Titans

by Leila Meacham

  Each member of the household took turns checking on Rebecca. Zak lay vigilant on the floor by her bed, and after lunch, Mavis took a nap lying beside her. The rain continued its pummeling, and Nathan was relieved that Rebecca slept on. After lunch, he managed to contact Charlotte, whose family, too, had been drenched hurrying to their carriage after Sunday worship. It was as Nathan had feared and expected. The party must be canceled, but Charlotte suggested they get together for a game of cards when the weather cleared. Cheered by that proposal, he and Trevor spent the rest of the day in the study discussing business-related topics. As the afternoon wore on, the wind gradually died, and the pounding rain turned to a soft drizzle. Talk ranged from Trevor’s design plans for the new plant complex to his interview with the veteran water-well driller he had engaged to dig his first oil well. The man’s name was Jarvis Putnam, and Nathan and Todd and Daniel had been invited to sit in on the preliminary meeting at Waverling Tools. Todd had asked him if he thought there was a lot of oil in Texas.

  “Hell, yes!” the salty old veteran had answered. “There’s oceans of oil in Texas, just like there is water. Been here for thousands and thousands of years way down deep just wait’n to be tapped. Fact of the matter, the whole history of the Earth is down there, trapped in strata older than the first man born to Earth. First trick is to find the experts and develop the tools to dig it out. Second trick is not to destroy one to suit the other.”

  Trevor and Nathan had exchanged glances expressing the same thought. Samantha would like this man. Trevor had signed him on the spot.

  As the sun began to set, they were about to adjourn to the parlor for Trevor’s evening scotch and soda when they heard a frantic pawing and yelping at the closed study door. Nathan hurried to open it and was greeted by the lunge of a pair of wet paws to his chest. “What is it, Zak?” he said, ruffling the German shepherd’s sodden neck, but the answer came like a dart to his heart. The dog jumped down and took off barking toward the stairs. “We’d better go,” Nathan said to Trevor. “I think it’s Rebecca.”

  With a panicked scrape of his desk chair, Trevor was right behind him as they chased after the dog to the upper story. On the landing, the men would have headed toward the open door of Rebecca’s room, but Zak, barking, bounded down the corridor in the opposite direction. By then, Mavis had come sleepily out into the hall. “What’s going on?” she called. “Why is Zak barking? Where’s Rebecca?”

  Trevor paused long enough to yell, “She’s not with you?”

  “No. She was on the other side of me, fast asleep.”

  Trevor, eyes strained from thinking the unthinkable, looked at Nathan. “She’s gone to the river.”

  They sped off after Zak, who had waited yelping by the outer door that stood wide open. As the men rounded the corner, water puddles on the floor told the horror of what had happened. Rebecca had let herself out into the rain with Zak following and had come to some sort of grief that had caused the dog to run back to raise the alarm. Seeing the men, the German shepherd took off down the outside stairs and sprinted toward the pier. Nathan and Trevor splashed in pursuit, Trevor yelling “Rebecca!” from panic-stricken lungs. Nathan joined in the cry, but in his pounding heart he knew it was no use. Rebecca had gone to find her uncle. In the rain-drenched afternoon that was slowly fading to dusk, he could almost hear the chant of her last words: I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

  Benjy had heard the commotion and come running, reaching them as their feet hit the flooded pier. Nathan feared that Zak would leap into the churning current, and there would be no saving him, but the dog circled in a whining frenzy at the dock’s edge, then raced by them to the ground again, setting off up the riverbank. “I think we should follow Zak,” Nathan yelled to Trevor, who nodded, his face the color of the gathering dusk.

  It was Zak who found her. The current had not borne her downstream to be swallowed into the mouth of the Trinity River. She lay facedown, wedged between two large rocks by the water’s edge, her long, dark hair and napping gown billowing around her. The dog pawed at her and whined until Nathan pulled him away so that Trevor could wade into the water and lift his daughter into his arms. Benjy moved to help him, but he said, “I’ve got her. I’ve got my little girl.”

