The moment of emotion was safely past for me.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I wonder if there’s something you can tell me.” I gestured toward my door. “Do you know why anyone would hang an old funeral wreath on my doorknob? There was one there when I came upstairs last night.”
“So that’s where it came from. You must have dropped it out your window. I found it when I walked around the house early this morning.”
“Why would it be left there?”
“I can’t even guess.”
“There was a card.” I’d kept it in my pocket, and I took it out to show him.
He read the words gravely and handed it back. “I don’t like this. It seems a cruel and stupid thing to do.”
“Where could a wreath like that come from?”
“There’s an old cemetery out behind the ranch, where a few Morgans and those who worked with them are buried. It could have come from there.”
“Whoever wrote that card knew that my father had been murdered. Grandmother Persis told me this morning about what happened.”
Jon looked away uncomfortably.
“You knew too, didn’t you?”
“I knew about his death, of course. I was living here at the ranch with my mother at the time. There was a lot of excitement, and it was in all the papers.”
“What do you know?”
He seemed to hesitate. “Why—that somebody broke into the house, stole some valuable jewelry, shot Richard Morgan, and got away.”
“The official story.”
He was silent, and I went on.
“That’s what Gail Cullen calls it. Did you know she used to live around here?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“She sounded as though something else might have happened that was never in the papers. I thought you might know what it was. And about Noah Armand’s disappearance.”
“Sorry,” he said curtly. “I’ve got to get back to work now. See you later.” He went quickly down the stairs to escape my questioning. Like the others, he knew more than he was telling, but since he was the one I was beginning to trust, I hated to see him turn away from me, holding onto those secrets.
I went into my room to stand before a window, where I could watch him heading toward the barn, moving with that easy lope which was characteristic, never looking back. It was good just to watch him.
I sighed and turned from the window. Everything that had happened so long ago was somehow connected to what was happening now. More and more I was convinced of this. It was connected with my presence here. Perhaps I was the catalyst who was causing old horrors, old fears, to boil toward the surface. What would happen when the truth exploded into my mind, into my life? What would happen to Persis Morgan?
What would happen to me?
XI
The afternoon hours stretched idly ahead, and I was restless. To be idle meant letting in my fears, letting in the conviction that something stronger than malice was operating against me. I had begun to jump nervously at unexpected sounds, and I dreaded nightfall and my room, where a door could creak open after dark.
This wouldn’t do. What I needed was a plan of action, something I could take to my grandmother. Something I could announce to the world, to Mark Ingram, to whoever else threatened her. Hillary would back me, I knew, and so would Jon Maddocks if he approved. About Caleb I was not so sure. At the moment, however, there seemed to be no way in which I could take charge. Persis hadn’t put that right into my hands as yet, and there was no reason why she should in the face of the unwillingness I’d shown her.
In any case was I ready to take on any sort of authority? My thoughts, my feelings seemed to be in a state of flux. Even my feeling for Hillary was undergoing a change. Not a sea change—a mountain change. Ever since that moment when I’d looked out my window toward Old Desolate, I had been changing. I didn’t seem able to help it—or want to stop what was happening inside me.
Now, as I looked out that same window, my attention was caught by the old cemetery Jon had mentioned. I could see where it spread up the hillside above a stand of pine trees. The fenced-in Morgan property ended well before the burying ground, but there was a gate out there, and I knew that much of the land along the mountain and up the valley also belonged to Persis Morgan. Perhaps something could be learned from old graves. Perhaps a walk would help me to sort out my own thoughts and emotions, lead me into the plan I must make.
I picked up Red’s leash and went outside. When I neared the barn, the setter came running and I clipped it on his collar, not wanting him to go free once we were outside the fence. I wasn’t sure that Red would know what to do with such freedom.
We skirted the barn, the old bunkhouse, and the cabin Jon occupied. I saw that a weed-grown road started beyond the gate, and we went through to follow it. Here the rocky land began to climb in an easy slope, and when we reached the pine grove we paused in its shade.
The sky wasn’t as blue as it had been this morning, and already puffs of white drifted across the tops of the mountains. We climbed again, out in the sun. The cemetery was farther than it had looked from my window in the clear air, but the road was marked in the earth, and wide enough to take a burial party, though obviously long unused. The cemetery itself had been left unfenced, its boundaries obvious where the stones ended, though a sustaining wall above the graves kept the mountain from sliding down upon them.
How very peaceful, how utterly lonely it seemed. Even Red stopped prancing about at the end of his leash, affected by the quiet. Small blue wild flowers grew among the stones, though weeds had been kept down to some extent, so that nature hadn’t taken over entirely. Most of the graves were undecorated, but on several mounds lay incongruous, crumbling wreaths.
As I looked about, I caught movement as chipmunks scampered among the headstones, and Red came to life.
“Be quiet,” said a voice nearby, slightly hoarse, familiar. “Don’t frighten the little critters away.”
