In the Shadow of the Mountains

by Rosanne Bittner

  He shook her hand again. “Fine. Then we have a deal.”

  Hank glanced at Irene, holding his hand out to her. “It’s been nice meeting you again, Miss Kirkland.” Their eyes held as she took his hand, and he closed it over hers with a gentle squeeze that seemed to have more meaning than just a casual handshake. “Remember what I told you about one of Sunrise’s offspring.”

  “I will,” Irene answered. “And I’m glad you’ll be working with us, Mr. Loring.”

  She followed Bea and Hank outside, watching Hank mount his golden stallion with the ease of a man who fit the horse as if he’d been born on it. He tipped his hat to her and rode off alongside Bea’s buggy, heading for town. Irene rubbed at her arms, thinking how strange it was the way people moved in and out of other people’s lives. A casual hello while passing on the Colorado plains had led to Hank Loring working for her mother. She remembered how she had just glanced at Ramon that first day they came to Denver, and later there he was, working in her own house, riding with her, kissing her. A new, young lawyer had come to town, another total stranger, and now she would very likely marry him.

  She realized that in a place like Denver, there was no “old generation,” no citizens who could say their fathers and grandfathers had lived on this land. Only the Indians and Mexicans could say that. People came here from all walks of life, and all were strangers, thrown together in a common cause, heading toward a destiny none of them could predict.

  She headed back inside. She had to rest and get ready for tonight. Chad was coming for dinner, and she had a feeling he was going to give her a ring. He had said he wanted tonight to be special. She turned at the door to get one last look at Hank Loring and his beautiful stallion, and just as he had that first time out on the southern plains, Hank turned and waved at her.

  “Do you really think we can do it?” Chad asked Bea. It was nearly closing time at the office, and he had to get back to his room and get ready for dinner at the Kirkland’s tonight; but Bea Kirkland had another scheme going, and he never walked away when Bea was talking.

  “Of course we can do it,” Bea answered. “We have to. You heard what Hank Loring said. I need a lot of land. Under the Homestead Act those settlers can only claim a hundred and sixty acres at a time. The government won’t allow someone like me to buy up thousands of acres, so we’ll do it another way. We’ll pay those homesteaders twice what they would be paying for that land, have them sign papers signifying the land really belongs to us. They just won’t tell the government about it. We’ll pay those homesteaders to go ahead and work the land for the time being, let them make whatever farming profit they can make, build whatever buildings they need to make it all look perfectly legal. When we need that land, we’ll promise to help them settle someplace else, or they can stay on and work for Kirkland ranches. Either way, they have lost nothing, and we will have the land we need.”

  “What about unclaimed land?”

  “I want you to find people we can trust, pay different families to claim adjoining parcels under the act in their own names, only it will all really be ours. You can even file claims for us under fictitious names.”

  “It all sounds illegal.”

  “It is illegal,” she answered, folding her arms. “It wouldn’t be the first illegal thing you have done for me, Chad.”

  He grinned. “I guess not.”

  “Remember what I said about survival. And remember that no one is being hurt by it. I wouldn’t do it if it meant displacing families, but they’ll all be better off. You pay a man enough, he’ll do whatever you ask. And I want you to go and talk to the homesteaders personally.”

  “Me! I have my work here.”

  “Slade and Brown and I can take care of things here, and I might hire another man. This project in the south is very important, Chad. Someday we’ll have so many holdings down there I’ll need someone to run everything for me permanently, and that man could be you. I want you to go south and get a feel for the land. Besides, for what I want to do, I need someone to approach those homesteaders who is capable of talking a fish out of water. I can think of no one more charming and convincing than you. You’re the ideal businessman—one who understands that to get ahead in this world, we sometimes have to skirt the legalities, and one who can make a person believe anything he says just by smiling at them.”

  Chad laughed. “Well, thank you for your confidence.” He rose. “But I don’t relish being away from Irene. We haven’t had a lot of time together since she got back, Bea. I had plans tonight to ask her to marry me. I already discussed it with Kirk before he left because I wasn’t sure how long he would be gone this time. You must know I have his blessing, and I hope I have yours.”

  She smiled. “I can’t imagine you would think I would disapprove. Of course you have my blessing. I’m sorry to take you away from Irene, but if you become engaged before you leave, you’ll feel closer while you’re gone, and it will give Irene something to cling to. You’ll only be gone a couple of months. Then you’ll have the winter together, and perhaps we can plan an April or May wedding. Irene will be eighteen in March. Things will be back to normal around here by then, and you’ll have a good start on buying up land for the ranching business.” Her eyes lit up. “You could even take Irene to the south for your honeymoon. I’ll have a hotel finished by then. It would be a nice getaway for both of you. Irene told me once how pretty it was down there. She’d like that.”

  Chad gave her a wink. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  Bea patted his arm. “Good. You go on now and get ready for dinner. I’ll expect you at seven.”