  Mavis, thin and fragile, her shawl drawn around her, stood waiting and watching on the crest of the slope leading down to the pier. From her vantage point, her white hair and pale gown water-soaked, she looked like an ancient ghost risen from the river. Her face showed no emotion through the film of drizzle when the silent men, Trevor carrying his streaming burden, gained the ground where she stood. Not even her eyes blinked from the weight of the moisture on her lashes.

  “Come inside, Mother, before you catch your death,” Trevor ordered gently.

  Mavis followed dutifully, wordlessly. They entered the house through the door to the back stairs where Lenora hovered anxiously in the hall, and Mavis spoke for the first time. “I knew the river would get her one day. Lay her on her bed, Trevor, and I’ll get blankets.”

  The family doctor was on his way to Galveston with his nurse to offer his services, Nathan was told when he was instructed to telephone the physician’s office. It would be best to contact the police, who would notify the coroner.

  They all waited in various modes of shock and grief in the parlor for the police to arrive. Dry-eyed, Mavis sat in her wingback like one grieving the long-ago loss of a loved one for whom all her tears had been spent, face pale, lips pressed firmly together, Scat curled in a ball in her lap. Lenora cried quietly in a corner, and in another Benjy fingered his Catholic rosary, his lips moving in a requiem for the dead. Trevor brooded in his customary chair by the window, his profile rigid as a Roman bust. Nathan sprawled, sickened, in the wingback across from his grandmother, Zak at his feet with his head on his paws, the door to Rebecca’s room closed against him.

  “Why?” Mavis asked vaguely of no one in particular. “Why? I knew the child was fascinated by the river, but she’d been warned so many times about going down there without someone being with her. Why of all days did she go down there?”

  Nathan glanced at his father. Only he and Trevor knew the answer. Rebecca had witnessed her uncle drown. Today, because of the storm, her mind had become trapped in the memory of that day, and she’d gone down to the pier to rescue him. His little half sister had tried to tell them, but none had listened. He remembered the promise he’d made to his father: I’ll see after Rebecca for as long as she lives. Nathan turned his gaze to his grandmother, and to his utter astonishment, before he could put a clamp on his tongue, no more able to prevent himself from speaking than he could keep a boil from rupturing, he heard himself answer, “Rebecca saw her uncle drown himself and went down to the river to save him.”

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Billie June and Daniel caught the first afternoon train to Fort Worth and managed to arrive at the Triple S just as the rain and wind laid siege to Dallas. On his round to punch tickets, the conductor had told his passengers of a rumor that Galveston had been struck by a terrible storm coming from the Gulf of Mexico, and the Central Plains would probably get its share of it. “I hope Sloan got his hay in,” Billie June said. “Winter feeding will be awfully slight if he didn’t, and of course if it floods, he’ll be worried sick about his cattle. Neal Gordon, too. Livestock have a natural instinct to move away from floodwaters, but there’s only so much high ground on both ranches, and of course, there’s always danger of crowded animals stampeding if lightning strikes.”

  “What happens if they can’t make it to high ground or there’s not enough room?” Daniel asked.

  Billie June had looked bleak for a moment. “It means they lose some of their herds and a sizable chunk of income. Raising cattle is an awful hard way to earn a living, because so much of successful ranching depends on the weather. If this storm is bad and lasts long, the Triple S may be in trouble.” />
  Daniel heard Billie June in surprise. He’d assumed a ranch the size and prosperity of the Triple S could weather any storm. “The Triple S in trouble? How so?”

