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I lifted my shoulders lightly. “It doesn’t matter now. I think we have begun to understand each other.”
“Then you will go with me to Silver City? I’ll come for you the day before, of course, and reserve a room at the hotel.”
“I’d love to go,” I said smiling.
Seven
The ball at Silver City was still a month off, but in the meantime, I rode almost daily with Mark Shannon, and watched him fall in love with me. I was vindictively glad that his uncle made no overt move to see me again, although I guessed that he knew of all the time his nephew spent with me.
Let Todd Shannon wonder. Let him think the worst of me, if that was what he chose! I made no effort to take over part of the management of the SD, although I learned a lot from Mark. The riding habits I wore now were my newer ones, and I made some effort to pin up my hair so that it looked becoming, although I always wore a hat, a flat-brimmed, flat-crowned Spanish-styled one that Mark had given to me. Once or twice Flo Jeffords accompanied us, but I don’t think she was happy at the transformation in my looks and manners. As soon as she found she wasn’t the center of attention, she made excuses to stay at home.
I could sense that she did not like me, and that she resented Mark’s growing interest in me. She reminded me, in some indefinable way, of my mother, and so I couldn’t like her either, although there were moments when I almost felt sorry for her.
Poor Flo! The scandal attached to her past, when she had been still a girl, seemed to keep her isolated. Why had she come back here? I began to realize that in spite of Mark’s eagerness to tell me as much as he knew, he never mentioned the feud or the Kordes family. And nobody else had mentioned it either. Had Mr. Bragg been exaggerating? I had met some of the SD cowboys, and recognized some of them by sight now. They would touch their hats politely when they saw me and explain whatever tasks they were engaged in if Mark pressed them. But everything seemed so peaceful! And I hadn’t yet seen any of the fierce Indians I had been warned about.
Sometimes I felt that I had gone back into the past and was back in Jhanpur again. The climate here was very much the same, and even the fierce mountains that loomed like a gigantic backdrop in the distance looked familiar. Inconceivable that peril could lurk there! I began to think that all the stories I had heard before I’d come here had been figments of someone’s overactive imagination. Wildly improbable tales, designed to put me off coming here, no doubt!
I thought darkly that Todd Shannon himself had probably started the rumors of violence and Indian attacks. There was no longer any feud, of course. How could there be? Hadn’t I seen for myself just how powerful a man Shannon was, and how carefully the SD was guarded? He had enough men to form a small army. It was ridiculous to think that a man like Todd Shannon would fear anyone, and unthinkable that any man, no matter how reckless and vengeful, would dare to stand up against the might of the SD.
I had read Todd Shannon’s character. Now, as the days passed, and I was constantly in his nephew’s company, I began to have the feeling that Todd Shannon was only biding his time, waiting for something to happen. He was a dangerous, devious man, and he hadn’t finished with me, nor I with him. What would transpire at our next meeting? In some strange way, I found myself waiting. This time, at least, he wouldn’t catch me off guard. I would be ready.
It was Mark, though, who indirectly precipitated matters. He had been helping me sort out some legal papers that my father kept in a battered tin box. Railroad share certificates, shares in mines both in New Mexico and California. IOUs from men I had never heard of. All were jumbled together, filling the box almost to bursting. I had no idea how many of these documents were valuable and how many were completely worthless.
Mark was helpful, and I discovered that he had an extremely sharp legal mind. He should have stayed in Boston to practice law. Indeed, whenever he talked of it, and some of the cases he had handled, his voice became quite wistful.
We had become friends by now. Impulsively, I put my hand on his arm.
“Mark, that’s what you really want to do, isn’t it? Why are you here, then, wasting your time?”
There was an unusual, bitter twist to his lips when he met my eyes. “Because my uncle decided to make me his heir. You don’t understand, Rowena. My mother has money of her own, and my father was an able lawyer. He was appointed a judge before he died. I always wanted to choose the law as my profession. But you see, there is the family obligation. And the money, of course; I’m no Sir Galahad!”
“But you said…”
“My mother is comfortably off, better off than most, I suppose. And I was making quite a good income following my chosen profession. All the same, how can any of it compare to what my uncle’s share of the SD alone is worth? Don’t you see, Rowena? He has no heirs! Someone has to take over some day. Your father chose you, and my uncle chose me.”
I wanted to burst out at him, tell him to follow his own inclinations, as long as they made him happy, but logic held me silent.
As he had pointed out, in a way we were both in the same predicament. Both here because it profited us to be.
“Will you have to live here always?” I asked Mark, and he gave a slight shrug, shaking his head.
“Not yet, thank God! No, I’m here to learn the ropes, and then I can go back to Boston. Maybe come back here for a few weeks of each year. You have the same alternative, of course. As long as you reside here for a whole year, your father’s share of the ranch becomes yours with no further strings attached.” His voice became wry. “I suppose you’ll spend your time traveling in Europe and appoint a manager to see to your interests here.”
We had both been sitting on the rug before the fireplace with the box of papers between us, and now I sat back on my heels.
“And why should you think that? I’ve already done my share of traveling in Europe. It’s all too civilized there. This way of life is a challenge, don’t you see? My father and your uncle were the groundbreakers, so to speak, but you and I, we’ll be the ones to build something lasting. We’ll watch a new century come in, if we’re lucky enough!”
“You make me look at things so differently, do you know that! You should have been an orator, Rowena! And when you said ‘you and I’ just now, I—”
Suddenly, his eyes shining, he leaned forward to catch my hands, taking me off-balance, so that I half fell against him. “Oh, Rowena, I’m sorry. I never meant—but I cannot help the way I’ve come to feel about you! Why, for God’s sake, do you have to be so darned rich?”
“Why? What has that got to do with it?”
I pulled away from him frowning. I had not wanted this to happen. Certainly not a declaration which I would have to turn down and, in so doing, ruin what might have been a good friendship between us. I had tried to avoid a situation that might lead to such a declaration. But what had Mark meant by saying I was too rich?
“Rowena!”
He reached for my hands again and succeeded in capturing one. “I only meant—well, as much as I care for you, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I would propose marriage to you merely to gain control of your fortune. Surely you see that?”
