The Storm Women

By C. K. Thomas

Set in rural Arizona’s southeastern corner near Willcox, the novel’s Storm women take you on a uniquely-feminine journey though the Wild West of 19th Century Arizona. Find out why the Storm women must navigate this dangerous era without the men who fathered their babies. From the early days of burlesque right up to present day Arizona, travel the back roads with these courageous women. The protagonist from the Arrowstar Series, Star Lance writes historical fiction and The Storm Women represents Star’s 2nd historical novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. K. Thomas
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310405839

C. K. Thomas

C.K. Thomas lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her husband, Frank, and Chihuahuas, Cleo and Peanut. She earned her first dollar writing a poem for a teen magazine when she was 14 years old. As an adult she continued to write freelance book reviews and articles for various publications, including Rider motorcycle magazine and The Arizona Republic’s weekly Arizona Magazine. Arrowstar is her second novel and marks the first in a series of novels set in Mineral City, a fictional town situated in the southeast corner of Arizona. Cheryl and her husband own ranch-land near Willcox, Arizona and roaming that area often serves as inspiration for her writing. While not claiming to be a cowgirl herself, she continues to admire the independent spirits of women who ride horseback and hold their own on ranches all over the state of Arizona. She intends for her stories about adventurous women not only to entertain, but also to inspire each woman who reads the books of the Arrowstar series to ... Take a chance, amaze yourself!

Book preview

The Storm Women

A Companion book to Charade

C.K. Thomas

with Star Lance

Text copyright © 2014 C.K. Thomas

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved

eBook formatting and cover design by FormattingExperts.com

This book or any portions thereof may not be reproduced for any purposes other than review without the written permission of the author.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

The Storm Women is dedicated to the women in my own ancestry whose names I borrowed for the characters in this novel:

Great-great-grandmother Sarah: 1834-1897

Great-grandmother Almanza: 1861-1890

Great-grand-aunt Ladoska: 1859-1905

Grandmother Carrie: 1889-1974

Cousin Opal: 1893-1983

Cousin Margaretta: 1914-1939

My heartfelt gratitude to these hearty country women: great-great grandmother Sarah Swing-Horton, great-grandmother Almanza J. Kirkham-Horton, great grand aunt Ladoska Dusky Anna Horton-Partlow, grandmother Carrie Edna Horton-Thomas, cousin 2x removed Opal May Horton, cousin 1x removed, Margaretta Belle Horton-Purvis

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Spoiler Alert!

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Other books by C.K. Thomas

Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks to Kimberly Gallagher, my daughter and content editor; Lu Sanford, my friend and copy editor and to my Twitter, Facebook, and Blogger friends for all their support and enthusiasm during my writing process. Also, it’s imperative I give a shout out to the great dictionary and research goddess known as the Internet.

Spoiler Alert!

The Storm Women is a companion book to the second book in the Arrowstar series Charade. The women of the Storm family inhabit the pages of Charade, but in limited cameos. This companion novel builds on those cameos and traces the Storm women’s ancestry back to Margaretta Storm just as she begins her dancing career at the tender age of 23 in 1857. The life stories of five generations of Storm women, as told through the historical fiction of Star Lance, traverse the Civil War years of the 1860s, and chronicle the births of the Storm family’s daughters in 1859, 1861, 1888, 1890, 1915, 1935, and 1961.

To fully savor Charade without ruining its secrets, it would be wise to save reading The Storm Women for dessert.

Chapter One

Margo Storm

Present Day

And the winner is … Margo Storm and the Mike Quinn Band for their album Lost and Found. Margo made her way up to the stage to accept the Academy of Western Artists Award for best western swing album of the year with the other musicians of the Mike Quinn Band. Her head was swimming with unexpected thoughts of Blanch Horn and the woman she used to be.

