Summer 1868Warren Ashby
Bookstore Owner and Postmaster
St. George, California
Her ghost first appeared one morning as I washed the breakfast dishes. She stood in the tall pines beyond the creek that runs behind my little cottage. She wore that same spring frock—the color of daisies—that she’d worn on the day, so long ago, when I’d left home. Her hair was plaited in a long braid that dangled down and swung so gaily behind her. She came, barefooted, through the timber to the creek. She looked right and left, then sat herself down, and laughed as she played her hands in the cold, rushing water.
That happened on a Sunday, but it all began the Friday before, when a certain young man came into my store to post a letter. He was a good looking fellow who had gone native—in blue jeans, a flanne
