In the Shadow of the Mountains

by Rosanne Bittner

  Irene could hardly believe the words. “The fact that our mother is dying gives me the right. She’s your birth mother, the woman who raised you and gave you everything you ever wanted.”

  “The woman who kept me from having Chad for myself—you and she both,” Elly bit back. “To think that all the time Mother knew you were part Indian, that you weren’t even hers by birth, yet to treat you as though you were the most beautiful, wonderful thing that ever happened to this family…it makes me sick! Don’t you know how much I hate her, and you? And now—now you’ve chased Chad out of Denver just to turn around and marry your Mexican lover! You must be very thrilled that again you have everything you want while robbing me of everything I ever wanted!”

  “Is that why you have refused to see me since I came back to Denver?”

  “Of course it is!” She stepped closer. “I loved Chad! I’m sure John has told you all of it by now.”

  Irene met her eyes squarely. “Yes, he told me the lurid details of how my own sister was a whore to my husband!” Elly’s eyes widened with indignation. “There is no other way to put it, Elly. A woman who would sleep with her own sister’s husband deserves no respect. Perhaps you loved Chad, or thought you did; but I can guarantee Chad never loved you, because he was incapable of loving anyone! If he truly loved you he would not have left Denver, and you know it. As far as any unhappiness you have ever had, Elly, none of it was ever my fault. You brought it upon yourself!”

  She thought for a moment Elly might hit her as she clenched her fists. She held her chin haughtily then. “I’m happy enough. Red built me a home nearly as grand as this one, and he buys me jewels and furs and anything else I want! We’ve been to Europe and San Francisco and New York, and we have entertained some of the most important people in the country.”

  Irene turned away, moving behind a desk. “I’m glad you think those things can make you happy, Elly. You carried on for years with my husband, as well as sleeping with half the men of Denver; you married poor Red for spite, a man you don’t love at all; you have no children of your own and you’ve abandoned the only people who really love you.”

  Elly folded her arms. “No children? Maybe you should know I was pregnant once, dear sister—by Chad!” She watched Irene’s eyes widen in shock. “Yes. When I went off to school I discovered I was pregnant.”

  “To school! You were only seventeen!”

  Elly smiled. “That’s right. And I had already been sleeping with Chad for three years, before you even married him! He was my first man. I had him first, Irene. What do you think of that?” Irene struggled to keep her composure. Fourteen! To realize the extent of Chad’s lurid infidelities, the extent of his lies and lust…how could she have been so blind, so trusting? “I think the most notorious prostitute in Denver might be considered an angel compared to you,” she answered. She turned away, hardly able to look at her sister. “What happened to the baby?”

  “I had an abortion. The man who did it botched it up and I had to have an operation that left me unable to have children. That’s the reason I’ve never had any, dear sister. That’s the sacrifice I made for Chad.”

  Irene shook her head. “I hardly think it was a sacrifice on your part. It only left you free to carry on with him without the worry of pregnancy.” She finally faced her again. “Why didn’t any of us know about it?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to know. The school, of course, was quite happy to keep it quiet.” She set a parasol aside. “As far as Mother dying, you might guess I am not overly upset by it. At least now I can get back into K-E and run it my way. John certainly isn’t capable, and you’re too concerned about being the good mommy and wife. I’m the only one qualified.”

  Irene was suddenly happy over her mother’s decision to put K-E in her hands. She had not wanted it, until now. “It so happens I have been put in charge,” she told Elly calmly. “Mother already told me it’s in her will. I am to be president of K-E.”

  She could almost hear thunder as Elly’s face began to turn nearly purple with rage. “You! You aren’t even her real daughter!”

  “The few things she turned over to you, you lost. You don’t know how to make money, Elly. You only know how to spend it.”

  “I won’t stand for it! I’m a Kirkland!”

  “That never seemed to matter to you before.”

  “I deserve a share of that company! I deserve to be in control of some of it!”

  Irene smiled bitterly. “Are you afraid poor Red is going to run out of money? You told Mother once that you didn’t need K-E, that you would wait for your inheritance. Father is still a healthy man, Elly. He could live another twenty years, and that’s how long you will have to wait for some of the money, unless he cuts you out of his will. If you refuse to go see Mother and be civil and kind to her, he just might do it.”

  Elly nearly trembled with rage. “I won’t do it! I want her to die knowing I hate her!”

  Irene held her eyes, hardly able to believe her ears. “Maybe you do. But I’m not going to let that happen. You’re going to go to Mother and tell her you’re sorry for hurting her and that you love her. You’ll do it, even if I have to bribe you. I’ll give you a share of K-E, Elly. I’ll sign over a couple of the mines, some of the businesses, one of the banks—put it all in your name, free and clear, if you’ll go see Mother. We’re big enough to get along without some of our branches. That way you’ll never have to answer to me for anything, and you’ll never have to darken my doorway again, nor I yours.”

  “You’d actually sign part of the company over to me just to go tell Mother I love her?”

  “I would. I’m sure Father would agree. Do you agree?”

  Elly frowned in astonishment. “Don’t you know Mother is the one who kept you and Ramon apart?”

