“It was our intention to find such a place as this, one that offered plentiful water and timber. We had grand designs of building up a vast ranch, running the range with a mix of horses and cattle. And that has come to pass. There is good forage for them here, as you have seen for yourselves.”
His eyelids drooped again and the surly expression of earlier clouded his face, his voice matching it. “One of my brothers died along the trail out here of a fever. The second less than a year after our arrival, in a skirmish with bandits.”
He worked his jaw muscle hard then, as he stared at the sunset glow of the oil lamp hanging above the middle of the table. “After all that, I was determined to make a go of it here, alone if need be. And for much of a year following, I was alone. Then I was able to hire help, and little by little built up the ranch while fending off all manner of hazards—Indians, rustlers, common thieves.”
He looked at me then. “You can see why I was wary of you earlier. Especially with how you look and those gunshots we heard.”
“You got a nerve, mister, commenting on how we look.” Jack puffed up, but still managed to soldier on with his stew.
“Jack,” I said, hoping to head off a tirade. “It is true, we are not the prettiest pair of backwoodsmen a person is likely to meet.”
“Just what have you been through?” Scribley said.
A fair question, considering we looked chewed on, smelled rank, and were partaking of the man’s fare. “Well sir.” I wiped my mouth with my hand, nodded toward the front wall of the house, the direction we’d come from. “It’s a long story, as Thomas nibbled at earlier. Has to do with that ranch back there.”
Scribley sat up straighter, still staring at me. “I had a feeling you weren’t riding through.”
Jack snorted, but kept chewing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Scribley stood. “Well, let me tell you what I know of that place, then, since you are about to ask anyway.” He poked the wood in the stove, added two pieces, then plucked down four squat drinking glasses from an open shelf above the sink and set them on the table.
He turned to a cupboard and brought down a bottle of liquid the color of red hair in the sunlight. The label was in French, but I did pick out the word cognac. The rancher didn’t even ask, but poured four glasses and nudged one to each of us. Then he sat and resumed talking. Time was something Mr. Scribley had figured out how to take slowly.
“It had been my intention from the start to stake claim all the way down the river, including the land that ranch sits on. And I did, too, though it was an undertaking that caused considerable pain to my coin purse at the time.”
“When was this?” said Jack, who had warmed considerably when Scribley brought out the bottle. It was possible we’d even see Jack smile before the night was out.
“I’m getting to that.” Scribley sipped, then spoke again. “In order to establish certain arms of my business, I needed capital. I had put myself in a position I did not want to be in. But as I say, it was one of my own devising, so to speak. Along about that time, a wealthy man, one Abraham Rawlins, from back East, Providence, Rhode Island, to be precise, ventured out here with a guide and fell in love with the valley. In particular that sloping river meadow that ranch now sits on.
“He offered to buy it, and a sizable chunk of land surrounding it, from me, for a substantial amount, a figure I could not turn down. More than I would need to continue with plans of broadening my empire, so to speak. I would be able to irrigate, grow crops, employ more workers, breed fine horses, and establish extensive logging operations. The world, I felt, was finally opening to me.”
Hell, with all his downright chattiness I wondered if we’d see a smile from Scribley, too. I made a wager with myself to see who cracked first before the night was out, Maple Jack or Clement Scribley.
“In short, I sold it to him. Enough land so that he felt as though he had a special spot all to himself. And what’s more, he wanted me to continue as steward of the property.”
“Sounds like a good deal all around,” I said.
Scribley nodded. “He was a curious sort of man, had always wanted to come out West, but for many years had been, as he put it, burdened with too many family members dependent on him. Ironically, his was the opposite situation as mine.”
He sipped, fell silent for a few moments, then spoke again. “He was also making too much money to leave.”
“Nice problem to have,” said Jack, color riding high on his cheeks.
I looked to Thomas, but he was fingering the sides of his glass, lost in his thoughts.
“To be sure,” said Scribley. “He made his fortune in ice, of all things. A commodity that melts. Amazing. His clients were primarily shipping companies with great fleets of schooners plying the coast and the oceans with perishable goods. He made it out here and hired me and my men. He also brought in a selection of craftsmen of his own to build the place. I’m not sure if you noticed, but he spent a fortune there. It’s nice enough, but I prefer my own home.” He looked around the friendly room, his relaxed face matching the warmth of his abode.
Such a contrast to the man’s earlier attitude, I thought.
Jack nodded. “I’ve rarely seen its equal. Especially out in the wilderness as it is.”
“It is a curiosity. But he had money and the inclination.”
Jack leaned forward over the tabletop and squinted. “What’s with all this palaver we heard about mineral rights?”
Scribley eked out a small smile then—I owed myself a penny—and nodded. “That’s a rumor the old man started. Thought it would make it sound more dashing and authentically Western in his letters back home. I remember him chuckling as he told me about what he wrote to family members back there. In truth, he was happy to live there, had a woman who cleaned and cooked for him, and her husband kept the stable. They were former slaves, as a matter of fact. Good people. They made a cozy little setup for themselves inside the stable. All in all, I believe Mister Rawlins had a fine time there. Just not a long one.”
