Rivals

by Janet Dailey

  The painting lost much of its one-dimensional quality, the smoky blue haze of its background now projecting the tall, redheaded man in western clothes from the canvas. And that dark glow Charlie mentioned was in his eyes, those eyes that seemed to look directly at her.

  “Although uneducated, Kell Morgan was an innately intelligent man—and a keen observer, too,” Ben Canon inserted, again taking charge. “When he returned to Texas, he started noticing the changes in the making. The era of the open range was drawing to a close. Every year more and more fences were going up. And the long drives north to the railheads took valuable weight off cattle. Four years in a row, he made the long, arduous trek north with somebody else’s longhorns. And each time, he stopped to look at his valley—and stayed longer on every trip.

  “Now you have to remember that all this land belonged to the Creek Nation. And I use that term nation advisedly. The Creek land was a separate entity with its own boundaries, governed by its own laws. Back in the eighteen thirties, the federal government, or more precisely, President Andrew Jackson, decided with typical arrogance that it would be in the best interest of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Creeks, the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, and the Seminoles—to give up their lands in the South that had been their home long before the first white man set foot on this continent, and move west to escape the corrupting influence of the whites. Through a series of nefarious treaties, they succeeded in removing them to this area.

  “Now, according to Creek law and tradition, no individual held title to any given parcel of land. It was all owned in common. Which meant it was impossible for Kell Morgan to buy his valley outright. But during his trips here and his sojourns in the neighboring Creek village of Tallahassee, which the cowboys on the trail dubbed Tulsi Town, he became acquainted with a politically influential mixed-blood Creek named George Perryman. Through him, Kell Morgan succeeded in leasing his valley. With the money he’d put aside from his wages, he managed to buy one hundred head of scrub cattle, drove them north to his valley, wintered them on the rich grass, and made the short drive to market in the spring.” He paused, a certain slyness entering his grinning smile. “That may not sound like much of a start to you unless you consider that he bought them at a price of seventy-five cents a head and sold them for over fifteen dollars a head. With his profits, he leased more land, bought more cattle, and repeated the process with the same results.

  “By eighteen eighty-two, Kell Morgan was justly considered a cattle baron. Three years earlier, the U.S. Postal Service had opened its Tulsa Station, subtly changing the town’s name once again. And by eighteen eighty-two, the Frisco Railroad had extended its line into Tulsa. No longer did Kell Morgan have to drive his cattle to the railhead; it had come to him.”

  Without a break in his narrative, the balding attorney turned and scanned the rows of books on the two shelves directly in front of him. “During all this time, he hadn’t forgotten his little brother, Christopher, back in Texas. By then, Christopher wasn’t little any more. He was a strapping lad of sixteen. With his newly acquired wealth, Kell sent him off to college in the East, determined that Christopher would have the education circumstances had denied him.” He extracted a wide volume from the shelf and flipped it open as he swung back toward Flame. “When Christopher finished college with a degree in engineering, he returned here to Morgan’s Walk. In that interim period, Kell had been adopted by the Creeks. Now with full rights to the valley—as full as any Creek had—he had Christopher design and build this house. Prior to that, the only structures had been a dog-trot cabin and a log bunkhouse for his cowhands.” Pausing beside Flame’s chair, he handed her the leather-bound volume, an old photo album. “Hattie thought you might like to see some pictures of your ancestors. Here’s one of your great-grandfather, Christopher Morgan.”

  His finger tapped the thick black paper directly above an old sepia print pasted on the page. A young man sat in a stiff pose, one large hand resting on his knee and the other holding a dark, wide-brimmed hat. He wore a dark suit and vest, the jacket opened to reveal the looping gleam of a watchfob and the white of a starched shirt collar tight around his throat. Although unsmiling, the expression on his smooth-shaven face conveyed an eagerness and a love of life. It wasn’t closed and hard like the man in the portrait, although the strong, angular lines of their features were very similar. Their hair color was different, of course. In the brown-tinted photograph, Christopher Morgan’s appeared to be a light shade of brown with even lighter streaks running through it.

