“Just the usual.” Samantha handed him the mail, studying his leathery face for signs of illness. She saw none.
“You should have invited him here for Grizzly’s fried steak. It would have been great to see him.”
“It didn’t occur to me,” Samantha said. “Did you have to pull many?”
His chagrined expression said, Well, it should have, before he answered. She was referring to the risky procedure of extracting a calf from the birth canal of its struggling mother, another life-threatening problem that Samantha’s small hands had often corrected. “Only a few, thank goodness, since you weren’t here,” Neal said. “We’ve had a strong, healthy crop so far. How’s your mother?” He placed the stack of correspondence on his desk while he put on his reading glasses. Samantha had arranged it so that Dr. Tolman’s letter was the last in the group. His reaction to the sender would tell her if there was anything to worry about. She would not get a straight answer if she asked him how he was feeling. Fine, he would say even if he was dying.
“Probably lonely by now, I expect,” she said. “She’d gotten used to having me around.”
Neal sniffed. “She doesn’t have to be lonely, you know. Her choice. Mind goosing up the fire a bit while I look through these? There’s still a chill in the air.”
Samantha took the stoker to the logs while watching her father stack the newspapers and periodicals in one pile and set the bills in another for her attention. He let out a grunt of surprise when he came to the letter from his Civil War comrade and said, “Well, what do you know? Here’s one from my old buddy from the First Texas Infantry Regiment. I hope he’s not writing to tell me he’s dying. Oh, and what is this… ?”
Neal adjusted his spectacles and brought the letter closer to his eyes. It could have been her imagination, but Samantha thought he paled slightly beneath the deep, burned color of his skin.
“I see you have a letter there from a doctor marked ‘Confidential.’ Is there something you’re not telling me, Daddy?”
He glanced at her, startled. “Like what?”
“That you’re sick.”
“Oh, good God, no!” Neal’s guffaw made light of her concern. “If I were sick, I’d go to our old Doc Madigan in town. Nothing’s wrong with me. Never felt better. No, the letter is from a… a veterinarian. They’re called Doctor now, you know. He must be writing in reply to a letter I wrote him some time ago about his article on cattle ticks. He’s developed a compound that wards off the buggers. I’m surprised he answered.”
“I don’t recall the article.”
“That’s because you probably didn’t read it.”
His terse tone told Samantha that Neal Gordon had said the last on the matter of the letter. She was not to push further, a rare stance for him to take with her. Now she was worried. She reviewed every article pertaining to the cattle business that he read and then they discussed it. In none of their periodicals had she read of a compound for treating cattle ticks developed by Dr. Donald Tolman. Further, if the contents of the doctor’s letter were as her father claimed, why did he not read it at once and share its information with her? But if he had written away for information about a health issue, why to a doctor in a small river town in the Oklahoma Territory? Marietta was located a few miles inland from the Red River, not exactly the likely home of a physician her father would consult for medical counsel.
“You’ll probably want to have a wash before we eat, so why don’t you run up, and I’ll have a couple of drinks poured when you get back,” Neal said. “We’ll have time for a snort before we eat. There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
He was getting rid of her so that he could read the letter in private, Samantha thought. No matter. Should he not show it to her, she knew where her father kept his private papers and the location of the key if it should be locked. She must find out what was in that confidential letter and why he was so secretive about it.
Washing her hands and face in the bathroom, Samantha studied her facial features in the mirror above the basin. Did Sloan Singleton find her the least bit attractive? She could not recall one compliment he’d ever paid her appearance. She would have remembered. Her hair was her best feature, of course, but her gray eyes were clear and well shaped, her nose small and pert, and the rest of her features suitable to her face. She had good skin and a pleasing figure, all pretty enough, but sparrow plain compared to Anne’s peacock beauty.
