Loveland Read online

“It’s not our place, Annie. If we start gossiping, we’re no better’n them.”

  “But we know the truth,” she said in some exasperation.

  Jesse looked from one to the other. “Which is?”

  Tom hesitated, then said, “Why don’t you ask Alex what the truth is, Jess? If you think it’s your business, if you think this makes a difference as to who she is, or how good a person she is, or whatever it is she is to you personally, if you think you have a right to know, why don’t you ask her? Why the heck are you askin’ me?”

  Jesse sat with his chin in his hand for a while taking in what Tom had said. He couldn’t say he had a right to know, it wasn’t necessarily his business, and it wasn’t going to change who she was or what she was to him—which he hadn’t even figured out as yet. He was ten years older than she, had sat with her on his lap, watched her grow up. His confusion was palpable.

  Annie broke the silence. “Here is what you should know. Here is what they should all know, Tom, for goodness sake. Alex was forced to marry some lord or other—against her will. She tried to prevent his advances by putting laudanum in his drink. He found out and the marriage has been annulled. Not divorced, annulled. That’s about it. That’s what happened. That’s what you should know.”

  ****

  Back in 1876, when Jesse and the other men of the Double F Ranch had been told Mr. Calthorpe’s young niece was coming to stay, their reaction had been puzzlement. Jesse had wondered what a young girl would do on a ranch in the wilds of Colorado; others had felt a tinge of annoyance at this intrusion into their everyday routines while still others thought back on the families they had left behind. The bafflement most of them had felt was also touched with curiosity. It had been years for many since they had lived amongst a family, and the idea of a young child around the ranch needed some accommodation in their organized and solitary lives. Alex had won them over, however; enchanted by her huge green eyes and the rosebud mouth that seemed to fill her delicate oval face, amazed at the quiet yet concise little voice which asked them endless questions and demanded they repeat their time-worn stories, there hadn’t been a single man at the Double F who hadn’t become a better father or uncle to her than the two men who held those titles.

  But after the episode at the church, Alex knew full well that all the men would eventually hear what had befallen her in the five years since she left for England. She decided to keep to herself the next few days, riding out, sketching, starting a painting of the men on their horses with the herd, clouds of dust, lariats swung out. She didn’t want their pity and she didn’t want them to feel awkward around her so she avoided them for the most part. She didn’t talk to them much and they in turn respected her silences, watched from a distance to see she was all right. She had no idea who knew what, or what had been said, or how anyone had reacted to whatever they had been told, and she cared even less now. The painting consumed her. This was what she wanted more than anything now; this was her ticket to being free.

  On an afternoon toward the end of the week she rode up to the chuck wagon to refill her canteen from the water butt. A man she didn’t recognize lay spread-eagle on the ground, facedown, with a group of the other punchers around him. Cal sidled up to her, tin mug of coffee in hand, and tried to block her view.

  “What’s up?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

  “Oh, just a bit of fun,” he answered a bit too nonchalantly.

  “Doesn’t look like fun for the man on the ground.” She looked at Cal questioningly, but he avoided her eyes and took another sip of coffee. Cal had always been her good friend—the one who listened and never lost his temper, the one who would without reservation take her side, see her point of view. “What’s happening, Cal?” She tried to push past. “And don’t tell me not to worry my pretty little head.”

  “Oh, heck Ladilex, you leave them alone now, ya hear?” he said with some embarrassment. “Just a bit of good ol’ frontier justice.”

  “Frontier justice, huh?” She stood there smoldering. “How’s that for frontier justice,” and she flung some water in his face before she picked up Brandy’s reins and rode off.

  It was called “chapping” she learned later from Annie, where the victim had his backside smacked with the leather of his own chaps. Annie didn’t say why the man was being chastised in this manner but Alex inferred it had something to do with herself. At least her old friends were protecting her honor, and then she felt sorry about what she’d done to Cal.