When Mike finished his acceptance speech and turned the microphone over to her, Margo opened by saying, My name wasn’t always Margo Storm, and I didn’t always sing with the Mike Quinn Band. However, one of the best life decisions I’ve ever made involved changing my name from Blanch Horn to Margo Storm and beginning to sing and write for Mike’s western-swing band. My late mother Opal Storm sang and wrote songs during the 1960s, and I’m especially proud to carry on her legacy. This one’s for you, Mom! Margo said lifting the award high.

* * *

Margo grew up in Mineral City, a small mining town situated in the southeast corner of Arizona, where horse-ranching outfits and cattle companies thrive in a landscape peppered with saltbush and sweet clover. Ranchers and farmers grow orchards of apples, peaches and pecans here. They hold fast to loyalties steeped in tradition and trace their ancestry back to the days of miners, bronc riders, gunslingers and homesteaders.

Behind the church on the hill at the end of Main Street where Tyler Spring Pike takes off north toward Ellenville, a community cemetery preserves the past in stones engraved for souls who once lived here and breathed life into this town. Among them are the women of the Storm family, and that’s where Margo traces her roots.

Along with the upstanding citizens who reside in the company of tombstones, rests Bobby Flint, who accompanied by two pals, built a fire inside a tunnel just outside Mineral City and stopped and robbed the train of its Ellenville Mine payroll. At least, that’s the way the legend goes.

Miners who once blasted gold and silver from the Weaver Mine in Mineral City and the Sugar Loaf up by Tyler Spring also lie here in the shade of cottonwood trees. The graves of single men make up the majority of miners, but a few lie alongside their wives and families in iron-fenced plots.

Margo’s people inhabit a similar space. The Storm women, buried behind a gate forged with their ancestors’ name, braved life single-handedly, and their men found rest in soil wherever their wanderings ended.

The Storm Women

Margaretta - Storm family matriarch

Sarah and Almanza - Margaretta’s daughters

Clare and Ladoska (Dusky) - Almanza’s daughters

Carrie - Ladoska’s daughter

Opal - Carrie’s daughter

Margaretta (Blanch/Margo) - Opal’s daughter

During the hardscrabble days when Mineral City began, entertainment could be found in a makeshift saloon at the east end of Main Street. Today the townsfolk drive the 40 miles north to Ellenville to take in a movie or maybe a stage production in the old Crown Theater. Not much happens in Mineral City, except on weekends when tours of the old Weaver Mine, near the train tracks a few blocks south of Main Street on Tyler Spring Pike, attract some tourists. There’s an antique store on Main Street, and right next door, if folks are hungry, Carla’s Bar and Grill serves some mighty fine food.

Back in the day, folks traveled to Tombstone for entertainment, where they could take in a burlesque show at the Bird Cage Theater. These days shows no longer play there, and some say the old theater is haunted.

In the old days, the place reverberated with thunderous applause for the acts that graced the small stage. When the crowd got rowdy, a couple of big cowboys were paid to throw buckets of cold water on the troublemakers. That settled ‘em down all right, but the next act just wound ‘em up again. Performers learned how to bob and weave when eggs and fruit started to fly from a crowd bored by the show or simply too drunk to care. Margo’s ancestors counted at least three performers among their ranks, and one of them played the burlesque circuit.

Chapter Two

Almanza Storm – 1879

Almanza held the worn volume to her breast and sighed as she remembered the day she had found it in the very bottom of her mother’s cedar chest, almost buried in cedar chips, under a pile of handmade baby things. She held it to her face to catch the faint scent of cedar still clinging to its pages. Her finger traced the title stenciled on the cover in gold, The Code of Terpsichore: The Art of Dancing published in 1830 by C. Blasis.

Only five years old when she discovered the book, she had hidden it under a loose floorboard in the room she shared with her sister Sarah. It wasn’t until a few months later, after she had practically memorized every picture in the back of the book, that she summoned the courage to ask her mother about it.

Who is the beautiful lady with the lyre on the first page of this book, Mamma?

Where on earth did you find this, Almanza? Her mother Margaretta asked.