I had felt so alone a moment before that I jumped and looked around. Perched on a rock in a shadow of the wall where I hadn’t noticed her sat the woman from the hotel, Belle Durant. Somehow I couldn’t have been more astonished than to find her here watching the chipmunks. She had shed her fancy dress of last evening, and once again wore tight jeans and a green pullover. As I stared, she raised one hand, holding up a bunch of pinkish wild flowers, nested in greens that had the look of ferns.
“Tansy asters,” she informed me. “They can smell strong, but they’re pretty outdoors.”
In the open, away from the Timberline atmosphere, Belle looked and sounded more real, but she worked for Mark Ingram and I didn’t trust her. I sat on a sun-warmed rock nearby and unclipped Red’s leash. He wouldn’t go very far with me right here.
“Have you always lived in these mountains?” I asked.
She shrugged, and her red hair caught highlights from the sun. “Now and again. Tom Durant, my husband—he died ten years ago—was part Morgan. Of course old Mrs. Morgan knew that, and she let me bury him here. I used to work for her, you know.”
“Yes, someone told me. You seem to be missed. Why did you leave?”
For a moment she seemed uncomfortable. Then she met my question with a look that dared me to criticize.
“Mark Ingram turned up. I went to work with him.” Her expression changed, as though she remembered something that was still bittersweet. “I don’t mind telling you. Everybody knows. I knew him a long time ago, when I was young. Before Tom. You don’t forget things like that—things that happen when you’re young. So when he needed me at the hotel, I went back to him.”
“No more loyalty to Persis Morgan?”
She bristled. “I have to take care of myself. Mark will be here when your grandmother is long gone.”
“Maybe,” I said, and she was silent.
I stirred myself to look about me. “Jon Maddocks says there are Morgans buried in this place, so I thought I’d come up to have a look.”
“Sure. Do you want me to introduce you?”
She got lightly to her feet, and Red made a dash for the chipmunks. The little creatures vanished among the stones far more quickly than he could move. Belle picked her way among the grave markers to a low one of mountain granite, where she placed her small bouquet. The stone flaunted a wreath that had seen better days, and I read upon it the name of Thomas Durant.
“Is that a custom?” I asked. “I mean to leave old funeral wreaths on the stones?”
She flashed me a smile that was wide and a little mocking. “That’s my idea. When I see there’s been a funeral in some place I can get to and wreaths are being thrown out, I collect a few and bring them here. Sort of dresses up the place, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wild flowers and grass do pretty well.”
“But they grow here. When I bring something special in from outside, it shows them”—she waved a hand—“that they’re not forgotten, that I made a special effort.”
What a strangely unexpected person she was.
“Hardly anyone gets buried here anymore,” she went on. “Tom’s grave is pretty new, compared with most. There are a lot of these old burying grounds around in the mountains, where they sprang up near the mining camps. Sometimes they outlive the towns.”
I walked among the stones, finding many of the markings nearly erased by time and mountain winters.
“Diphtheria took a lot of them in the old days, I guess,” Belle said. “Though in the beginning it was mostly accidents in the mines that killed the men. Women were scarce, though a few are buried here, and of course there were the babies that never grew up. Look here at this one.”
It was a small grave, a small stone, simply inscribed. The words read, Our Darling, and no name was given. So much pain, so long forgotten.
“I don’t suppose Sissy and Malcolm Tremayne were brought here?” I asked.
“Lord, no! They’d have to be taken someplace grand. Persis Morgan wouldn’t have left them here. But while they were alive they didn’t feel that way. Tyler Morgan’s grave is right here where they buried him. I guess you know he was Malcolm’s partner in the Old Desolate, and it was his son who married Persis. Of course she wouldn’t let her Johnny be buried here either. He was taken down to Denver. It always seemed kind of strange that she buried their son, Richard, here. Your father.”
I looked sharply at the woman beside me. “My mother always said he was buried in Denver, near where we used to live.”
“Maybe she didn’t want you to know, what with all the trouble connected with that time. I guess Mrs. Morgan persuaded your mother to let her bury him here.”
In spite of the sun I felt suddenly chilled in this unsheltered place. Wind blew down the valley between the peaks, and I turned up my jacket collar.
“Can you show me which grave is his?”
She pointed. “Over there in the corner—the one that’s been taken care of so carefully. She sends somebody over every week with flowers. And she has Jon keep the plot clear. Of course Jon has graves of his own here to look after.”
As she threaded her way among the stones, I followed, with Red coming along beside me. My father’s grave was near one of the retaining walls at the top of the little cemetery, where the mountain rose above, dwarfing it still more. Again the stone was of granite, and I bent over the inscribed lettering. It was simple enough. Just my father’s name, the date of his birth, and the date of his death—the year of my eighth birthday. I touched the stone and it seemed icy in this shady spot by the wall—as though it somehow rejected me.
That was being whimsical, and I turned to walk among the other graves. So many old dates and forgotten names. No one cared anymore that some distant cousin who bore the Morgan name had been born in Wales. Perhaps no one even remembered how he had died or whom he had loved and fathered. It didn’t matter anymore. None of it mattered.
“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Belle said beside me. “These over here are Jon Maddocks’ family. His father and mother. And his wife.”