  One evening some days later Alex got involved in finishing up a painting, and it was past dark when she finally arrived back at the corral. The men’s voices drifted out to her before she could see them all, their horses were saddled and torches were just now being lit.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Oliver, who stood there, hands on his hips, watching her dismount. She approached him somewhat hesitantly for their relationship wasn’t any easier than it had been when she was younger. She regarded him neither warmly nor yet unhappily, but perhaps warily at times. He had said little to her regarding her annulled marriage and less about the local reaction to it.

  “Where the hell have you been? Do you know we were just starting out to search for you? Do you have any idea of the time?” His anger was resonant.

  “Search for me? Whatever for?”

  “I was worried. It’s late. You can’t go gallivanting about the countryside here as you wish. You could have been hurt. You could be laying hurt somewhere, attacked by a bear or mountain lion, thrown from your horse. Anything could have happened to you.”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you? I have my rifle here.” She pulled the gun from its scabbard.

  “I think you owe Tom and the men an apology,” Oliver fumed. “I think you owe us all an apology.”

  Alex looked long and hard at Oliver; he seemed to understand her less now than he had five years ago. She turned to Tom. “I apologize, Tom, to you and the men that Oliver thought it necessary to send you all out looking for me when you obviously have much better things to do with your time. Not to mention you all are probably tired and hungry after a day’s work and really didn’t need this nonsense!”

  Oliver was furious. “That’s not what I meant,” he snarled between his teeth. “I want an apology this minute, young lady.”

  “I just gave you one. I’m not a child any more, Oliver.”

  “But you are a young lady and should bloody well behave like one!”

  “I am late and I have apologized. I didn’t know I had to go reporting in every five minutes as to my whereabouts.”

  “No one is asking you to report in every five minutes. We are asking for the common courtesy of letting us know where you’ll be.”

  “How many hundreds of square miles is this spread? How many millions of acres do our cattle roam? Common courtesy? Well, my goodness.” She loosened the cinch on her saddle.

  “I’m waiting!” Oliver’s voice was harsh and sharp.

  “You can wait ’til hell freezes over. I’ve given my apology.”

  Cal raised an eyebrow, but Jesse she couldn’t read. He stood there with his thumbs in his belt, head down. Tom and the others just watched the whole scene unfold in an embarrassed silence.

  “You owe the men an apology,” Oliver repeated. “This minute. Or you can go back to your father!”

  “My father?” Alex snickered. “My father?” she said, coming to boiling point. “Now therein lies the rub, as I believe Shakespeare would say. Just who the hell is he, Oliver? You tell me and I’ll give you a better apology. Or maybe it will be you giving me an apology—that’s to be decided yet I think. My father? You can rot in hell.”

  “Go to your room this minute!” His voice was low and threatening.

  “Like hell I will!” She retightened the cinch on her saddle and before he could stop her she rode out.

  By the time Oliver gave the order to go after her, Alex was out of sight. Jesse agreed with Tom that they would split up, Tom going to the Homestead to see
if Alex had taken refuge with Annie. Knowing she had no provisions with her, no bedroll, and only her paints in the saddlebags, Jesse figured she would head to one of the line camps perhaps. It was near the road to Boyd he and Cal found her, sitting on her saddle blanket looking up at the stars.

  Breathing somewhat resigned sighs of relief, they squatted on either side of her.

  “Remember stopping the buggy here once, Jess, when you had to take me home from church? You showed me Horsetooth Rock somewhere over there marking Fort Collins.” Alex pointed into the darkness. “And we watched the antelope running, and the quail in the cottonwood down by the lake. I always loved Boyd, listening to the water lapping and the hum of the crickets and grasshoppers, and the cattle always seemed so contented here, grazing right up to the lake shore. Remember?”

  “Yeah,” said Jesse quietly. “You were like a little porcelain doll.”

  She turned to look at him.

  Cal cleared his throat. “Stars are pretty good tonight,” he said sitting himself down. He looked over at Alex, seeing the woman trying to struggle out of the child she had been.

  “Did we ever teach you how to tell time by the stars?” Jesse settled down on the blanket by her other side. “Or are you carryin’ a fancy watch that don’t seem to work real well?” he quipped.

