A few hours later Dallas watched his youngest brother as he lay sleeping, his shoulder swathed in bandages. Dr. Freeman had assured Dallas that Austin was in no danger. He’d be sore, weak, and cranky, but he would survive. Still, Dallas decided he’d feel a lot more confident with the doctor’s prognosis if Austin would awaken.
Dallas assumed Houston held the same concerns. Houston had convinced Amelia to sleep with Maggie while he sat on the opposite side of the bed, never taking his gaze off Austin.
When dawn’s feathery fingers eased into the room, Austin slowly opened his eyes. With a low groan, he grimaced. Dallas eased forward. “You in much pain?”
“That worthless bastard shot me in the shoulder,” Austin croaked. “How am I gonna play my violin?”
“You’ll find a way,” Dallas assured him.
“When … I’m strong enough … I say we run ’em off their land.” Austin’s eyes drifted closed.
“Dallas?”
Dallas met Houston’s troubled gaze.
“Dallas, you’ve got to do something to stop this feuding. Dr. Freeman is right. Next time, we might not be so lucky, and I don’t want my family caught in the middle.” Houston shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “I won’t have my family caught in the middle. If I have to choose—”
“You won’t have to choose. I’ve been pondering the situation, and I think I might have a solution to our problem. I’ll schedule a meeting with Angus McQueen and see if we can come to some sort of compromise.”
“Good.” Houston stood, planted his hands against the small of his back, and stretched backward. “I’m going to get a little sleep.” He started walking across the room.
“Houston?”
Houston stopped and turned.
Dallas weighed his words. “Do you think McQueen’s sister is as mean-spirited as he is?”
“What difference does it make?” Houston asked.
Dallas glanced at Austin’s pale face. “No difference. No difference at all.”
“By God, you have no right!” Angus bellowed.
Leaning back, Dallas planted his elbows on the wooden arms of his leather chair. He steepled his long fingers and pressed them against his taut lips. Narrowing his dark brown eyes, he glared at the spittle that had flown from McQueen’s mouth and plopped onto the edge of his mahogany desk. He could imagine it sliding along the front of his desk like a slug slipping out at night to coat the land in slime.
Slowly, he raised his eyes to his adversary’s. “I have every right to fence in my land,” he said calmly.
“But you fenced in the river!”
“It’s on my land. Any rancher of sound reputation would side with me. None would blame me for stringing up your sons from the nearest tree. We have an unwritten code that most cattlemen honor. Once a man has a valid claim to a river or a water hole, another cowman won’t come within twenty-five miles of it—with or without a fence. No one would have questioned my right to take the fence back farther, but I graciously left miles of land open to grazing.”
“To taunt us. I don’t need grassland, damn you! I need water!”
“You have creeks and rivers on your land.”
“I’ve got nothing but dry creek beds.”
Dallas shook his head in sympathy. “I can’t help that Nature chose to dry up your water supply and left mine flowing, but I don’t part with anything of mine freely.”
McQueen’s face turned a mottled shade of red. It occurred to Dallas that the man might have an apoplexy fit right here in his office. Then Dallas would never get what he wanted.
“Freely,” Angus muttered. “You won’t part with your water freely, but you will part with it for a price. Is that what this meeting is about? Is that why you fenced in the river? So you could get something for the water? Isn’t it enough that you stole my land?”
“I’ve owned that stretch of land since 1868.”
Angus snorted. “So you say.”
“The law backs my claim,” Dallas reminded him.
Angus released a harsh breath. “Then name your price for the water, and I’ll pay it. What do you want? Money? Cattle? More land?”
Dallas lowered his hands to his lap, the fingers of his right hand stroking the ivory handle of the gun strapped to his thigh. He should have insisted this meeting be held without weapons in tow.
“I have money. I have cattle. I have land. I want something that I don’t have. Something as precious as the cool water. Something as beautiful as the flowing river.” Giving his words a moment to echo inside McQueen’s head, he tightened his hand around the gun. “Something as pure as the sun-glistened water.”