  “You can tell they were brothers,” Flame remarked idly as she turned the page, curious to see more of the old photographs.

  “Miss Hattie said back then they were as close as two brothers could be,” Charlie Rainwater declared with a faintly envious shake of his head. “They weren’t a lot alike, though. About as different as daylight and dark, I hear. But just like daylight and dark go together to make a whole day, that’s the way it was with them.”

  “In your great-grandfather’s case, it was probably hero worship for his older brother,” Ben Canon added. “And Kell Morgan probably saw in his younger brother the educated man he wished he could be. I understand there was a good deal of mutual sharing of knowledge—Christopher teaching Kell about history and philosophy, and Kell giving him lessons in range lore.”

  The next pages in the album contained photographs of the house under construction, some posed and some not. Flame was able to pick out Christopher Morgan in two of the pictures. Then she found a third photograph of the brothers. Side by side, the differences in their personalities were obvious—Kell Morgan looking impatient and uncomfortable, and Christopher, happy and smiling.

  “I don’t understand.” Flame turned her frown of confusion to the attorney. “If they were so close, why did Christopher Morgan leave and never come back?”

  “I’m coming to that,” he assured her.

  Impatiently she flipped to the next page, irritated by this air of mystery and dark secrets. She wished he’d get to the point of all this and stop dragging it out. Then her glance fell on the lone photograph on the facing page of black paper.

  It was a picture of a young woman in period dress. Dainty and refined were the two adjectives that immediately sprang into Flame’s mind. She looked as fragile as a china teacup, and Flame could easily imagine the elegant curl of her little finger when she sipped from one. Her dark hair was swept up at the sides, ringlets peeking from beneath the small brim of her high-crowned hat trimmed with ostrich feathers and shiny ribbons. Her heart-shaped face appeared ivory smooth and pale, needing no artifice of makeup to enhance its doll prettiness.

  “This woman, who is she?” Flame glanced expectantly at the attorney.

  He answered without looking at the photograph. “Ann Compton Morgan, Kell Morgan’s wife. You see, after the house was finished and all the furnishings arrived, Kell decided it was time he took a wife. Naturally, not just any woman would do. He had a shopping list of requirements his future bride needed to fulfill. First of all, he wanted a woman with refinement and breeding, someone with culture and education, possessing style and grace—preferably pretty, but attractive would do. But, above all, she had to be the daughter of a family active in either politics, banking, or railroads. In short, his wife had to be a lady and a valuable liaison.” Observing the disapproving arch of her eyebrow, Ben Canon smiled. “As crude and chauvinistic as that might sound to you, you must remember that Kell Morgan was a pragmatic man. Christopher was the idealist.”

  “Obviously,” she murmured.

  “In the fall of ’eighty-nine, after the first great land run opened the so-called Unassigned Territory to homesteaders the previous spring, giving birth to the towns of Guthrie and Oklahoma City, Kell Morgan went to Kansas City to find his bride.”

  “And his list went right out the window when he met Ann Compton,” Charlie Rainwater declared, punctuating it with a faint chortle of amusement as he pushed out of his chair and walked over to th
e tray to pour himself some coffee. “Fell for her like he’d been shot out of the sky, he did,” he said, winking at Flame.

  “Is that true?” Flame turned to the attorney for confirmation, not so much doubting Charlie’s word as being surprised by it. Kell Morgan seemed the type who would make a loveless marriage of convenience.

  “Indeed, he fell hopelessly in love with her. And from the standpoint that her father was a socially prominent physician in the community, but without any important business connections in his family, she failed his major requirement in a wife. The fact that he married her anyway after a month-long whirlwind courtship merely proves that, like most men, Kell Morgan had his weaknesses.”

