Summary:  Joe and a friend give each other challenges. Can they also find treasure through it?

Rating:  K+

Word Count: 3168

 

Sophie always loved to go barefoot. It had a sense of freedom and being one with the earth instead of following the rules of society. Luckily she didn’t live in the middle of city like her grandparents and cousins did, where the rules were strict and many of the streets dirty or paved. That was a different kind of dirt than the ground itself. She couldn’t go barefoot there. It wouldn’t feel the same and she would be considered a lunatic who didn’t know any better.

Today she was barefoot because of Little Joe Cartwright. It was a fact that she liked the feeling, but it was also a fact that it was partly Little Joe’s fault. It had been his suggestion. It was also not much better going barefoot in Virginia City than another city, she noticed.

For a while now the two of them had had a sort of a game. Some would think it was a game of dares, but it wasn’t exactly that. Not like the little boys played it by daring each other to do something that was a little dangerous or their parents wouldn’t approve of. The boys did not always enjoy it either, but felt they had to do the things not to lose face and to keep their status in the group. Joe had probably done that when he was younger and Sophie had done something similar herself even though she assumed it was a bit different between boys and girls. It was a most important unspoken rule between them that Sophie and Joe didn’t do things that they did not want to do. There was an understanding between them that there was no pressure even when there might be some excitement. There was a thrill sometimes in doing something a bit daring or frightening, but she didn’t lose face if she backed out of it.

Sophie thought of it as a game of suggestions. One of them would have an idea and would ask the other if they would like to do it. Suggesting it. If the other thought the challenge was interesting and possible to do, then one or both of them would do it.

This time Little Joe had challenged Sophie to go barefoot for a whole day on a day when she wasn’t staying at home all day. She had chosen a day when she was working with her mother at the milliner’s shop. The streets of Virginia City weren’t pleasant either and she walked carefully to not step on anything sharp or disgusting. It was easier for her to hide her feet under her dress than it would have been for a man to hide his feet, but she had to walk with care also to keep the skirt evenly in place. Perhaps she did it too slowly, as her mother asked her if she was feeling unwell, after looking at her quizzically for a while.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Wood family had started their life in the territory optimistically with the intention of being a part of something new, finding gold and becoming settlers on a new land. The new life started with Walter Wood trying out mining. Then it started again with farming. Then the new life started again a bit more like their old life, as Mr. Kent realised that there wasn’t a trade he did better than his own and now that Virginia City was growing, it was possible for them to settle down there, doing what they knew how to do. “But maybe just a little farm on the side,” he said, not ready to let go of his dream yet. Some years later they had a house at the outskirts of the now bustling town, now growing vegetables in something closer to a kitchen garden in size, that they could keep up with, and a few animals, mostly chickens. Mainly they were living comfortably through the carpentry of Mr. Walter Wood and the millinery of his wife Louise. Some said it was her trade that gave the family what wealth they had. Joe Cartwright did not know. He cared more about his friendship with their daughter Sophie, than who did what of the rest of the family. Walter and Louise were nice enough people and he liked them, and he did like their son Andrew, but he was several years younger than Joe and still at school.

“In a way I enjoyed it,” Sophie giggled. “Even when it wasn’t so nice to go barefoot in the middle of town. It felt like being a little girl again and having done something in secret from my parents or the teacher. And I like going barefoot.”

“Yes, you told that before,” Joe said. He had found Sophie sitting at their normal place by the creek, with her feet in the water.

She looked down at her lap in mock shame. “It wasn’t a complete success in the end.” Now she was holding in her laughter more than ever, trying to finish the story before she burst out laughing uncontrollably. “I think a couple of ladies in the store glimpsed my toes. I managed to hide that though and they looked at me again in a sort of befuddled way, one of them shaking her head as if she was trying to wake herself up. She probably thought she was imagining things.”

Joe let out a laugh, seeing in his mind an older lady in the milliner’s shop where Sophie too was working now, trying to make out if she had sat too long in the sun, and then deciding that she was in the right place to get help. “Maybe they buy even more hats now, so that they won’t get so dizzy in the sunshine,” he giggled.

“That’s not all,” Sophie continued. “This wasn’t about not being seen, but about being barefoot. I wasn’t the whole day though and I’m sorry about that. It’s Ma’s fault. In the end she spotted my toes peeking out from under my dress and took me aside to force a pair of spare shoes on me. I got an almighty scolding on the side too and she would probably have sent me home if she hadn’t found something to dress my feet in. She didn’t feel it was appropriate for a girl to show her feet in public, especially in a store at work. There was a lot more to that and your name was dragged in to it in passing, when she correctly guessed with whom I had hatched this idea.”