I know I wasn’t supposed to, and I’m real sorry I looked in your cedar chest, Almanza told her as her downcast eyes studied the light showing between the floorboards in the parlor where her mother had been sitting in the rocker mending.

Almanza remembered the faraway look in her mother’s eyes as she told her how she had traveled from her hometown in Spain to Paris to learn ballet. The book, named for the Greek muse of dance and song, she now held in her hands had been like a bible to her mother while she studied dance.

After much begging on Almanza’s part, Margaretta had agreed to teach her youngest daughter ballet. From the age of five until this moment, dance remained the center of Almanza’s hopes and dreams.

The room she presently occupied and had paid for through tonight in the one-story, frame building that passed for a hotel in Tombstone, had taken the last of the money she had earned teaching a small dance class for six weeks in the home of one of the more affluent residents of Tombstone. The promise of year-long employment teaching dance had brought her from Mineral City to this new and barely established town.

When she arrived in Tombstone, she had discovered buildings under construction on nearly every corner that soon would serve the ever-growing population brought here by the promise of work at the Tombstone Mill and Mining Company. She had answered an ad in the newspaper, only to find when she arrived that the woman could engage her for just six weeks.

It won’t do me much good to stay in my room agonizing over what tomorrow will bring, Almanza thought and decided she might as well go see the show tonight, advertised to take place in the makeshift tent on Allen Street next to the only store in town. The nickel she discovered deep in the pocket of her only warm coat would just cover the ticket to the show. Luckily her room came with one meal a day in the dining area of the hotel. At least she wouldn’t go to bed hungry. Still, the question remaining foremost in her mind, what would she do when tomorrow dawned?

After dinner Almanza walked along the boardwalk to a spot where planks had been placed across the muddy street strewn with big potholes and puddles. She carefully crossed the precarious walkway of boards and stood near the entrance to the tent, watching the sharpshooting exhibition taking place in an area in the middle of the street covered with a thick layer of straw to keep the participants from sinking knee-deep in the mud.

The show inside the tent proved to be superb, and for awhile Almanza quit worrying about tomorrow. After the show the players from the Wayne-Dobbins Touring Company gathered outside in front of the tent, meeting the people who had watched the show; urging them to bring their friends back tomorrow night when they claimed the acts would be different and even better than tonight’s performances.

Just as Almanza turned to make her way back to the walkway of planks to cross the street, she bumped into one of the players coming around the side of the tent, her arms loaded with sheet music and scripts. The collision caused the woman to lose her grip on the stack of papers, and the pages went flying in all directions.

Almanza scrambled to help her pick up the mess, and said, I’m so sorry I caused you to muddle the pages. Let me help you put them back in order.

The woman, who didn’t appear to be much older than Almanza’s 18 years, looked her up and down and said, Can ya sing, lassie?

Uh, no, but I know how to dance.

Grand, that’ll do, the woman said as she grabbed Almanza’s arm and guided her back through the open tent flap and slapped the gathered pile of paper down on one of the long tables inside. We’re a wee bit short on players for tomorrow night’s melodrama, and if you can dance, then we won’t be so scundered.

You won’t be what? Almanza asked, confused at the thick Irish brogue she was trying to decipher.

Embarrassed, we won’t be so embarrassed when we can’t get our act together.

I see, Almanza said, although she wasn’t sure she did. I’m Almanza, by the way.

Clare. I play the concertina in the all-girl band, and if we can find her, Antonia can sing both parts since you don’t sing.

Who’s Antonia?

She’s billed as our songbird virtuoso. You’ll like her when ya meet her, Clare said. That is, if we can find her before tomorrow night’s performance.

Is she truly lost in this small town?

She may not even be here at all, Clare told her. When we left Tucson a few days ago, she stayed behind a day to be with a fella she met there. Today when the stage came in she was supposed to be on it, but she wasn’t.

* * *

The next day around noon Clare and Almanza were on the stage in the big tent when Antonia burst through the door, making a grand entrance; singing at the top of her lungs.