The trace of depression that had hung over her ever since awakening from that dream this morning had now formed into a full overhead cloud. Never be afraid of your thoughts and feelings, no matter how scary, her father had instructed her. Face the buggers like you would any other threat to your person. Examine ’em. Question ’em. Find out where the hell they came from, what they’re doing in your head and heart. Sooner or later, understanding will come.
Understanding had come. Life expectancy for a woman in 1900 was forty-eight, and she was almost halfway through her allotment of years upon the earth. Her ship was firmly underway on an unalterable course, and there was no setting it in another direction. Inevitabilities loomed in the future. The correspondence from Dr. Tolman had sparked a fear she’d not allowed herself to dwell on. Her parents would get older and one day die, and she would be left to run and preserve one of the biggest ranches in Central Texas, not her first choice of a life pursuit. The man she loved would marry someone else, and she had little hope for another to come along who would win her heart.
Well, so be it, Samantha thought, drying her hands. She would take life as it came and make the best of it. There could still be surprises. No sea stayed unchanging.
Neal handed her a glass of sherry when she returned to the library and settled down with his bourbon in his “papa bear” chair, as Estelle called it, while Samantha took her usual seat on one end of a deep leather couch. She glanced at the desk. Neither letter was visible. She would wait until he brought up the subject of their contents in his own good time.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.
“At our poker game Monday night, Buckley Paddock told me about a wheat farm going up for sale in Cooke County—140 acres. Buckley says that the owner’s ad will appear in the classified section of the Gazette starting this Monday, and from the description, the place appears to be within proximity to La Paloma.” Buckley Paddock was the publisher of the Fort Worth Gazette; La Paloma was the name of a cow camp, home to a portion of Las Tres Lomas’s herd.
“In what direction and how much?” Samantha asked.
“North,” Neal said, “and the ad doesn’t say.”
Samantha understood the meaning of the twinkle in his eyes. Las Tres Lomas ran five thousand head of cattle on ten thousand acres in Cooke County. It was a large operation overseen by another foreman who had been on the Gordon payroll half his lifetime. The camp was situated seven miles from the Red River, an ideal location from which to move the herd at market time across the river to the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad’s loading ramps in Marietta for transport to the Kansas stockyards. The only hitch was the intervening wheat farm that cut off direct access to the river, requiring that the herd be driven around the farm ten miles out of the way to reach the ford crossing. Samantha had never been to La Paloma. The camp lacked amenities suitable for a lady.
“It could be the farm that smacks right up next to our holding,” Neal said. “Years ago when I bought La Paloma, I approached the owner about buying his place, an irascible old goat named”—he thought a moment—“Barrows. Liam Barrows, but he informed me that farm had been in his family since before statehood, and that his two boys would make sure it stayed. He didn’t care if I had to drive the herd to hell and back to get across the river.”
“Sounds like a nice neighbor,” Samantha commented. “So what are you proposing?”
“That we—you—check out the place. What harm can it do? Buckley says it won’t stay on the market long. We’ll get all the details in Monday’s paper, and I pro
pose that we immediately contact the owner by telegram and set up an appointment to look over the place. You can take the train to Gainesville.”
Samantha did not ask why she should be the one dispatched. Why not her father to look over the place? His answer would have embarrassed him. Neal Gordon was ashamed of the phobia that made it impossible for him to endure the close quarters of a train compartment. To go by horse would take the better part of three days and risk the chance the farm could be sold by the time he arrived.
Samantha thought the idea worth considering. In regard to acquiring land, her father had sometimes failed to show good judgment, but in 1890 he had wisely purchased 160 sections to add to the 166,400 acres of grazing land of La Paloma where he could permanently establish a part of his herd. Before the purchase, when the summer heat of Central Texas dried up grassland, Las Tres Lomas had enjoyed open access to drive three thousand head of cattle north to Cooke County to relieve the number of bovine mouths to feed at the home ranch.