“Later I took off my shoes again and continued out here barefoot, as you see,” she said triumphantly wiggling her toes in the air, as they laughed at the whole thing.

After that they sat quietly, exhausted from the laughing, enjoying the gentle warmth of the sun and the rustling of the leaves in the breeze mixed with the quiet sound of the water. Realising his feet were getting numb in the cold water, Joe lifted them up to let them dry in the sun. As he glanced at Sophie, he could tell she was thinking through an idea.

“Would you like to spend a night at a haunted house?” Sophie asked, suddenly breaking the companionable silence.

“Um…,” Joe started, a little unsure about where the question was leaving. He didn’t know any haunted houses.

“Well, have you ever spent a night at a haunted house?”

“Where would you get a haunted house from?”

“So would you?”

There was that spark of excitement in her eyes again. Her mother had once wondered out aloud if it was something about the color of their eyes, that gave them both that curious spirit and quick temper and sometimes Joe thought she was right. Maybe you could recognise people with a similar spirit from their eyes. No one else in his family had green eyes and neither had Sophie’s mother or brother. Walter Wood had green eyes though and like them he was quick in his movements and full of ideas and adventure.

“Yes, why not,” he replied. “But where? And why really?”

“When we visited my cousins in San Francisco they told about more than one haunted house there and we even visited one. But that was just in the daytime and I wondered if it would really feel more haunted at night even if we didn’t meet any ghosts. What would the atmosphere be like? I would like to try that, wouldn’t you?”

Joe nodded slowly. “That’s all in San Francisco. I can’t just up and ride to San Francisco any day to see it.”