  “I know. And I know you’re the one who told her you saw us kissing. Life is too short to carry hatred in our hearts forever, Elly. I will not let Mother die with a broken heart. She might not have handled things quite right, Elly, but she thought she was doing the best thing for us. I was old enough at the time to remember how she scrubbed clothes from dawn to dusk for over a year back in California, waiting for Father to find his gold. We owe everything we have to Mother, like it or not. And if you want any part of what she has left to us, you’ll go to her right now and you’ll make her believe that you love her. That shouldn’t be hard for you. Like Chad, you’ve always been good at acting.”

  Elly stiffened. “All right,” she said, holding her chin high again. “I’ll go see her. But I want two of the warehouses and three of the supply stores. I want to sit down and see how the gold and silver mines are doing and I want the right to pick which ones I get to keep.”

  “Fine. It’s the coal mines that are beginning to emerge as more important anyway.”

  “There will never be anything more important than gold and silver! I also want one of the banks—the Colorado State Bank, I think. And I want twenty-five percent of our stocks in the gas company and the railway companies. I also want the Kirkland Hotel and the theater—and the smelting plant. I need to see that at least part of K-E doesn’t fall into the hands of that stupid Indian nephew of yours. The way things are going, nothing but Indians and Mexicans will run K-E someday, and I want no part of them!”

  “Fine. We’ll have to sign everything over later. Right now every minute counts. Mother is not expected to last through another night.”

  Elly drew in her breath, picking up her parasol. “Show me to her room then.”

  Irene just stared at her a moment, wondering how the girl managed to live with herself. “I am really sorry for you, Elly. I never hated you, you know. I wanted so much for us to be close, but you would never let it happen. I truly am sorry you always felt so left out and unloved. I felt that way myself sometimes, but I guess you thought it was just you.”

  Elly sniffed. “You’ve always led the life of a fairy princess. You don’t know what unhappiness is! Now, if I must go and see Mother, l
et’s get it over with.” She turned and walked out in a huff, skirts rustling. Irene just stared after her a moment in disbelief. Ramon came into the study then.

  “Are you all right, Irene?”

  She closed her eyes. “I’m not sure.” She turned away, and in the next moment Ramon had her in his arms. “My God, Ramon, she was sleeping with Chad before I even married him. She was only fourteen.”

  The room hung silent for a moment as Ramon just held her. He sighed deeply, kissing her hair. “It is done now, Irene. It cannot be changed, and you will not change the way she is, nor are you responsible for it. All that matters now is us, just us and the children.”

  She met his eyes, his dark, loving, true eyes. “Yes. That’s all that matters.” He met her lips, again erasing the ugly past, again renewing her strength and her trust in the future, a future that would see Irene Kirkland Jacobs Vallejo as the new president of Kirkland Enterprises.

  The funeral for Beatrice Kirkland was one of the biggest Denver had ever seen. Not only was it attended by the governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver, as well as the top representatives of Denver’s most important businesses and industries; but it was also attended by the owners of many smaller businesses who were connected to or dependent on Kirkland Enterprises. Mining representatives, as well as miners themselves, many of them friends of Kirk’s, railroad executives, reporters and many people from the general public also went.

  People overflowed the church and formed a huge parade through the Denver Bea Kirkland had helped build, a Denver that was plagued with the problems of city growing too fast. It bore the many signs of proud progress, four- and five-story brick buildings, hotels, theaters, restaurants, churches, shops, industries, schools, trolley cars, and now men were working on bringing in telephones.

  But there were many drawbacks to the city’s burgeoning population, which had grown in only ten years from five thousand to nearly thirty-six thousand. The streets were still not bricked, and dust rolled over the sad procession that made its way to the city graveyard. Black smoke and coal dust from smelters on the north side of town darkened the air, the streets were still much too littered, and when the wind was just right, the smell of raw sewage that was dumped into the Platte River stung the nostrils. A city-wide sewer system was sorely needed, a project Bea had been working on before she died. Irene was determined now to finish it.

  Men walked ahead of the funeral procession shoveling up horse dung from the street, and in the distance one could hear the whistles and clatter of trains moving in and out of Union Station. Various gangs of homeless children stared at the “rich lady’s” funeral from alleys, as did many of Denver’s poverty-stricken adults. Irene caught sight of some of them as the carriage in which she rode with Kirk, Ramon, and the children made its way behind the hearse. She vowed that now that Bea was gone, she would donate more money to shelters to help the growing numbers of jobless people who had come to Denver to find their dream, only to discover it was a mirage. Some, especially Denver’s Italians, were left jobless by the hundreds after being hired by the railroad, then let go once the railroad projects were finished. Irene wanted to do more to make hospitals and schools available to the poor as well as the rich, and to continue to help erase prejudice against foreigners and their exploitation by big business. K-E had been one of the worst, and she intended to change that.

  There was so much to do, but she reminded herself she had Ramon. He and Kirk would help her hire more men to run the daily business, but she had promised her mother she would protect K-E, and she was determined to do just that.

  She stared at the hearse in front of her, vowing she would never let K-E take control of her life, that she would never become a Bea Kirkland. She loved her mother, in spite of the things she had done, but she did not want to be like her. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she whispered.