Angus shook his head. “You’re talking in riddles. I don’t have anything that’s pure or precious or beautiful.”
“I’ve heard you have a daughter,” Dallas said, wishing he hadn’t needed to be quite so blunt.
The furrows that ran across McQueen’s brow deepened. “Yes, I have a daughter, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
Dallas was beginning to question the wisdom of holding his meeting with Angus, wondering if it might have been better to discuss the particulars of his compromise with Boyd. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but women are scarce. I need a w—”
“My God! You can’t be serious!” McQueen yelled, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
“I’m dead serious.”
Angus slumped in his chair. “You’ll give me access to your water if I give you access to my daughter?”
With a speed Dallas never would have expected of the rotund man, Angus lunged across the desk and grabbed Dallas’s shirt. Dallas brought the gun from his holster and jabbed it into the folds of Angus’s neck, but the man was apparently too angry to notice. Spittle spewed into Dallas’s face.
“I’ll see you dead first,” Angus growled.
“That won’t get you the water,” Dallas said in an even voice.
“I won’t give you my daughter as a whore!” “I don’t want her as a whore. I want her as my wife.”
Angus McQueen blinked. “You want to marry her?”
“Is there a reason that I shouldn’t?”
Angus dropped into the chair. “You want to marry Cordelia?”
Cordelia? He was going to pull his fence back for a woman named Cordelia? Where in the hell had McQueen come up with that name?
“You don’t even know her,” McQueen said.
Dallas leaned forward. “Look, McQueen, we’ve been arguing over that strip of land for three years now. The law says it’s mine and gives me the right to fence in and protect what’s mine. Your sons killed my cattle—”
“You can’t prove it—”
“Two nights ago, they damn near killed my brother. I went to war when I was fourteen. I’ve fought Yankees, Indians, renegades, outlaws, and now I’m fighting my neighbors.” Dallas sank into his chair. “I’m tired of fighting. Angus, I need a son to whom I can pass my legacy. I need a wife to give me a legitimate heir. The pickin’s around here are slim—”
Angus came out of the chair and pounded a fist on the desk. “The pickin’s? If I were ten years younger I’d pound you into the dirt for thinking so lowly of my daughter.”
“I think very highly of her because I respect her father. We’re both working hard to carve an empire from desolate land, and we’re both on the verge of destroying all we’ve attained. Barbed wire is part of the future. I put it up, you tear it down. I’m going to keep putting it up.” He took a deep breath, ready to play his final hand. “But tomorrow at dawn, I’m giving my men orders to shoot to kill anyone who touches my wire or trespasses on my land.”
“You are a son of a bitch,” Angus snarled.
“Maybe, but I’ve poured my heart and soul into this ranch. I’m not going to let you destroy it. Marrying your daughter will give us a common bond.”
“You don’t even know her,” Angus repeated, bowing his head. “She’s—”
Dallas had his first sense of foreboding. “She�
�s what?”
“Frail, delicate, like her mother.” He lifted his gaze. “I honest to God don’t know if she could survive being married to you.”
“I’d never hurt her. I give you my word on that.”
Angus walked to the window. Beyond the paned glass, the land stretched into eternity. “You’ll pull your fence back?”
“The morning after we’re married.”
Angus nodded slowly. “Deed the land that runs for twenty-five miles along both sides of the river to me, and I’ll have her on your doorstep tomorrow afternoon.”
Damn! Dallas wondered if Angus had read the desperation in his voice or in his eyes. Either way, Dallas had lost his edge, and staring at the cocky tilt of his neighbor’s chin and the gleam in his eyes, he knew that Angus understood he had the upper hand. “When she gives my a son, I’ll deed the land over to you.”
Angus pointed a shaking finger at him. “All the land that I thought I owned when I came here.”
“Every acre.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Houston roared.
