Page 6 of My Darling Clementine

But why? She’d still be the same Clem there, no good as a woman, still hiding who she is, and doing it without speaking the language. It would be better to go home.

But where was that? Wasn’t she lying in her old room in the house she now owned, moping around like she was a teen, staring at the same spot on the ceiling, and wishing for answers she couldn’t find? Wasn’t this home?

No, this was her father’s house, where she stayed when she wasn’t at school. He had no interest in her, never cared to know who she was. She played sports; he hired instructors and coaches. She competed and won, he never attended a tournament or race. The only thing they shared in common was a love of writing, which he refused to acknowledge. He orphaned her long before he died.

Clem realized she had known the answer for a while. Her home was in California, where she was a successful prospector and author. She was going back to live and work with Barney, and visit her two favorite girls at Lady Jane’s.

She had ridden to Independence as fast as possible after reading Jim Burdock’s letter about her father’s stroke. Traveling light on horseback without a wagon, taking a six-horse stagecoach for a leg, and a newer, faster steam engine got her to Boston in half the time it took to reach California.

But she would return west by wagon train. Sleeping on the ground around campfires surrounded by men was noisy, smelly, and uncomfortable. Passing as a man in her own private wagon was the best way to keep her secret. And the articles she wrote about prospectors and the other people she met along the trail during her first trip across sold well. This time, Clem would look at the journey from a different perspective, perhaps that of a pioneer searching for a place in the wide open west to start a farm. It would be great research for future articles, or even a novel if she could write one.

Her mind made up, Clem used the new telegraph to join a late-season wagon train leaving Independence, Missouri, for California. After what happened to the Donner Party last winter, she would have waited until spring, but the wagon master was Jed Cushing. After surviving together on their first crossing, she trusted him.

Cushing planned to arrive in California by Christmas and, because of time constraints, he recommended Clem purchase a Studebaker wagon constructed in Independence, ready to pack when she arrived. The last train of the year would leave mid-August, which gave her only weeks to finish up in Boston.

Telegraph lines didn’t extend past Missouri, so she sent a letter to Barney Finkle in care of Sacramento General Post, telling him of her plans to return. She asked him to sell back her claim rights, but keep whatever he’d mined in her absence. Clem figured they’d live together again as they had before she up and left.

In the last week of July, the house almost empty, she donated the incomplete collection of the Boston Daily Journal to the library, noting the dates of the two missing issues. Deciding to give them the bulk of Tom Dennison’s personal library also, she gathered all of his books together, stuffing them into boxes. To her surprise, every publication with one of her poems was among them. She didn’t give them to him, didn’t know he had them.

Clem put them in her ‘take’ pile of personal items. It included the best of her father’s clothing, which fit her well, and her mother’s wedding dress, which did not fit her but he’d saved it all these years for her wedding.

During the first two weeks of August, she sold the rest of the household belongings, authorized auctions, and made charitable donations in her father’s name. She ordered a tombstone with this inscription:

Devoted Father and Husband of Clementine Lorelei

It was vindictive and childish, but accurate. “Here’s the same back at’cha, Dad.” She left written instructions for Jim to have a new one made and erected after a year, but until then to leave it standing as a little reflective humiliation.

When her father published her second story as Dennis Tines about finding gold in California, she thought he’d change his mind, and admit she could write as well as a man. But maybe that’s what set him against her. God damn him, and his stubborn pride.

She proved her point, but hadn’t considered how he’d take being deceived by his own daughter. Her two articles — the first about the dangers she faced crossing the trail, and the second about hard-working prospectors risking everything to search for placer gold and the rich men exploiting their labor — caused the Journal’s circulation to soar. But when she wrote to him explaining Dennis Tines was her pen name, instead of offering his daughter well-deserved praise, he wrote a letter she burned after reading, it was so blistering. She never heard from him again. Clem received news of his stroke in the next post, and would always wonder if her revelation caused it.

Several times a week she received invitations to dine with Jim and An, which she never turned down. They were delightful company, stimulating conversationalists, and had a unique vision of the world, both cosmopolitan and humble.

“It was the fuming fury of that last letter, and selling the business out from under me.” Clem shook her head over an after-dinner wine, smoking a cigar. “I cannot figure out his reasoning, or his reaction. Dad was always so distant, unimpressed by any of my achievements. This reaction was unlike any I ever provoked from him.” She blew a smoke ring.

“He never explained his reasoning to me and it wasn’t my business to question his decisions, but I will tell you he made arrangements to sell the newspaper a year ago, when the doctor first told him his heart was weak.” Jim shook his head. “I thought it was odd at the time. He’d never mentioned the idea before, but lined up the purchaser himself, and gave me instructions to complete the sale, with the provision for your annuity, several months before his stroke.”

“He decided to sell the newspaper so I couldn’t run it before he found out I was Dennis Tines?” Clem shook her head. “I knew he wasn’t pleased with my choices, but I never suspected his anger went this deep.”

“Why he chose to sell the newspaper, we can’t know. It’s possible he was punishing you for passing as a man, or going against his wishes, or refusing to get married.” An reached for the crystal wine decanter and refilled their glasses. “But the letter you burned was his reaction to finding out you wrote the articles his newspaper was so proud to have printed first. When you told him you were Dennis Tines,” he smiled with mirth, “a brilliant nom de plume, by the way, although I have had inspirations for a dozen more. I even created a few calling cards to try them out, but I digress…” He giggled and looked across the table at Jim. “What was I saying, darling?”

It charmed Clem to hear An use the endearment. How lucky they were to have found each other, making her think of Poppy and Joy.

“You were talking about Tom’s overblown reaction to Clem’s news that she was his star contributor,” Jim offered with a tolerant smile.

“Yes, there’s that, and then finding out his only child lied to him on top of that.” An cocked his head to one side. “But is that enough to justify the full blown fury Clem describes?” His eyebrows creased. “It doesn’t sound like Tom, the man we had to dinner, but then we didn’t live with him.”

“It wasn’t like him,” agreed Clem. “Belittlement and dismissal were his usual response to anything I achieved.” She blew another smoke ring, watching it rise rather than looking anyone in the eye. “I honestly believed he’d finally admit I could do something, and do it well. I never expected him to accuse me of plagiarism, fictionalizing my story, he even suggested I hired someone to write the entire thing using the name I gave him.”

Jim shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. A reaction to his deteriorating health, maybe? That might have been his ‘last straw’.” He nodded. “I’ve had clients who were rational until the final stages of a long illness, who then codify their wills at the last moment to cut off those closest to them.”

“Maybe,” said Clem, unconvinced.

An said, “I think it was something else.” He looked Clem over. “You look just like your father but in the bloom of youth, stronger, healthier, and cuter.”

“Cuter? I never thought of Dad as cute.”

“Because he wasn’t. Whatever physical charms he had in his youth were exchanged for the body he earned sitting on his duff for thirty years.” An shrugged. “You are a younger, more attractive version of Tom, and…” he paused, “you write better than he did.”