“No, of course not. We need one here. I’ll find one,” she said decisively, and the matter was closed.

~~~~~~~~~~

She did find a haunted house and no more than a week later they were there. Joe had confessed to Hoss where he was going, just so they wouldn’t look for him in the saloons if his family noticed he was gone for long and started to worry. He wouldn’t tell Adam before he had to as Adam would straight away tell him how childish the whole thing was. He thought the same about their challenges in general and would theatrically roll his eyes at them, suggesting it was like schoolchildren’s antics. Joe was sure he wouldn’t be as old and serious as Adam even when he was physically as old as Pa.

On the way to the house Sophie told Joe the whole story of the house and the legend of the ghost. It wasn’t a very old house, but it had some rocks in the base that had been used in a much older house before. The house was deserted now and had been so since old Cochrane, who had built it, had died. Cochrane was a Scot and he had travelled to this area looking for gold as had so many others, but he had also been running away from something.

“He was running away from his past,” Sophie said dramatically, which made Joe giggle and then clamp a hand over his mouth as he saw her glare. “Not only his past,” she continued when she was satisfied with his demeanor. “There was a great tragedy in his past, and maybe he was trying to run away from madness too.”

Cochrane had apparently fallen in love in his youth in Scotland. That was a mistake in any ghost story. The girl’s father had not approved of Old Cochrane (then young Cochrane), and when the girl and her father had fought she had slipped off a cliff, when she tried to run away, and died. Cochrane had gone crazy from sorrow and after a few years he had packed his belongings, including a couple of rocks from where she died and a couple of rocks from her old house and bought passage on a ship to America. In the end, always running away had led him to this remote place in America. Not because of a big desire for gold or silver, but because of a need to do something, he had looked for gold and in the end found both gold and silver. In his last years Cochrane had settled down here and built the simple house, with the Scottish rocks in the base. He hadn’t showed his wealth and was living in the simple house, having hidden the treasure somewhere on the property.

The legend told that the spirit of his lover had travelled with him in the rocks to America and she could sometimes be heard crying. After his death, Cochrane had joined his love and some said the two ghosts had been seen standing by the house together, finally having a chance to be with each other.

“How did you find about all this?” Joe wondered. “I’ve never heard the story before.” He even wondered if she had made it up, but on the other hand his Pa wasn’t much for telling these kinds of tales.

“Some of the ladies visiting the shop tell you anything once you give them a hint of where to begin.”

Joe chuckled. “It’s the same with some of the ranch hands. They enjoy telling a good story.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The house itself was a bit of a disappointment. They didn’t find anything to talk about there. It was just an old house and it felt like an old house. On the way out Sophie noticed a line scratched above the door. She read it out aloud.

 

“Who would be
A merman bold
Sitting alone,
Singing alone
Under the sea,
With a crown of gold,
On a throne?”

 

“Poetry?” Joe commented unnecessarily.

“But what if it’s a clue?” she breathed. “It talks about gold. Oh and there’s under the sea referring to water. What if it’s the well?”

“I wonder how we could best look into the well and see if there is anything inside it,” Joe pondered. “Of course we need to get down there too if we see something down there, but I’d prefer not to go down there if we don’t have to” he continued. Perhaps it wasn’t the best time to try a treasure hunt in a well in the middle of the night after all, he thought. Maybe coming back would be better.

But soon they were leaning over the well anyway, trying to see if there were any clues. “Be careful Joe,” Sophie’s breathless voice cautioned by his ear. She herself was leaning just as close over the well and it wouldn’t have been a dangerous place if the well hadn’t been so old and stones at the edge about to fall down even at a lighter touch.

First there was a tiny scraping sound and then Joe felt the movement of the escaping sand under his feet. There was barely time for an exclamation from him an a yell from Sophie when they were tumbling down the well.

After a brief silence as the rubble settled down they coughed and spoke at almost the same time.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Are you hurt?,” he asked.

Neither of them was hurt except for a bleeding wound on Joe’s arm which hurt a bit if you touched it, but wasn’t serious and some scratches and probably a few bruises But they were trapped.

“How are we going to get out of here?” she asked at last when they had already examined all the possibilities. He could hear fear creeping into her voice and put a comforting arm on her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Sophie. Someone will find us tomorrow. It’s quiet tonight but in the day there will be people passing and then we can yell to let them know we are here.”

“Look, there’s something written on the wall! Who would write inside a well? It’s old Cochrane who has lured us here and his going to let us die in this well.” Sophie’s voice was rising in panic and when she read the words of poetry on the wall, she was sobbing.

“Oh! what a happy life were mine
Under the hollow-hung ocean green!
Soft are the moss-beds under the sea;
We would live merrily, merrily.”

 

“Green! Look it mentions green! He knew we would come here!”

Joe looked at her puzzled.

“It’s our green eyes. He knew it would be us. He wanted us here,” her hysterical explanation continued.

“No it’s not about eyes. He might have been crazy but he didn’t know anything about us. It’s a coincidence.” Joe was trying to sound calm, even though he did not like being at the bottom of a well either, and he was worried that she had been physically injured, but wasn’t realising it yet.

It continued for a while with them in the cramped, but luckily dried out, well. Waves of fear came over her and he tried to stay calm and calm her down. At one point he did it with a kiss, and that did the trick. In fact it stunned them both and he was sure a well was the most awkward place to be in when you didn’t know if you should have kissed a girl or not. They were supposed to be friends, not lovers.

In the end they were both completely exhausted, and Joe was about to fall asleep, leaning against the cold wall, when they heard a voice calling his name somewhere above them.

“Oh! Thank God, it’s Hoss!” Sophie tugged at Joe’s sleeve, accidentally touching the wound and making him wince. “I’m sorry, Joe! I didn’t mean to do that. But it is Hoss, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Joe croaked sleepily, again catching his breath. “Hoss! Hoss!”

After they joined forces in shouting his brother’s name, Hoss’ voice soon joined in the echoes of their prison. Looking down at them in the light of a lamp was a face they were happy to see. Hearing his voice silenced the two down in the well.

“Joe? Sophie?” Their names echoed off the new silence of the walls like they had just been put there. “How did you end up down there? Are you two all right?”

A couple of worried exclamations later from Hoss, they were able to break their stunned silence and tell him they were not seriously hurt, only cold and bruised with some minor cuts, and they could start thinking about how he could help them up.

When Hoss had managed to help them up and got them warm with blankets, they were soon heading to the Woods’ place. When she was about to go inside Sophie leaned close to him an whispered, “We are still friends aren’t we?” A slight tremble in her voice made him realise how worried she was about this. Her eyes showed all the things she was scared of.

“Yes, of course.” His eyes softened for her. In fact he wasn’t sure if he minded too much about her fears. Maybe some day, not so far away they would not only be friends, and he would still love to go on adventures with her even if she was a little afraid sometimes. After all it was part of their unspoken agreement that you could be afraid and the other wouldn’t think any worse of you for that. She seemed to have forgotten that tonight. And he would be just her friend if she wanted to.

She smiled serenely as she kissed his cheek and waved goodbye, while he stifled a laugh thinking about how they would still dare each other and go on adventures when they were as old as his Pa.

 

The End

Author’s Note:

(1) Written for the 2021 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.   The game was Five Card Draw and the words and/or phrases I was dealt were:

Milliner
Haunted house
Bottom of the well
Go barefoot
Green eyes

(2)  The lines of poetry are from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Merman.”