Fighting not to squirm, Dallas stared into the writhing flames burning low in the hearth. Houston of all people should understand his brother’s desire to have a wife. Hell, he’d taken Dallas’s wife from him. Houston could at least support Dallas in his quest to find a replacement.
“Maybe I am, but the town we’re building hasn’t done a whole hell of a lot to get women out here. Eligible women, anyway.”
“You don’t even know her!”
Dallas spun around and met his brother’s gaze. “I didn’t know Amelia either when I married her.”
“You knew her a lot better than you know Angus’s daughter. At least you wrote letters to each other. What in the hell do you know about this woman?”
“She’s twenty-six … and delicate.”
“From what I hear, I don’t imagine she’s much to look at either.”
Dallas snapped his head around to stare at Austin. He sat in a chair rubbing his shoulder, his face still masked with pain.
“What have you heard?” Dallas asked.
“Cameron McQueen told me she doesn’t have a nose.”
“What do you mean she doesn’t have a nose?”
Austin lifted his uninjured shoulder. “He said Indians cut it off. Nearly broke her heart so her pa fashioned her one out of wax. He took the wire off some spectacles and hooked it to the wax so she has a nose to wear … like someone might wear spectacles.”
Dallas’s stomach roiled over. Why hadn’t Angus revealed that little flaw in his daughter? Because he hadn’t wanted to lose the chance to obtain the water and the land. He imagined the McQueen men were having a good laugh right about now.
“Call it off,” Houston said.
“No. I gave my word, and by God, I’m gonna keep my word.”
“At least go meet her—”
Dallas slashed his hand through the air. “It makes no difference to me. I want a son, goddammit! She doesn’t need a nose to give me a son.”
Houston picked his hat off a nearby table and settled it low over his brow. “You know, until this moment, I always felt guilty for taking Amelia from you. Now, I’m damn glad that I did. She was a gift you never would have learned to appreciate.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Dallas asked.
“It means for all your empire building, big brother, you’ll never be a wealthy man.”
CHAPTER
TWO
It was a woman’s lot in life to live within the shadows cast by men.
Cordelia McQueen knew that unfortunate truth and understood its ramifications only too well.
With her hands folded primly within her lap, she gazed out the window toward the horizon where the sun boldly retreated. She had never blamed her mother for wanting to run toward the majestic blues and lavenders that unfurled across the sky. Her mother had called it an adventure, but even at the age of twelve, Cordelia had recognized it for what it was: an escape.
Her mother packed one carpetbag and told Cordelia and Cameron to bundle up their most precious possessions. She explained that Boyd and Duncan were too old to go on the journey, Cordelia and Cameron too young to stay behind.
They were walking down the hallway when her father trudged up the stairs, his face flushed with fury.
Cordelia pulled Cameron into a far corner, hiding his face within the crook of her shoulder while her father ranted and raved that Joe Armstrong wouldn’t be taking his wife—his property—anywhere.
Horror swept over her mother’s face. She turned for the stairs, and her father jerked her back. “That’s right! I know! I know everything!” He backhanded her across the face and sent her tumbling down the stairs.
Her mother’s scream echoed clearly through Cordelia’s mind as though she had heard it this afternoon. For ten long years she had cared for the woman who had once cared for her. The accidental fall—as her father referred to it—had left her mother an invalid, with woeful eyes housed within an immobile body, her thoughts trapped by a mouth that could no longer speak. Only when her mother’s eyes had welled with tears, did Cordelia know for certain that her mother lived within the withering shell that held her prisoner.
Her mother had simply exchanged one prison for another, and now it seemed as though Cordelia would do the same.
“Goddammit, Pa! There are other ways to get the water we need,” Cameron said. Six years younger than she was, Cameron had always been her champion. Often his blond hair and pale blue eyes reminded her of the foreman who had disappeared the day her mother was injured. “You don’t have to give Cordelia to that man!”