If we don’t make a move now, Estelle, Samantha remembered her father saying in a family discussion, it may be too late in a few years. Prices will rise, and fences between here and our summer range are going up faster than a maple sheds its leaves in fall. It won’t be long before passageway to drive our cattle up to La Paloma will be blocked, and then what will we do? You know that in summer, the whole herd can’t be sustained on the grass we have here, and there’s no land contiguous to ours going on the block anytime soon to fix the problem.
Neal was warden of the ranch’s purse, but Samantha was keeper of the books, and it was her job to play devil’s advocate when it came to spending proposals. Her father, bent on becoming a titan in the cattle industry and making Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad one of the biggest ranches in Texas, sometimes had to be reined in, especially if there was a bulging surplus in the bank—the Cattleman’s Bank, rather than the Rutherford City Bank.
“I suppose it will all depend on the price the place is going for and if the owner is not opposed to the family farm being converted to a ranch-to-market road,” she said. “I wouldn’t want Las Tres Lomas changed in character.”
Silbia, the Mexican housekeeper who saw after the domestic management of the main house, came in to announce that la cena—dinner—was on the table. She prepared breakfast and supper for el patrón and his hija—daughter—but the noon meal was carted to the main house from Grizzly’s kitchen unless her boss and his daughter ate with the ranch hands.
“Ah, Grizzly’s fried steak,” Neal said, rising. “I hope he sent over plenty of gravy.”
A look at her father betrayed no sign of illness, just bright anticipation of enjoying a good meal, but as Samantha rose, she glanced toward the fireplace, and her heart caught. Fallen from the softly glowing embers into the grate was the burned corner of a cream-colored letter.
Nathan
Chapter Fourteen
Five days after his twentieth birthday, on the tail end of a bright, crisp Wednesday, Nathan rang the doorbell of his father’s town house, which was situated in an elite enclave of other distinctive homes nestled on a tributary of the Trinity River in Dallas, Texas. The cabbie who had picked him up at the train station immediately recognized the address Trevor had written on the back of the business card that Nathan showed him. “Oh, yes, that’s in Turtle Creek,” he said, giving Nathan’s barn jacket and faded jeans a skeptical look. “You goin’ to do some work on the place?”
“My father lives there,” Nathan said.
A black maid wearing a frilly white cap and lace-fringed apron over a dark dress opened the door. It was made of ebony, lacquered to a glossy finish, and bore a shiny brass knocker. “Deliveries go to the rear door,” she said, frowning down at Nathan’s knapsack at his feet.
Nathan removed his cloth cap. “I’m not a delivery boy. My name is Nathan Holloway, and I’m Mr. Waverling’s son. He asked me to call on him.”
The maid’s mouth opened like a gawping fish. Nathan heard the toot of several horns from the street before she spoke. “Well, I never in all my life expected to hear such a thing. Get out of here before I call the police.”
“You do that, and you’ll hear from Mr. Waverling. I’ll wait here until you telephone him at his office to inform him I’ve accepted his invitation. I imagine an establishment like this has one of those inventions.”
The maid backed away, eyes bulging, and closed the door. Nathan could hear the hard click of the lock. He put his cap back on and sat down on the front step of the round brick stoop to await the result of the maid’s threat or the call to Trevor Waverling’s office. Leon had advised that he write to his father to warn him of the date and time and place of his appearance.
Show up at his office, not at his home address, Leon had said. I didn’t hear that option extended, and when you introduce yourself, say simply that you’re Nathan Holloway from Gainesville, Texas, and you have an appointment with Mr. Waverling. Don’t mention anything about bein’ his son. That way things’ll get off on the right foot with no embarrassment for anybody, ’specially for you if there should be… well, some awkwardness. He also advised Nathan to dress in his best and only suit. Shows respect, he’d said.
Nathan had listened and disregarded. He was Trevor Waverling’s son. If the man was ashamed of that fact or preferred to ignore it, Nathan figured that by declaring who he was up front to any who asked, he would know soon enough if Trevor Waverling was sincere in his wish to claim his son. Back entrances were not for Nathan. If his father thought him good enough to visit him at his office, he was good enough to meet him at his home before his front door dressed as he was every day with the exception of his cap.