  Red and Elly rode in their own carriage behind them, and John rode in yet another. The procession of carriages and people on foot stretched for several blocks along Larimer Street, past new K-E offices, past many K-E businesses, including the first bank Bea had ever founded, one that had survived both the fire and the flood.

  They reached the graveyard, where Elly and John stood on one side of the black hole that would hold their mother, Elly wearing a black veil that was not necessary, for there were no tears in her eyes. John just stared at the coffin, shivering for a drink, tears coming to his eyes only out of a longing to cry out to his mother and ask her why she had never tried to understand what he really wanted out of life, why she never understood that in the early years he had done what she wanted just to please her and win her approval. But he had never pleased her. He had only disappointed her. What his mother had begun destroying in the beginning, he had finished destroying with liquor, on which he had been totally dependent to soothe the inner wounds since before leaving for college. Liquor was his life now, all he cared about, liquor and the women of Old Colorado City, who made him feel important.

  He glanced over at Irene, loving her, admiring her strength. Irene had become the backbone of the family, and he was more than happy to see K-E fall into her and Ramon’s hands. He was glad she was finally happy, married to the man she had always loved.

  Irene turned to Kirk, placing her arm around his waist. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she felt him shudder with silent tears. The minister spoke his eulogy, people expressed their sympathy and headed for the Kirkland mansion for food and visiting. Elly hurried after them, anxious to get away from the depressing grave, eager to put on a show of the grieving daughter. John stared at the coffin a moment longer, then broke into tears and walked away.

  Kirk and Irene remained beside the grave. “I figured she’d be around long after me,” Kirk said brokenly then. “She was always so strong, like an unbending steel post. I never realized how much I really needed her, Irene.” He rubbed at her shoulder. “Don’t ever let things come between you and Ramon, especially the company.”

  “I won’t, Father.”

  He sniffed, reaching out to touch the coffin. “Thirty-one years,” he sobbed. “We…sure had our fights…but in a lot of ways we had a hell of a good time. I never dreamed…when I brought a little baby Indian girl to a young woman I hardly knew back in Kansas…that it would all turn out like this. I never thought we’d build a city…with practically our own two hands. She wanted so much…and I wanted so little.” He shook his head. “I just…can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t imagine walking into K-E without her being there. I’m going to see her…everyplace I go, hear those skirts rustling…hear her complaining. Would you believe a man could miss a complaining woman?”

  She smiled through tears “Yes. I can believe it.”

  He placed a rose on top of the coffin, one he had carried from the church and which was beginning to wilt. “Good-bye, Bea.”

  Irene noticed a bouquet of flowers at the grave she didn’t remember from the church, although there had been so many it would have been easy to miss one. Out of curiosity she leaned down to read the card: “In deepest sympathy from Uncle Jake and Aunt Marlene Ritter, Cousins Charley and Cynthia, Kansas City.”

  “My God,” Irene whispered.

  Chapter Forty

  January 1888

  Irene stood holding two-month-old Miguel as she peered out at the raging blizzard. She hoped that seventeen-year-old David, who was up at Colorado State University at Fort Collins, was safe and warm, and she was glad for the marvelous invention of the telephone. She would try calling him later this afternoon, when he was finished with classes.

  She walked over and turned up an oil lamp, thinking how nice it was going to be when they finally had electricity here at the ranch. Denver and other foothill communities had long ago changed from gas lights to electric lights, and now electricity was being used for many other purposes, replacing steam power.

  Ramon had brought her here to the ranch to give her a long rest after giving birth to Miguel, the sixth child Irene had delivered since
marrying Ramon eleven years ago. Two of the six had died, one at birth, the other, a little boy, of measles at two years old. Their little graves were not far from the ranch house, and Irene tried not to dwell on their deaths, but rather to be happy for those who had lived. Combined with her own children and Ramon’s son, as well as little Sam and one other adopted child, Irene and Ramon had nine living children. Irene had no doubt there would be even more before her child-bearing years were over.

  Eight of those children were with them now at the ranch, while David was up at Colorado State. The winter winds kept them inside, and she turned to watch them playing in the great room, thinking how fast time passed, how rapidly things had changed in the twenty-nine years since she and her family had first come to settle in the little log community along Cherry Creek in ’59.

  Denver was a huge city of a hundred thousand people now, not drifters and miners, but stable, stationary citizens. K-E remained a huge enterprise, but other industries and businesses had moved in, and new antitrust laws were making it difficult to hold a monopoly. A good share of K-E had been broken down into smaller companies, some of the businesses sold, and several of the gold mines now sat idle, most of the precious ore already taken from their bowels. In some respects Irene was glad for the changes. She had discovered many questionable acquisitions and borderline-legal moves on the part of K-E, and she wanted no part of them. She had made the company reputable and had even made amends with a few businessmen who had been scalded by K-E.

  So many things had changed. The huge Kirkland “castle” had been sold to one of the many new businessmen who’d come to Denver, which now attracted the very wealthy from many parts of the country. Kirk lived in a suite at the Denver Inn, still working at K-E, but not with the enthusiasm he once held.