  “You did try to teach me once I think, but I wasn’t a particularly good student as I recall. Something about the North Star and the Big Dipper?”

  “Ursa Major,” Cal pointed out. The three of them lay back, heads together on the blanket.

  “There’s an eagle’s nest high up in that tree,” Alex said. “I can just about see it by the moonlight.”

  “An eyrie. Hey, she’s right.” Jesse sat up again and put his hat back on. The proximity to Alex stirred feelings in him he couldn’t quite deal with as yet.

  They watched the sky for a time in silence. The grass was wet and Alex shivered with the cold in her thin jacket.

  “Gonna have to get some better duds ’n that,” Cal said.

  “Yes, I’m making a list before I go into town.”

  “Ain’t you brought suitable clothes?” Jesse asked. “You knew where you were headed.”

  “Suitable, yes, for the grand salons of Europe. For the English Hunt Season perhaps, but not, perhaps, for a Colorado ranch. Who’s getting supplies next week?”

  “My job,” said Jesse. “I leave for Loveland at six Monday mornin’. No waitin’ ’round neither for spoilt young ladies who can’t tell time.”

  She smacked him on the leg. “I am not spoiled!” She pulled up some buffalo grass and then said, “Call for me at 5.45. I’ll be ready.”

  “If’n Mr. Calthorpe lets you out of the house again,” added Cal.

  “Yeah. Well. Time to take you prisoner.” Jesse got to his feet and extended his hand.

  “Very funny.”

  Alex took Jesse’s gloved hand, entwining her fingers with his. Jesse held them there a moment longer than might be necessary. Cal sighed and brushed himself off, then helped Alex onto her horse.

  ****

  Oliver was waiting for them in his office. He thanked the men peremptorily, saw them out, then returned to Alex with a face like thunder.

  “Don’t you ever embarrass me like that again!”

  She looked at him, then without saying anything turned on her heel to go.

  “No, wait!” His tone was more conciliatory. He stood until she had turned back to him, then sighed. “Without Madame Helene it’s very difficult…it’s very difficult to know how to treat you—”

  “Try treating me like an adult, why don’t you?”

  “I am. I have only your best interests at heart, you must know—”

  “Are you my father?” Her tone was blunt.

  He stood still and stared at her for a long moment, a moment in which she stared right back at him. “No. Why would you think that?”

  “I told you before—a conversation I overheard years ago, dates I’ve put together, things said to me. I’m not an idiot, Oliver. I’m asking you, are you my father?”

  “And I’ve just answered no.” He took a few steps, then turned. “Nothing would make me more proud than to be your father. But I am not. I loved your mother very much; she was everything to me. I could never look at another woman after her. I would have done anything—and did do everything I could for her. But I am not your father.” He waited a while and tried to find words to both comfort her and yet put the matter to rest. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was everything a man could wish for. But I couldn’t compete with my brother and we both knew that. He could give her everything. I could give her nothing.”

  “But you did return to England in 1867. You were there for some months. Did you, or did you not have an affair with my mother?”

  “It wasn’t what you think.”

  “David walked in on you. He knows what he saw.”

  “No, no he doesn’t. It wasn’t anything like that.” There was a note of desperation in Oliver’s voice.

  “What was it then? What was it like?”

  “Alexandra. Please. It’s all a very long time ago and I swear to you—I am not your father.”

  They stood staring at each other before Alex turned to go. “I’ll change for dinner.” She went toward the hall.

  “Wait. Please.” She stopped again and turned. “I know it’s been difficult for you. I understand what you’ve been through—”

  “Do you? Do you really?” Sarcasm etched her voice. She thought of how he’d avoided the subject of her marriage since her arrival, how he had almost acted as if the scandal were all her fault. She felt all he worried about was the dent it had put in his social life.

  “No. Maybe not. But I am certainly on your side, Alex, whether you believe it or not.”

  “My side? What is my side, Oliver?”