I looked down at the three graves. “I didn’t know he’d been married.”
“It didn’t last all that long. She was a wild little thing—like one of those chipmunks—and she didn’t last much longer. The baby is buried with her.”
Sorrow for the younger Jon rose in me, and for my father—for all of them. I wrenched my thoughts away from death. It was life I must deal with now.
“You seemed different yesterday at Timberline,” I said to Belle, drawn to her, however reluctantly.
“That’s what I’ve grown into,” she said, tipping her chin at me in slight defiance. “Mark’s world. When I come out here, maybe I’m trying to find me the way I used to be. I think I had stronger feelings about everything then than I do now. But you’d better not tell Mark—he’d laugh at me. He only believes in the present and in the kind of future he wants to make happen.”
“How do you feel about that? I mean about the future he plans for all this.”
Under my eyes she seemed to toughen and harden a little. “I’m on his side—make no mistake. I owe him a lot, and what he tells me I’ll do.”
This was what I expected of her, but I pushed a little more. “I wonder what he was like as a boy.”
“That’s not something he talks about, and he doesn’t enjoy questions.”
Nevertheless, I wanted answers. “How did you happen to meet him?”
“I don’t like questions much either,” she said, and turned away from me.
I didn’t want to let her go. She had shown me a softer side, and I wanted to know more about her—more about any of them over at the Timberline.
“I wonder why Mark Ingram bothers to fight an old woman like my grandmother. If he would just wait and let her alone, she might die quietly. Then perhaps everything would come his way. Why upset her now?”
“Mark’s not given to waiting,” Belle said. “He wants what he wants right away. And I can tell you he means to have it. He means to get things started up the valley soon. He needs time to clear the slopes and put up a lodge in Domino. And he’s not going to let Mrs. Morgan hold him off much longer.”
“But he wants more than that, doesn’t he? He wants to punish her in some way. Because a long time ago Noah Armand was his friend. What did my grandmother do to Noah Armand?”
The question didn’t seem to upset her. “I don’t know anything about that. I just know that Mark Ingram gets what he goes after. One way or another. And you’d better remember that. Sometimes it’s just as well to be afraid.”
She was entirely on his side, and her words carried a hint of threat. Just the same, an obstinacy that had its roots in anger was rising in me.
“I’m not going to let Mark Ingram scare me. It’s not going to be all that easy for him to win this time. I think perhaps I’ll stay and see this through.” Suddenly the plan I needed was burgeoning.
Belle gaped at me. “You’re crazy if you set yourself against Mark. He’ll squash you like he’d squash a bug.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “What if the land comes to me when she’s gone? I don’t care about her money or any of her other property, but if she wants to leave me that house in Domino and the Jasper house as well, I might stay right here and hold out against Mark Ingram.”
There! I was promising what Jon wanted. I was committing myself, and now I didn’t want to turn back.
She looked a little frightened. “I don’t think you’re very smart.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I stay and live in Morgan House if I choose?”
“You’re liable to find out why not,” she told me. “If you lock horns with Mark Ingram, you’re liable to find out.” She started away from me, and then stopped and looked back. “How is she? Mrs. Morgan, I mean.”
“Sometimes she seems fine. Sometimes not. Jon says that when you were there she wasn’t kept sedated so much of the time.”
“Is that what they’re doing to her—Caleb and tha
t nurse? What is that woman up to, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night she came sneaking up to the hotel real late.”
“I’ve wondered if she could be tied up with Mark Ingram in some way.”
If I expected to get a rise out of her, I was disappointed. She smiled at me, and it was a smile I didn’t trust—a smile that hid too much that I wanted to know.
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” she said.
“I’m going to get rid of Gail Cullen if I can.”
“Not a bad idea.”
Of course she would be pleased if I rid her of a younger rival. But her next words surprised me.
“Look, Miss Morgan, if you get in a jam anytime with your grandmother, let me know. Mark wouldn’t approve, but I could fill in in a pinch. Though not for long.”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that,” I said.
She waved a hand at me and went off down the hillside. I watched her go, more than a little puzzled. If it hadn’t been for Mark Ingram, I might have liked Belle Durant. There was a natural wisdom in her, and perhaps more generosity than she was always willing to show.
For a few moments longer I stood beside the grave where my father was buried, trying to evoke some memory of him. It ought to be possible, here of all places. But nothing came to me out of the past. Nevertheless, I was experiencing an oddly euphoric feeling because I had at last committed myself. I still had no power to back up my words. I didn’t even know if Persis Morgan wanted this. Yet I had taken a decisive step in my own mind. I had stopped running. I wasn’t hiding, I wasn’t leaning.
I wondered what Mark Ingram would do when he knew. This wasn’t going to be an easy road I had chosen, and it might even be dangerous.
Red had been roving among the stones in search of wildlife, and I called him to me and clipped on his leash. As we started down the hillside I kept him close to me, lest he be tempted to run off in all directions. When I came to an outcropping of rock that offered a sweep of all the valley and enclosing mountains, with Old Desolate commanding the view, I climbed upon it and stood for a moment searching for Belle Durant.
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