Antonia! Where have you been? Clare shouted over the singing.

Who’s this then? Antonia asked, looking at Almanza.

She’s dancin’ in the melodrama tonight, and now that you’re here, you can do the singin’. But then, you didn’t answer my question.

Nor you, mine! Antonia exclaimed.

Almanza could see this discussion was going nowhere fast, so she piped up saying, Hello, I’m Almanza, and I’m glad to meet you, Antonia.

Ciao! Antonia said breezily, using one of the few words of Italian she’d picked up from her mother.

Antonia, where were you yesterday when the stagecoach came in? Clare asked.

I didn’t ride the stage. My fella brought me in his buggy.

All the way from Tucson? Clare exclaimed.

Yes, all the way. That’s why it took an extra day. We lost a wheel about halfway here and had to stop while he fixed it, Antonia told her.

It’s a wonder you made it here at all over those miserable roads, Clare said.

But I did, and my fella’s staying around to hear me sing tonight, Antonia said as she looked appraisingly at Almanza. You’re a quiet little thing, aren’t you?

She’s not quiet. You just won’t close your mouth long enough to let her get a word in, Clare scolded.

I’m really grateful you’re giving me a chance to perform tonight, Almanza told them. I’ve been teaching here in town, but that’s over now. I was only paid at the hotel though last night, and now I don’t know what I’m going to do.

You’ll just have to bunk with us tonight, Antonia told her. We’re moving on to Mule Gulch tomorrow. Since a couple of the players left the troupe in Tucson, I’m sure the manager would be glad to hire you.

You haven’t even seen me dance yet, Almanza reminded her.

If you’re good enough to teach dance, then I’m sure you’ll be terrific on stage, Clare reassured her. Come on, let’s do a run-through of the melodrama and get ready for tonight.

* * *

That night Almanza slept soundly, knowing she had landed a new job. Tomorrow she would be leaving this noisy, bustling outpost for the excitement of a life on the road. On top of that, she’d made two new friends, who were willing to show her the ropes of burlesque. She couldn’t have been happier or more relieved. In the morning she’d dash off a note back home to her mother and sister, letting them know of her change of fortune.

Embarking on this new life would be so different from her years growing up in Mineral City with her mother and sister. She couldn’t remember her dad, as he left to fight in the Civil War when she was a mere infant. No, it had always been just the three of them making their way as best they could. She especially remembered how exciting it was whenever a letter from their father arrived. Her mother would hum and sing for days after hearing from her husband, even as she slaved over the big wash tubs of laundry she took in from the many single men who worked the Weaver and Sugar Loaf claims.

Almanza also remembered how red and raw her mother’s hands always looked and how paper thin her nails were. Some nights she’d awaken to see her mother sewing or ironing in the middle of the night, taking care of work she’d gathered from the shopkeepers and the few professional people of Mineral City. Most people in town knew Margaretta as the best seamstress for miles around and called on her often to make and mend their clothes. It bothered Almanza that once her mother had been quite an accomplished dancer before she came to America with a touring company and chose to stay and marry Almanza’s father, Jacob.

Now, she earned a living for herself and her daughters doing this work that kept her tired and worn most days. Almanza remembered when her mother taught a small dance class in the schoolhouse after the day’s regular classes were over. One time she actually saw her mother perform in a variety show at the church. Thoughts of her mother made her homesick, so she turned her attention to packing her things for the trip to the Mule Mountains with the troupe of players.

Chapter Three

Margaretta Storm – 1879

Margaretta picked up the tintype from the top of the dresser and remembered the day in San Francisco when it had been taken. Jacob looked so carefree and happy, and she couldn’t remember any day since when she herself had been more satisfied with everything about her life. At the young age of 23 she was five feet, two inches tall, weighed a mere 90 pounds and was talented enough to be dancing with a well-known Paris company. With her chestnut hair piled high on her head and waiting in the wings to take the stage, she imagined the world lay at her feet.

* * *

1857

Jacob