That man. Cordelia had only seen Dallas Leigh once, and then only from a distance. He was taller than she was, broader than she was, and when he’d announced that the land he’d roped off was to be used for a town, the wind had been gracious enough to carry his deep voice to everyone who had gathered around him. She didn’t think he was a man who would have accepted less.
Now he was demanding that she become his wife. The thought terrified her.
“This matter isn’t open to discussion, Cameron,” Boyd said. A tall dark sentinel, he stood behind his father’s chair. Since they had moved to Texas from Kansas following her mother’s death, her father’s health had diminished considerably. Within the family, Boyd blatantly wielded the power. Only his love and respect for his father allowed him to let outsiders think his father remained in charge.
“When I want your opinion on a matter, Cameron, I’ll ask for it,” her father said.
“I’m only saying—”
“I know what you’re saying, and I’m not interested in hearing it. I’ve already given him my word.”
“Well now, you won’t be breaking your word if he happens to die tonight, and we can certainly arrange that,” Duncan said.
Cordelia kept her gaze focused on the pink hues sweeping across the horizon. She had no desire to see the depth of their hatred for this one man. She had seen hatred that deep once before: when her father had confronted her mother. She knew of no way to stop it. As a child, she’d hidden from it in a shadowed corner.
As a woman she had a strong desire to hide again, in her room, deep within one of her books. She feared Duncan was not in a mood to jest. As her father continued to hold his silence, she became concerned that he thought murder might have some merit.
“Killing him won’t get us the water!” her father finally bellowed. “That’s what this is all about. The water!”
“Leigh will treat her no better than a whore!” Duncan roared.
Flinching, Cordelia clenched her hands in her lap. She hated the anger and rage, hated the way it distorted faces that she loved—for she did love her brothers—into faces that she feared.
“Cordelia, go to your room. Your brothers and I obviously have a few details to work out,” her father barked.
She rose to her feet, her hands aching as her fingers tightened around them. She had considered weeping. She had con
sidered dropping to her knees and begging, but she had learned long ago that when her father and Boyd set upon a path, nothing would deter them. She salvaged what little pride remained, angled her chin, and met her father’s glare. “Father, I’m not opposed to this marriage.”
Cameron looked as though she’d just pulled a gun on him. “You can’t be serious.”
She took a tentative step forward. “Try and understand. Father’s dream is to raise cattle, and you have always been part of it. I’ve only ever been able to watch from the window. Now, I have an opportunity to be part of his dream. I am the means by which he can gain the water he needs.”
“You’ve no idea what goes on between a man and woman, Cordelia,” Cameron said, his voice low. He abhorred violence as much as she did, and she knew he followed Boyd’s orders so his brothers would never question his manhood.
She looked at her father, remembering when she had been six and a nightmare had sent her scurrying to her parents’ room. Her mother had been weeping. Her father had sounded like a hog grunting as slop was poured into the trough. He had called her mother a damn cold bitch, and although Cordelia had not known what the words had meant at the time, the force with which her father had spat them had seared them within her mind. “I do know, Cameron,” she said quietly.
“Then you should understand why Duncan and I are opposed to this. Dallas Leigh hates us all, and he’ll show you no mercy.”
“Surely, he’s not that unkind.”
“Then why did his first wife leave him within a week of their marriage?” Duncan asked.
He stood like a pillar of strength, watching her as though he truly expected her to know that answer. Dark hair, dark eyes, it was only his usually sedate temperament that distinguished him from Boyd.
“I want to do this,” she lied, for Cameron’s benefit and peace of mind if for no one else’s.
Her father slapped his hand down on the table. “Then, by God, it will be done.”
For as long as she could remember, Cordelia had wanted to be a man, to enjoy the freedoms that men took for granted. She pulled the curtain away from the small window of her traveling coach and gazed at the barren, flat land. How anyone could deem this desolate place a paradise was beyond her. Why men would fight to own it was incomprehensible to her.
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