“I think he’s laughing,” Amy said uneasily.
“Don’t worry about Martin, darlin’. We have to worry about getting you downstairs without anybody seeing you.”
They managed. With some of the acting expertise they’d learned in the last few months and some of Charlie’s clothes, they managed And they had an interesting announcement for the press when they all met at one o’clock for lunch and interviews.
The press was pleased. Karen was ecstatic. Martin was happy. Aunt Julia and Uncle Frank were tickled pink. Amy and Charlie’s fans were delighted and wrote by the hundreds to tell the happy couple so.
Horace Huxtable, sourly slogging through the filming of a beachcomber-native-maiden picture on a remote island in the South Seas, was as bitter as might be expected when he heard the news.
* * *
Amy adored life on the ranch. Even before the main house was finished, she’d settled in. She adored her husband, too, and thought his younger brother, who blushed and stammered every time he saw her, was a darling. In truth, she had to face very few hardships, thanks to Charlie’s good business sense, brilliant management, and ample capitalization of his ranching project.
For the first few months of her marriage, Amy was plagued by old fears, but they gradually tapered off. By the time she was about to deliver her first baby, she hardly thought about Alaska at all, and when she did, it was with the remoteness one generally associated with old legends and fairy tales.
Martin Tafft stood as godfather to the first Fox child to be born, a bouncing baby boy whom they named Martin Francis in honor of Martin and Uncle Frank. Their next child, Karen, was born a year and a half later, approximately two weeks before Karen’s first child, Amy, was born.
The two little girls grew up together, drank lots of good wholesome orange juice, wore only the most fashionable clothes, learned to ride and rope like regular cowgirls, loved the moving pictures, and both served as Rose Princesses when they were the right age.
Their mothers and fathers were thrilled.
Vernon Catesby, the local millionaire banker, didn’t have enough influence to block their selection. He sulked for a while but eventually recovered. After all, he was rich.
But Amy and Charlie Fox, who didn’t have half the worldly wealth of Mr. Catesby and his wife, the former Miss Luella Simpson, hand-picked by Vernon’s parents, who no longer trusted him to choose for himself—knew themselves to be far richer than the Catesbys.
Cowboy For Hire Page 33