  Chad took his silk hat from a hook and donned it, giving her a nod and a winning smile before he left. He realized with great pleasure that a trip south might not be a bad idea after all. While he was down in Colorado City, there would be no one to spy on him, no one to care what he did. He’d heard Colorado City was a wild town full of loose women. He could have himself one grand time before he came back to Denver to feign loyalty once again to one woman. He had not had a good romp with a woman ever since Susan killed herself; the mild guilt he had felt over that had left him, and he was getting restless again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  August 1863

  Chad led Irene up the stairs to the third floor and through the ballroom to the balcony outside. It was a beautiful, still summer night, a full moon lighting the distant mountain peaks. They could hear the occasional howl of a wolf far off in the foothills, while a few voices, mingled with the barking of dogs came from the direction of the city in the distance, where street lanterns glowed in the darkness.

  “I like this spot,” Chad spoke up, keeping an arm around Irene’s waist and leading her to a white wrought-iron bench to sit down. “Maybe it’s because it’s where we first kissed.”

  Irene smiled, thinking how he looked even more handsome in the moonlight. “Did you have places that were special to you as a child, Chad?”

  “Special?”

  “You know. Some secret place, like a tree you liked to climb, or a place you used to hide.”

  He looked away. The closet, he wanted to tell her. Anyplace where I could hide from my father’s curses and my mother’s lovers. There is nothing memorable about where I used to hide.

  “Well, our house in Pennsylvania is on the Allegheny River,” he said aloud, “near Pittsburgh. I used to sit at my bedroom window upstairs and watch the steamboats go by. Sometimes I’d sit on the windowsill, with my legs hanging out and a plate in my hands, and I’d pretend that plate was a ship’s wheel, and I was a captain, steering that steamboat down the river, watching for snags and other boats.” He grinned, meeting her eyes again. “You don’t want to hear silly things like that.”

  She smiled and moved closer, resting her head on his shoulder. “Yes, I do,” she told him. “I was just thinking today how little I know about you. You never talk about your childhood, Chad.” She moved her face to kiss his cheek. “I want to know you better, to know about
your family.”

  You don’t want to know my family, he thought, the hurt and bitterness returning to his soul. “There isn’t a lot to know,” he said aloud. “I mean, there was just me—no brothers and sisters. My father owns an iron mill in Pittsburgh. He’s done well. I always had a nice home, everything I needed. My mother didn’t go out and work like Bea does.” She was usually home in bed with some other man, he could have added. My father had his share of lovers himself. None of that would have been so bad if my mother hadn’t let one of her male friends come after me and—

  Chad suddenly rose, taking off his jacket. “It’s hotter tonight than I expected. It usually cools off better than this once the sun goes down.” Why didn’t my father believe me when I told him what that man did? Because he never loved me, that’s why; because he didn’t think I was even his own son. But why didn’t my mother defend me? Were her lovers so important to her that she didn’t care what they did to me?

  Irene noticed Chad seemed suddenly upset, but she couldn’t imagine why. “Do you have much contact with your parents?” she asked. “Do you think they’ll come out here to visit you sometime? I’d like to meet them.”

  He smiled, surprising Irene by looking nervous. He ran a hand through his hair and walked to the railing of the balcony. “Well, they’re pretty busy. I write them and they write me, and I’ve told them all about you,” he lied. He had not contacted them since leaving Harvard, and he couldn’t care less if he never saw either of his parents again. “They’d like to meet you someday, but my father’s mill is getting a little slow.” Probably because he’s too drunk to go in most of the time. How he hated drunks! His father always swore at him the worst when he had been drinking, reminding him he was the bastard son of one of his mother’s lovers.

  To this day Chad seldom touched liquor. He thought it ironic that he had so many other vices but refused to drink. “He’s pretty tied up keeping the business above water, and my mother is afraid to come out here to what she calls the wild West,” he continued. “And as busy as your mother keeps me, I don’t see much chance of your meeting my folks anytime soon. But I’ve always been independent of them, and they trust my judgment.”

  He turned to look at her, studying her trusting eyes. Yes, he had other vices, but a man had to protect himself. Or was it the little boy in him wanting to protect and be protected? He sometimes wondered at his own insatiable appetite for women, for money and power. The women helped assure his confused soul that he was indeed a man, that what his mother’s lover had done to him that night did not make him some kind of freak. Then again he sometimes thought of his mother when he was with other women, hated her, wanted to get back at her. Sometimes it felt good to hurt a woman as he had hurt Susan Stanner, as his mother had hurt him by refusing to protect him from that stranger, and as she had hurt him by sleeping with so many men.

  The thought made him turn away from Irene. He stared out at the distant peaks, wondering, as he had wondered most of his life, which one of those men his mother took to her bed had been his real father. “The boy is a bastard,” his father used to rage at his mother. “You think I don’t know that? You think that sandy hair and those gray eyes came from either one of us?”

  “Chad?” Irene approached him, touching his arm, realizing he was lost in thought. “Is something wrong?”

  He met her eyes, at first looking almost angry; but the look vanished, and he smiled. “Not when I’m with you,” he told her, pulling her close. He reminded himself to be careful. She must not know the truth about his parents, or she might realize he was marrying her simply because marrying someone so sweet and innocent made him feel better about his sordid past. She didn’t need to know his father had disowned him, had left Chad out of his will because he did not consider Chad his son. She didn’t need to know he longed for the money and power of a Kirkland because it was his way of protecting himself so that no one could ever again abuse him or take advantage of him. He had to stay on top, stay in control. He needed the Kirkland money, the high-paying position Bea had given him. He needed a woman like Irene on his arm to ensure no one ever knew about what that man did to him when he was a little boy; needed all the other women to prove he was as normal as the next man.

