterious, don’t you think?”
    I nodded. It was sad but very romantic to think Silverheels was still visiting his grave all those years later, and all the mystery made it a finer story. Even so, if I could find her, it was just what I needed to prove that Josie Gilbert was wrong. And that would be sweeter still.

CHAPTER 9
    G eorge Crawford was sitting on the steps