  Billie June looked as if she regretted divulging the information. Daniel encouraged her to share family news, hoping for a morsel about Sloan that might be useful, but Billie June had become closemouthed about her brother in the last months except to say something favorable. Daniel half suspected that Billie June may have had another reason other than his comfort in insisting that he lodge at the Triple S during his assignment at Windy Bluff. She might hold the hope that once her brother and Daniel got to know each other, they might sheathe their swords. Not a chance. Sloan Singleton represented the type of man Daniel most despised, the ones who thought themselves better than anybody simply by the luck of their birth. Daniel had been born in the gutter, no say about where he’d popped out, but he’d climbed out of it almost from the minute he’d shed his nappies. He hadn’t much to show for it until now, and in a way, he owed the upward direction in his life to Sloan Singleton. If Mr. High-and-Mighty Big Britches hadn’t humiliated him that day, Daniel might not be where he was now, but that didn’t mean he had reason to forgive and forget. The man was still a condescending, self-serving snob. If for no other reason, he’d get even with Sloan for the pain Samantha would suffer when she learned the real reason he had married her.

  Billie June’s worry was as raw and exposed as an open wound, and Daniel suspected she could not keep it to herself long. He wondered how she hadn’t yet figured out his motive in continuing to see her. He had never spoken of love. He had drawn a line at that deception. That he desired her, admired her, enjoyed her company more than any other woman he’d ever known—those were endearments he could truthfully shower upon her, but love, no.

  “Why would the Triple S be in trouble if the storm is bad?” he prodded.

  Billie June pulled nervously at the sleeve end of her jacket. “Let’s just say that every cow is needed right now to pay the bills,” she said, and after a moment, as if forced by anxiety, volunteered, “especially Sloan’s loan from the Rutherford City Bank.”

  Daniel could hardly keep his jaw from dropping. Sloan Singleton in hock to the Rutherford City Bank? After his ditch of his daughter, Noble Rutherford would not hesitate to call in the loan if Sloan failed to meet his obligation to the bank. “Surely your brother’s debt is not enough to be too big a worry,” Daniel said.

  Billie June’s mournful nod disputed the feigned certainty of his statement. Shocked, Daniel said, “Your brother wouldn’t have been d—” he caught himself before he said dumb, and said instead “desperate enough to put the ranch up for collateral, would he?”

  Again the sorrowful fall of Billie June’s face. “I’m afraid he did. We didn’t ride out the drought like the Gordons, and Sloan needed money to buy breeding stock more suitable to our climate and grasslands when another dry spell hits. He expected our herds to increase twofold within a few years, and it was happening, too. Sloan would never have pledged the ranch if he’d thought it at risk.”

  Of course it wasn’t at risk when he made the deal, Daniel thought. He’d planned to marry Anne Rutherford, whose daddy wouldn’t allow his daughter to suffer the stigma of foreclosure, so the ranch would never be in jeopardy. When his daughter married Sloan, Noble Rutherford would most likely forgive the debt—probably as a wedding present. But then Sloan had taken a gamble and cast his lot with Samantha, a potential oil heiress and a far more suitable wife to a rancher, with the same idea in mind that Neal Gordon, for the exact reason as Noble Rutherford, would never allow the Triple S to go under. What a scheming bastard! Sloan Singleton was turning out to be no better than any other man and a whole lot dumber than most. He hadn’t even had the foresight to anticipate a catastrophe beyond drought that could wipe him out before the Gordon well came in—if it came in—and now the banker had him by the short hairs. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy. Daniel had heard the we and our in Billie June’s explanation. She was still very much tied to the ranch. “So now I guess he’ll rely on your and your sister’s trust fund money to bail him out,” he suggested.

  Billie June turned to him with a look that could have fried bacon. Daniel realized he’d overstepped. No doubt about it. Blood was thicker than water. They were sitting together on the Pullman seat holding hands, and Billie June snatched hers away.

  “For your information, Sloan would never take a dime of my or my sister’s trust fund money for any reason,” she declared. “We offered him a loan when we learned he needed money, but he adamantly refused. He would never risk Dad’s provision in the will that represents our own livelihoods in case we do not marry.”

  Any other woman might have arched a look conveying a hint at the end of that statement, but Billie June turned her withering glare to the compartment window. Daniel felt a sudden, unexpected dip of his heart at her rebuff and tried to take her hand again. “I’m sorry if I sounded like I was maligning your brother,” he apologized.