“What happened to him?” said Jack.
“Early one April morning, we still had plenty of thick snow covering everything, the stable man, Jordan was his name, rode up hell for leather, shouting for help. Well, a pile of us rode back down there, for we were all fond of Rawlins, but there was nothing for it. He’d died with a cup of coffee in his hand, setting in his rocking chair on that porch. He was waiting for his breakfast and looking out as the light came up over the valley. And believe it or not, there was a smile on his face.”
“Good a way as any to go.” Jack grunted.
Scribley nodded. “And a damn sight better than most others.” He pulled in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and resumed his story. I noticed Thomas was now watching him, too.
“It wasn’t long before Jordan and Beulah moved on. Mister Rawlins had left them a tidy bit of savings. As they passed on through this way they told me they were headed for the coast, then would make their way northward to Canada. I wished them luck and have not heard from them since. That was nine years ago.”
“And the ranch has sat empty this entire time?” said Thomas, who had not uttered a peep since the road.
Scribley looked at Thomas, then nodded. “Until now.”
Thomas’s eyes focused and he glared at our host. I thought he was angry, but he held up a finger, said, “Scribley!” and reached into his coat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The rancher, and I could hardly blame him, flinched and he squawked backward in his chair, as if to prepare himself for an attack.
But Thomas only rummaged his hand around in the ragged folds of his garment, pulled it out empty, his shoulders dropping along with his brief near-smile. He folded his hands before him on the table.
“Thomas,” I said, quietly. “What were you doing?” I suspected Jack and the rancher regarded him, as did I, as someone whose boat had become untethered and was now adrift.
He shrugged. “The deed.�
�� He looked up at Scribley. “You are mentioned in the deed, sir.”
“What? What deed? What are you talking about?” The rancher looked at once perkier and more suspicious than I’d seen him all day.
Thomas sighed and closed his eyes. “Since we are sharing long-winded stories, and since it feels as if you are owed an explanation, at the least for your hospitality, if not for your demeanor, I will endeavor to explain to you how I came to possess the deed to the ranch at which I was so recently held captive.”
I was not certain how to take this sudden flurry of words from Thomas. On one hand I was pleased to hear he sounded as if he had regained control of his faculties. On the other hand, he was back to his old less-than-tactful, pampered-rich-child self.
“My father was an important personage.” Thomas’s eyebrows rose and he cocked his head slightly in Scribley’s direction.
The rancher nodded his head slowly, unsure of what to make of the sudden appearance of this odd person in his midst.
“He was a nobleman in Italy,” resumed Thomas. “And to make a long and rather exciting story short for the sake of brevity, if not levity.” He smiled at his own wit. No one else did. Thomas did not notice. “At the behest of the president of the United States himself, my father emigrated to America to orchestrate maneuvers, plans, and strategies for various covert causes. Already a highly decorated warrior across Europe, he was also a recognized and brilliant tactician.”
“What does any of this fooferaw have to do with the ranch, boy?” This time it was Jack who had lost all patience with Thomas’s windy ways. I nodded my support.
“Oh fine, then, if that’s the way you want it. My father ended up coming into possession of the deed in question, and so passed it to me as my inheritance shortly before . . . before he, ah, was once again called away on important and highly confidential military orders, this time away from the shores of America.”
I watched him, wondering if he was about to divulge that the old man, that is to say our father, had died. I did not care to see Thomas, maudlin and weepy, at this stranger’s table. “To the point, Thomas,” I said.
“Yes, yes, as I was saying.” He directed a fiery look my way. “I decided that in order to lay claim to my inheritance I should see it myself, in person, and make a grand adventure of it. And that is what I have done, eh, Scorfano?”
I couldn’t take it anymore and stood, knuckling the table and staring across at him. “If that’s what you call getting people killed, two others robbed and nearly killed, homes burned, getting yourself kidnapped, getting us shot at, then threatened with a lynching, well then by all means, refer to this dandy little trip of yours as a grand adventure.”
My heavy-handed reaction had more to do with the fact that the little ungrateful cur was my brother than because his story was boring. I shouldn’t have, but I felt guilty about everything that went south on the whole ill-bred venture.
There was silence for a few moments, then Mr. Scribley cleared his throat. “I can piece together the rest. Now, young man, you say I am mentioned in the deed. In what way?”
“The right of first refusal.”
Scribley half rose. “You mean it’s in there? In writing?”
Thomas nodded. “I cannot tell a lie. But as I no longer have the deed, it is of little consequence.”
“But that copy of the deed is not all that relevant, a mere formality,” said Scribley. “It is recorded elsewhere, surely. I had no idea Mister Rawlins had actually put that in his will, his deed. I had, of course, asked him to please extend me that courtesy, but then he died and I believed all hope of purchasing that property was gone. I tried, naturally, but received no response.”
“Well, as I said, sir.” Thomas steepled his fingers, trying to look as if he were in deep concentration. “Those . . . reprobates who kidnapped me, hurt them.” Here he nodded at Jack, then me. Then his face went white and I thought he was going to weep, but he regained his composure. “It’s the papers, you see. They have it all now.”
