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“untragic aloneness.” Because there were no playmates of her own age around the ranch, she frolicked with the animals or invented human companions. “I liked having friends nobody else could see,” Myrna would say of herself. “Maybe that’s the Welsh in me. You know how they believe in . . . the little people.” 24
    If this young daydreamer prized stillness, she also loved to move. Physically adventurous, Myrna often scraped her knees while climbing trees, tumbling in the hay, or scurrying through a wheat field. In early spring she braved swimming in an icy stream. Surviving photographs of her in early childhood show her all dolled up in pretty dresses, with a locket around her neck and a ribbon in her hair. Della made sure Myrna looked her best for the camera. But on the ranch and later, in Helena, Myrna was known as a tomboy. She and her father were pals. He read her stories and would take her along for berry picking, horseback riding, or rabbit hunting. He never struck her. The only spanking she ever received was from the hired man, Ben Sitton, who had forbidden her to crawl through the wire around the ranch. “I did, so he spanked me.” 25
    Ranch hands ate at a long kitchen table. In the same room, behind the potbellied wood-burning stove that provided heat, Myrna stored her slate, picture books, and child-size red chair. There she cuddled two gray kittens named after local plants, Timothy and Alfalfa. At night, after the candles were blown out, she could hear the howls of wolves and coyotes from her bed. More soothing was the sound of her mother playing Brahms’s “Lullaby” on the piano, accompanied by Aunt Lu’s violin. Thus comforted, Myrna would drift off to sleep. 26
    CHAPTER 2
    Not Your Typical Helena Girl
    When Myrna was five, her parents decided they’d had enough of ranch life. They pulled up stakes and moved to Helena, a former mining camp that had burgeoned into a thriving commercial center and, as Montana’s capital, a political hub. Pitched against Mount Helena and Mount Ascension, with the Big Belt Mountains to the east and spurs of the Rockies poking the sky to the north and west, Helena offered sweeping mountain views and bracing air plus city amenities. Its clanging streetcars, bustling shops, imposing civic buildings, flourishing public library, and lively theater scene must have made it seem like a metropolis after the isolation of Radersburg and the Crow Creek Valley. Here the population exceeded twelve thousand! Even in Helena, though, horses remained essential to everyday life. Most homes of the day came with outdoor hitching posts, and the rich had carriage houses, soon to become shelters for newly available automobiles. On a pretty day the Williams family, which would soon acquire a Dodge touring car, might ride the streetcar to Central Park, where they’d find a beer garden, a dance pavilion, skating rinks, a zoo, and a merry-go-round. 1
    For Myrna, even going for a walk felt like an adventure, since the Helena streets zigged and zagged. Built at the bottom of a ravine, the city grew up along the course of a meandering stream. Miners had altered the terrain by digging tunnels under most neighborhoods, some of which were naturally hilly. The odd-shaped lots, furrows, and steep slopes, down which Myrna went bobsledding in winter, could turn the terrain into a child’s oversized playground. 2
    The Williams family settled into a modest but comfortable house on Fifth Avenue, in a middle-class enclave east of Last Chance Gulch with none of the showiness of the elite west side, where gold barons, copper kings, and bankers of the plush 1880s had built ostentatious mansions with carved mahogany mantels, Tiffany stained-glass windows, and little stands on which New Year’s Day visitors placed their printed calling cards.
    Grandmother Johnson had cashed in her Radersburg mining claim, leaving behind the house John Johnson had built, and moved with her son Fred to Helena’s