  “I think we can weather this if we stick together. I have my own problems as well.”

  “Your problems? And what are they, may I ask? Can’t get your Havanas as quickly as you’d like? Your tailor cut your suits a bit too narrow? What are your problems?” She watched as he closed the door.

  “Ranch problems. You live here now but you don’t seem to be aware of how we’ve had to cut back this year. Beef prices plummeted in ’85. A lot of the ranches folded. Frewen is gone, the Herberts, others. The Cheyenne Club is practically empty—”

  “Oh, dear. My, that’s a pity!” Her tone was caustic.

  He chose to ignore this and continued, “There’s so much cattle being raised now, it’s overproduction. Tom and I will have to decide whether to hold the cattle over the winter to see if prices improve next year—”

  “And if they don’t?” she asked with real concern.

  “If they don’t, I don’t know. I sold some shares onto Tom Yost and I think he, in turn, sold a couple to one of the hands...” His voice trailed off.

  “Jesse Makepeace?” she guessed.

  “Possibly. It wasn’t any of my business. Some of the ranchers are moving shares into their daughters’ and wives’ names in case of bankruptcy—so the creditors can’t get their hands on them.”

  “Well, have no fear! Papa would never do that! Are you afraid I’ll be a major shareholder, Oliver, because I can allay any fears you may have on that account right here and now!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I could lose everything.”

  She looked at him, then turned to go but stopped at the door. The account books were open on his desk and she made a mental note to try to see them at some stage. “I know one thing. You can’t do better than Tom Yost for foreman. If anyone can weather the storm, it’s Tom.”

  Chapter Five

  The arguments were not over.

  Late Saturday night, when the men were just back from letting off steam in Loveland, Oliver’s carriage pulled up in front of the house and Alex, in evening dress, got out. Her voice was at fever pitch and she shook with rage.

  “Don’t you ever,
ever do that to me again! How could you? How could you? The most boring people, the most boring evening I’ve ever had the misfortune to spend, and that nasty little trumped up fool of a man, Henderson, all over me-it was disgusting.”

  “Lower. Your. Voice,” snarled Oliver. “Or you can go to your room right now!”

  “Go to my room? Go to my room? Gladly! I’d have been thoroughly happy—no, ecstatic!—to have spent the entire evening in my room, if you must know, rather than spend it with those insipid little mealy-mouthed damn fools. Go to my room? With pleasure, sir!” She marched up the path to the house.

  Jesse was with the men listening at the corral while unsaddling their horses, and he could just make out her form. Alex had grown into a real beauty, like some goddess or something, he couldn’t put it into words. She was something beyond anything he had ever known, and yet it was Alex, li’l Ladilex, as Cal called her, standing there with her sumptuous hair wound into coils back off her face, pearls woven in, and wearing a shimmering evening dress. Where was the child he had known?

  “We have friends,” Oliver was saying. “One must associate with one’s friends. We’re a community. We must all stick together.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Uncle Oliver.” Alex turned back and jabbed the air with the fan in her hand. “You stick with them. You associate with them. You invite them to tea and dinner and have them bore you stiff. Me, I’d rather associate with the punchers any day of the week. I’d prefer having a two-minute conversation with any one of our men rather than sit through an evening of listening to that moronic Henderson woman talk about her English china, and her crystal imported from Ireland, and her tablecloths from Malta and godonlyknows what else! As if all of their petty bourgeois accoutrements would impress me!”

  “I’m telling you now, Alexandra, if you don’t behave—”

  “If I don’t behave? If I don’t behave? What will happen that hasn’t already happened to me, Uncle Oliver, you tell me that!” And she marched into the house.

  They had to reach an arrangement, a compromise: they both knew that. Despite what she had said about leaving for a boarding house, Alex really wanted to live at the ranch, she loved it there; it was the only place she had ever felt was home, a safe haven from the world. She adored the Yosts, loved the punchers and had good friends among the men. Oliver had too many other matters to occupy him now than to have to keep dealing with his headstrong niece. Alex realized a bargain would be made.