  He walked back to the bookshelves and removed a slim volume, bound in rose-colored cloth, its edges threadbare and worn. “In every other respect, however, she was exactly what he’d wanted in a wife—an educated woman, well versed in arts and literature, trained in the social graces, and extraordinarily pleasing to the eye. When you read the diaries she kept, you’ll see that Kell Morgan swept her off her feet. Although what girl wouldn’t be if she was ardently pursued by a handsome and rich cattle baron with a grand and stately mansion on the prairie waiting for the warmth of a woman to transform it into a home. There are frequent passages in her diary that deal with the romantic ideas she had about life on the frontier. She expected it to be an exciting adventure. And it would seem that Kell Morgan had made little effort to dispell those notions. He was too intent on winning her affections—and her hand in marriage.”

  When he paused to draw in a deep breath, Flame had the feeling he was doing it purely for effect. “Later, much later, he blamed himself for her disenchantment. Their first few months of married life here at Morgan’s Walk were deliriously happy ones—according to her diary. Then, I suppose, the newness of her surroundings wore off. Nothing had prepared her for the tedium and isolation of ranch life—or the long hours, sometimes days at a time, she spent alone while her husband was out on the range. Growing up in the city, she was used to a constant round of teas, socials, cotillions, or friends stopping by to call. Here, she had no friends; visitors were few and far between; and her nearest neighbor was half a day’s buggy ride away. She had nothing in common with the sun-browned women who lived around her. Most of them had never seen a parasol before she came and knew nothing about the classics or chamber music. Naturally, Tulsa was the closest town of any size, but the activities it offered—other than an occasional church social on a Sunday afternoon or parties at private homes—were geared more for the cattlemen in the area, eager to blow off steam on a Saturday, drink, gamble, and cavort with the town’s soiled doves.”

  Flame absently smoothed her hand over the diary’s cloth cover. She, oddly, was reluctant to open the book and read the young woman’s innermost thoughts. Somehow it seemed an invasion.

  “From everything you’ve told me about her, I have the impression that she had a great deal more in common with Christopher than she did her husband.” As she voiced her thoughts, it suddenly occurred to her. “Is that what happened? Is she the reason he left and never came back?” Then she frowned, even more confused than before. “What does all this have to do with the Stuarts?”

  A smile of amused tolerance rounded the attorney’s plump cheeks. “You’re getting ahead of me again, Flame.”

  “It strikes me that Annie Morgan would never have been happy here.” Charlie Rainwater crossed to the fireplace and stood with one leg cocked and a hand propped on the smooth marble face as he gazed up at the portrait. “’Course, he always believed that she would have come to love it if she hadn’t gotten with child that first year they were married.”

  “Yes, the confinement of her pregnancy coupled with the loneliness and boredom she already felt merely added to her unhappiness,” Ben Canon agreed. “Not even the joy of giving birth to a healthy baby the following year made up for it. That boy, by the way, was Hattie’s father, Jonathan Robert Morgan,” he added in an aside, then continued. “Naturally little Johnny had his own way of keeping Ann close to home, even though she was able to find a wet nurse for him. Kell did his best to keep her happy. All these books, the ebony piano in the parlor, a buggy of her own, and a matched team of high-stepping grays to pull it—he gave her everything but the one thing that might have helped: his company. As she frequently states in her diary, a son is no substitute for a husband. And by the early fall of eighteen ninety-three, you get a very real sense of her loneliness, dissatisfaction, and…desperation, I suppose.” He gestured briefly at the closed diary Flame held. “Hattie has marked the page where the story begins.”

  Flame hesitated, then glanced at the slim volume in her hands, belatedly noticing the thin, age-yellowed tassel draped over the back cover. A chainstitch of thin threads connected it to a hand-tatted bookmark inserted between the pages near the back of the diary. She resisted the attorney’s subtle urging to read the woman’s private journal, then realized this was part of the proof Hattie had promised.

  Reluctantly she slid her fingers along the bookmark and opened the diary to the prescribed page. For a moment she stared at the small, neat handwriting, each letter precisely and perfectly formed. Then she began to read.

