Free The Silver Shawl by Elisabeth Grace Foley Page A

Henney fumble nervously with the keys and at last
manage to insert the right one into the lock. The door opened
inwards, and Randall pushed unceremoniously past Mrs. Henney into
the room. He stopped in the middle of it, looking about him in
bewilderment.
    The two ladies, who had entered after him in
considerable apprehension, likewise looked with astonishment about
the room, which was neat, quiet, and empty. The window-shade was
drawn halfway down, blocking out most of the morning light and
leaving the room mildly dim; the bed was neatly made and had
evidently not been slept in.
    Randall Morris turned around to stare at the
ladies. “Did she go out this morning?” he said.
    “Why, no,” said Mrs. Henney, whose mouth and
eyes were wide. “I was up early as always, and her door was shut
when I opened the curtains in the hall. She hasn’t come out
since.”
    “But how do you know that? Couldn’t she have
gone out when you were getting breakfast?”
    “Why, no, sir. I can hear every step on those
stairs, front or back, when I’m in my kitchen, and nobody went out
of the house this morning, not Miss Charity nor anybody.”
    “Well, then—where is she? When did you see
her last?”
    “Why, she went out to Miss Lewis’s last
evening after supper, Mr. Randall, just as usual. I saw her go out
then, and I was in bed and asleep before she came back, as I’ve
often been. I let Miss Charity have an outside key so she can come
in without waking anyone if it’s late and I’ve already locked up
and gone to bed.”
    “You mean you didn’t see her come back last
night? or hear her?”
    “Why, no, sir.”
    Mrs. Meade, in the meantime, had with a
thoughtful expression crossed the room to the wardrobe and opened
it, and stood looking at the simple dresses hanging there. “The
dress she wore yesterday is not here,” she said. “She was wearing
her light green gingham at supper—”
    “Yes, I know that dress,” blurted Randall
feverishly, as if that would be some help.
    Mrs. Meade lifted a hatbox a few inches from
the floor of the wardrobe and shook it gently, and set it down
again. “Her summer hat is missing—and her little silk purse, it
seems—but everything else appears to be in order. She was wearing
that hat when she went out, wasn’t she, Mrs. Henney?”
    “Yes, yes, that and her shawl. That’s what
she had on when I saw her go out and—”
    Randall interrupted the landlady’s trembling
recollections, speaking to Mrs. Meade: “Do you mean she didn’t come
back last night? Then where—”
    Mrs. Meade countered the alarm rising in his
voice with a calm interruption of her own. “Perhaps she spent the
night with Miss Lewis, if their work went very late. Miss Lewis
stays at the shop herself some nights if she doesn’t feel equal to
walking home. You should go and ask her first of all.”
    “I’ll do it,” said Randall breathlessly, and
plunged out of the room. In a few seconds he was outside untying
his horse from Mrs. Henney’s gate, and swung up into the saddle. He
brought his quirt down sharply across the horse’s glossy flank and
spurred out of the quiet side street into the main road.
     
    * * *
     
    Sour Springs, Colorado, misnamed by an early
settler who did not care for the taste of the mineral water he had
found on his land, was a pleasant little mountainside town nestled
among the wooded foothills, with pine forests on the crests and
lighter green stretches of cultivated farm and ranch land in the
valleys between. The snow-crested Rockies all around made a sharp
silver and white frame for the dome of clear blue sky arched over
it. The sunny main street was a double row of neat frame houses and
storefronts punctuated by fenced, tree-shaded side lawns and
gardens.
    Randall Morris, the son of a Southern family
whose fortunes had suffered in the generations following the war,
had come West to make his own way in the world several years
before. Young, energetic and determined, he was already well