  He had one thing to thank his unknown father for, and that was his looks. He had worked hard creating a charm to go with those looks, then using both to attain his goal of being his own man, of being wealthy and independent in his own right, of being in total control.

  Irene gave him a feeling of stability he had never known before. She wasn’t like all the others. Most women he had known were just like his mother—easy, secretly panting after men like bitches in heat. He didn’t mind obliging their whims, since every time he did, he knew he was a man. He blamed both his parents for instilling in him sexual needs that were not easily satisfied. But he could at least thank his mother for his good looks, and thank his father for teaching him how to lie with a smile on his face.

  Now he would marry Irene, a woman who could give him everything he needed, a woman who was innocent and unspoiled. She had not gone down easy, as Susan had. She didn’t look at him with the eyes of a whore, his mother’s eyes, the look he had seen in Elly’s eyes and the eyes of so many other women. He could have the others and still have this one special one for himself, this one woman who gave him a feeling of security he had never gotten from his mother.

  “You do love me, don’t you, Irene?” he asked quietly.

  There was a strange urgency to the words that made him sound like a little boy. Irene sensed a sudden vulnerability she had never noticed before. Chad Jacobs exuded such confidence, brashness, and sense of humor, it always made her forget her doubts about marrying him. Now that he’d shared with her the tiny bit about his past, telling about his childhood pretending, she felt he needed her, and she was all the more sure that she loved him.

  “Of course I love you,” she said, looking up at him. “Why would you need to ask?”

  He searched her eyes. “I love you, too, Irene.” So often he wished that he understood what love was supposed to be. His father’s many affairs could not possibly have been love. What his parents shared was not love; what his mother did with other men was not love. Irene made him feel safe. Maybe that was love. He was sure she wouldn’t be unfaithful as other women were. He only wished he could promise the same fidelity, but he knew he could not.

  He covered her mouth with his lips, still intrigued that he had never gone further than this with her. He felt her respond, begin to kiss him back, and he felt his power over women return. He needed to know women responded to him, found him virile and desirable. When he was enjoying a woman, he was not a cowering little boy at the mercy of a stranger. He was a man in total control, behaving the way a man was supposed to behave. When he broke a woman’s heart, he was breaking his mother’s heart, and it was a good feeling.

  He ended the kiss by pulling her tightly against him. “Enough about my family,” he told her. “I had a very dull, ordinary childhood.” He whirled her around. “I came up here for other reasons.”

  Irene laughed as he set her on her feet. He kissed her again, more suggestively this time, experimenting with her mouth, her emotions, her responses. She was so proper it made him laugh even while he was kissing her, and she pulled away. “What’s so funny, Chad Jacobs?”

  “Never mind. Just tell me you’ll marry me. We’ve both known that’s what is supposed to happen ever since your mother first invited me here for supper over a year ago. I don’t know why your father insists on waiting until you’re eighteen. You’re all of a woman right now, from what I can see…and feel,” he added, pressing her closer again and making her blush. “If I have to wait, then I will. But we can at least spend the next few months planning a wedding.”

  He reluctantly let go of her and walked to where he had laid his jacket. He took a small black box from the pocket and placed it in her hand. “Will you marry me, Irene?”

  She trembled a little
and felt warm inside as she took the box. At that moment she had never been more sure she loved him. Ramon could never be a part of her life now. That dream was done. She had responsibilities now, and there could be no more perfect man to welcome into the Kirkland empire than Chad Jacobs. If she allowed her unspoken doubts to keep her from this man, there were probably a thousand other women in Colorado alone who would gladly take her place.

  She opened the box, and the huge diamond inside sparkled in the moonlight. “Oh, Chad, it’s beautiful. But it must have been so expensive.”

  “Not nearly big or beautiful enough for you, but if I spent any more I wouldn’t have enough to take us away for a honeymoon. I don’t intend to sit back and let your parents support us, Irene. I think I’ve proven that by how hard I’ve been working since the fire. The money I have is money I’ve rightfully earned, and that’s the way I intend to keep it. I bought that ring with money I saved from my regular salary.”

  She sighed, taking the ring from the box and sliding it onto her left hand. “It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.” She looked up at him. “Yes, I’ll marry you. I love you, Chad.”

  He smiled then, a smile that had led Susan Stanner to a tragic destiny. “And I love you, Irene Kirkland. I’ll admit I knew your mother was just trying to set me up at first, but I didn’t need any prompting when I saw how lovely you were. When I realized how sweet and loving you were on top of it, I knew I’d be a fool to let you slip through my fingers.”

  He pulled her back into his arms, kissing her hungrily, lifting her off her feet and making her laugh again. “What do you think of Europe?”

  “Europe?”

  “Your mother wants us to go south for our honeymoon, take care of a little business at the same time. But after that, I say we take a nice, long voyage to Europe. What do you say?”