  “You don’t know him,” Billie June said.

  Yes I do, Daniel contradicted silently. Why would Sloan borrow from his sisters if he planned to marry a bank vault’s daughter or an oil-rich rancher’s pride and joy? Mr. High-and-Mighty Big Britches hadn’t counted on a hurricane getting in the way of his strategy. It was going to be interesting to see how he got out of this fix—if he did. He smiled to himself and settled against the leather-padded back of his seat. He missed Billie June’s soft hand and her trim little shoulder turned from him, but he was warmed by the speculation that the storm might accomplish his life’s mission for him.

  Millie May, Samantha anxiously standing behind her, had the front door open to greet her sister and Daniel before they could be completely drenched in the dash from the coach sent to collect them from the train station. Sloan ran out in the rain to help unload the luggage, grumbling that his sister must have brought everything but the icebox from her Dallas apartment. Along with Daniel’s large satchel of tools, the entrance to the house was soon filled with several suitcases, valises, hatboxes, and a steamer trunk pooling the floor. The men did not shake hands. Daniel might have been a spool on the staircase banister for all the notice Sloan took of him. “For God’s sakes, Billie June, this is more than you left home with!” her brother complained. “Where are we going to store all this luggage?”

  “There’s the upstairs hall cabinet where we keep Christmas decorations,” Billie June said. “We can put some things in there.”

  “No!” Sloan protested, his outburst so explosive it startled him as much as his wife and sisters and—dammit!—Daniel Lane. One of the ironmonger’s eyelids lowered thoughtfully while the women gazed at him in surprise. “I mean… that’s not a good idea, Billie June. That cabinet is full to the gills already, and there are some fragile decorations in there of our mother’s.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” his sister agreed. “We’ll make room in the storage compartment behind the stairs, and there’s room under the beds for our valises.”

  Luggage arrangements over, Billie June imparted news of the Galveston hurricane and that its aftermath was headed inland. “That will mean a delay of your drilling schedule, then,” Sloan said to Daniel, hoping the man would take the hint and go back to Dallas. He could not have him free to roam his house while he and his men were out trying to avert the damage the storm would inflict.

  “I’ll have to see what Monday’s weather looks like. I expect my boss to telephone today or tomorrow with new orders. Mr. Waverling might send me down to the coast to check for damage on a drilling operation. Meanwhile, maybe I could be of help to you on the ranch,” Daniel offered.

  Billie June patted Daniel’s arm, her miff over, and said with pride, “Daniel cannot sit still unless he’s reading. He’s always got to be doing something productive. Surely you can find something for him to do, Sloan?”

  Surprised at the offer, Sloan leaped at it. His stomach had knotted within seco
nds of hearing of the hurricane. The rain had caught the last of his hay to be baled, an unexpected and possibly crippling financial loss. If the storm was as far-reaching and long-lasting as Sloan suspected, every rancher’s hay in the North Central plains would be hit. Little would be for sale and sold at sky-high prices, but he would worry about that bridge when he came to it. More pressing were his fears of blackleg, especially to his breeding stock. It was a highly fatal disease resulting from a soil-borne bacteria released after flooding. Then there were the infectious diseases like foot rot and pneumonia, caused by long-term exposure to wet weather and pastures standing in water. Somehow he had to get his cattle to higher ground. Also, the wind had gotten up, the strongest in years, which meant that for the next few days, a detail would have to ride fence to check for damage, and, when the weather cleared, comb the pastures for metal objects like nails and bits of wire that could be ingested and cause damage to intestinal tracts. Brush and debris, especially the poisonous leaves and branches of the black cherry trees, impossible to root out from the land, had to be cleared from the pastures and drowned animals hauled off to a lime pit and burned. There was plenty of work to be done, not even counting the care and maintenance of thousands of head of cattle if a fraction survived.

  “You know anything about herding livestock in inclement weather?” Sloan asked.