Nathan pulled a copy of Jack London’s Son of the Wolf out of his jacket pocket. Though rare, his idle moments were spent reading, and his spare money went for books he bought in a general store in Gainesville. He couldn’t abide sitting doing nothing, like Lily could. He didn’t have enough to think or dream about to fill his mind as his sister did, so he let in worlds and people and events through used copies of the classics and dime novels of detective stories and frontier tales and medieval romances he could think about during his long, solitary chores.
“Hello.”
Nathan turned his head toward the sound of the childish voice. He’d been so engrossed in the tales of the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness and the Klondike gold rush that he had not heard the approach of footsteps. At first he thought his mind was playing eerie tricks on him. A little girl’s head had bloomed among the masses of blue hydrangeas in one of a pair of hedges that flanked the flight of steps, her hair ribbon the same color as the tightly compacted florets. She blinked at him, her long lashes like crescents of feathers above shy, deep brown eyes.
Nathan laid down his book, spread open to the pages he was reading. “Hello,” he said, his greeting softened with a smile. “Who are you?”
“I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.”
Nathan slowly rose from the step. Her singsong words sounded familiar. He was sure he’d heard them before, and then he remembered. They were a verse from one of his sister’s poetry books she’d read aloud to the family one evening. “I suppose you’d call me a nobody,” he said, addressing her across the hedge.
“How dreary to be somebody!” she quoted. “How public, like a frog, to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog!”
She was not quite right in the head, Nathan perceived immediately. Leon had mentioned that Trevor Waverling had a retarded daughter. There was something otherworldly about her gaze. She was staring straight at him but without really seeing him, and her lip twitched involuntarily as if pulled by an invisible puppet’s string. He had come expecting to meet her and his grandmother, too.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The question puzzled her. “Rebecca!” she sang after a moment’s struggle to remember.
He thrust his hand across the h
edge. “I’m Nathan.”
Slowly, she reached across the blue haze and shook it. “Nathan… Are you nobody, too?”
“I reckon I am to those folks who think they matter,” he said.
Nathan heard an approaching tat-tat-tat that sounded like the strike of steel against the flagstone path that ran alongside the house, and within a few seconds out from the trellised entrance stepped an elderly woman wielding a cane. The expensive scent of a floral fragrance reached him before she spoke.
“Well, for heaven’s sakes,” she said. “You did come.”
Nathan yanked off his cap. “Ma’am?”
“I’m your grandmother, Mavis Waverling,” the woman said. “There’s no denying it. You’ve got my eyes.” She peered at him as she drew closer. “Your father’s, too, of course, but there’s something in yours missing in his. I see you’ve met Rebecca.” She placed her arm around her granddaughter’s shoulders. “Rebecca, dearest, this is your… brother.” She glanced at Nathan. “Do you mind if we dispense with the half part of it?”
“Not at all,” Nathan said.
Rebecca’s eyes grew round. “My… brother?”
“Yes,” Nathan said. “You’re my sister.”
Rebecca turned to her grandmother. “He’s nobody, too,” she said proudly. “There’s a pair of us—don’t tell!”
“I won’t,” Mavis Waverling whispered conspiratorially into her ear.
Nathan was afraid he gawked. So this was his grandmother. She looked wafted from a flower box, perhaps one stored away in an attic yellowing and growing brittle with age but exquisite just the same. Nathan thought she must have been extremely pretty at one time. He had wondered about her, what she would look and be like, if they possessed anything in common. She was the main reason he had come. Indeed, they must be related, for they shared the same color and shape of eyes, the flesh around hers finely webbed. Beyond those features he could claim no identity to her fine bone structure and head of diaphanous white hair and a stature hardly as tall as the border of hydrangeas she stood behind. An odd sensation filled him as he realized he carried her blood. “You’re… my grandmother?” he said.
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