  21

  August 29, 1893

  I am going! Kell has finally consented to let me accompany him when he takes the herd of horses to Guthrie to sell to the homesteaders who have gathered there to make the Run into the Cherokee Strip. He didn’t say, but I know it was Chris who persuaded him to change his mind. He was so adamant that I must remain at Morgan’s Walk the last time we argued, insisting that such events attracted the worst as well as the best, that I despaired of him ever permitting me to go. How fortunate I am to have Chris for a brother-in-law. If he had not championed my cause, I am quite certain I would have gone mad if I had been forced to stay in this house all alone for two weeks.

  My darling Johnny will have to remain here with Sarah. I shall miss him dreadfully, but the journey overland would be too much for a three-year-old. It’s terrible to be pulled like this, wanting so much to go, yet hating so much to leave my son behind. But it will only be for two weeks.

  It should be an experience quite beyond compare. Papa writes that his patients have talked of little else but the opening of the Cherokee Strip to settlers. I have heard that people are pouring in from all parts of the country to take part in the Run. Some are estimating that there may be as many as one hundred thousand people on the starting line when the gun goes off. One hundred thousand! And here I am, hungry for the sight of one.

  September 9, 1893

  At long last, we have arrived in Guthrie. There were times when I despaired we would ever make it. The heat was—and is—unbearable. It has not rained all summer and the dust is so thick it coats everything. All my traveling clothes are covered with it. I know I resembled a walking powder puff when I arrived at the hotel. Each step I took, dust billowed about me. I fear the rigors of outdoor life shall never be for me. I have been bounced and jarred, jolted and rattled until I marvel that all my bones are still connected. Chris knows how I suffered on that journey, but I dared not say a word to Kell. He would have sent me back to Morgan’s Walk on the spot and I would have missed all this excitement. (Although I assure you I shall be making the return by train.)

  Excitement there is in great abundance, too. The street outside our hotel window is crowded with people in every kind and type of conveyance imaginable. Many of the wagons have clever little sayings written on their canvas covers. We passed one that read:

  “I won’t be a sooner, but I’ll get thar as soon as the soonest.”

  And another said:

  In God we trusted.

  In Texas we busted.

  But let ’er rip

  We’ll make ’er in the Strip.

  The determination—the fervor that is on the faces of these people—is something to see. Kell calls it land fever. It is definitely contagious, for I feel the same restlessness of
spirit. Kell has forbade me to leave the room unless he or Chris accompanies me. He says there are too many desperados, gamblers, and swindlers in town, come to fleece these poor, unsuspecting homesteaders of their precious savings, and he fears for my safety should I venture out alone. Yet when I look out the window of our hotel room, I see whole families jammed in their wagons, young men on blooded horses, boys on ponies, old men on ambling gennets, and women—yes, women, here to make the Run all alone! The thought staggers me. Yet the ones I’ve seen seem to be a decent sort—not at all the type one might expect to find.

  As a matter of fact, a woman stopped us just as we were about to enter the hotel. She looked to be in her late twenties and, despite the layers of dust that clung to her, I could tell she was stylishly dressed….

  “Please, will you buy my hat?” The woman fumbled momentarily with the lid to the hatbox she carried, then lifted it and produced the hat from inside for Ann’s inspection. “It came all the way from Chicago and I’ve only worn it twice. You can see it’s just like new.”

  At first Ann drew back from the proffered hat and the strange woman accosting her on the sidewalk. Not that she could possibly be in any danger, not when she was flanked by two tall, strong men, with Kell on one side of her and Chris on the other. Then she saw the hat—red felt trimmed in red velvet and adorned with feathers and gray satin ribbon. It was the perfect thing to wear with her pearl-gray dress.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ann declared, then looked again at the woman, conscious all the while of the firm pressure of Kell’s hand at her elbow and his rigid stance of disapproval, but she wouldn’t be hurried inside. “Why on earth would you want to sell it?”

  “I…” The woman pushed the receding line of her chin a little higher, asserting her pride. “…I need another five dollars to pay the filing fee when I make my claim.”