“I doubt that,” I said. “As Mister Scribley mentioned, they may have a copy of the deed, but that is all. Apparently you are the legal heir to the property.”
“That’s the problem.” Thomas dropped his head into his trembling hands, raked his curly brown hair in fear and frustration.
“Boy, what are you talking about?” It was Scribley that time, annoyed with the emotional, nonsensical turn this conversation had taken.
“The papers, they state explicitly that the bearer of the original document is the sole owner. I didn’t give it much consideration until I got out here in this . . . this vast ocean of viciousness and carnage and . . .”
“All right then, enough of badmouthing our home, Thomas,” I said, for I consider all of the West my stomping grounds. “I still don’t think there’s much to worry about, though I can’t fathom why they kept you alive, considering they’re so murderous where the deed’s concerned.”
Jack piped in. “Maybe they’re not sure of themselves, intended to keep the boy alive until they knew for certain he wasn’t vital to their schemes.”
That made some sense, as much as any of this deal made, anyway. “Maybe so,” I said. “But where that deed’s concerned, I can’t imagine such a clause would hold up in a court of law. After all, there is certain to be a copy of it back East.”
Thomas shrugged. Not an encouraging sign. “I’ve never heard of the existence of one. But that really doesn’t matter now. We have bigger problems.”
Jack sighed and ground stubby fingers into his eyes. “Boy, you know something more about all this foolishness, you best come out with it. You are testing my patience.”
“And mine,” I said.
“Count me in.” Scribley downed the last of his drink and clunked the glass on the wooden tabletop.
“Fine, then.” Thomas cleared his throat. “That wasn’t the only clause your Mister Rawlins put in the deed. Apparently in an effort to ensure whoever ended up with the ranch wouldn’t up and sell, he also included a thirty-day occupancy clause wherein the possessor of the deed must stay on for a month.”
“That old Mister Rawlins, he might have been a savvy businessman with his ice and all,” said Jack. “But it sounds to me he was a whole lot shrewder about folks and their fickle ways.” Jack cast a look at Thomas, but the intention was lost on him.
Scribley nodded. “I’ll bet that clause was directed at his money-grubbing relatives back East. He told me more than once that if they wanted anything from him after he was dead, they were going to have to earn it. Then he’d wink.”
“Got to respect a man like that,” said Jack, sipping the last of his cognac. “Who knows? After a month there, it’d be the rare person who wouldn’t want to stay on.”
I looked at Thomas, but saw no sign of agreement or disagreement on his face. “Thomas, you need to tell us about your captors.” I couldn’t let the matter drop, scurry off to the mountains, and live my life run off by two such as them. Not when we had all lost so much, the girl the most of all. “Thomas, we need to learn more about them. There might be something you know that will help us deal with them, short of going in there with brute force and taking over.”
“Brute force is exactly how I aim to deal with them,” said Scribley.
“Where the deed is concerned, they have the law on their side,” said Thomas.
“Aren’t you forgetting they are lawbreakers, the worst kind?” I said it through gritted teeth as images of the dead girl clouded my mind—slowly swinging from the tree, her kicked-off boot, her blue face . . .
Scribley must have sensed my anger, and cleared his throat. “From what you tell me, with all the chicanery those two have gotten up to, I don’t think the law will do much to go against us. And besides”—he stood, razed a hand along his chin—“I am the law in these parts.”
“Don’t think we’ve forgotten that, Scribley.” In word it was a kind remark, but the way I said it intimated it would be a long time before I wo
uld forget what he’d threatened to do to us. Jack nodded agreement with me. If the remark mattered to Scribley, he didn’t let on.
“Well,” said Thomas, swallowing and looking around the table.
“Speak up, boy. Lamp oil isn’t free you know.” The rancher had slipped back to his bold, no-nonsense self.
“Yes sir,” said Thomas. “There are two of them. Felix Meiderhoff and his wife, Esmerelda. He once called her Ezz in front of me. But only the once.”
“The once?”
Thomas shrugged. “I’d say she didn’t like it. She hit him and he didn’t call her that again.” He leaned forward over his glass. “She is a frightening woman.”
I recalled what I’d seen of her, and while I wouldn’t have referred to her as frightening, I can say she was coarse, and sloppy, all scowl lines and flinty eyes. And when she did smile it was a cruel look, uncomfortable on her low, homely face. She looked to be the sort of woman who is never happy in life.
“What about their drinking, Thomas? Which one is the drunkard? Or is it both?”
“They both imbibe,” he said. “But Mister Meiderhoff is the one with the problem.”
“Hitched to a cow-beast like that,” said Jack, looking wistfully into his own empty glass. “I don’t blame the man for taking to the bottle.”
“Before I light out in the morning to settle their hash once and for all,” said Scribley, “I’d like to know the details of how your father came by the deed, young man. Is that information you have?”
Thomas looked up at Scribley, who had advanced to the youth’s chair and looked down at him, arms folded across his chest.
“I don’t know the answer to that, sir. I have given it some thought, particularly since this adventure began to sour. My best conjecture is that he bought it from one of the old man’s heirs, perhaps one who hoped to make quick cash.”
“You ever consider he might have come about it unlawfully?”
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