It was of two stick figures, one apparently in chaps and a Stetson, the other in what seemed to be her tiara but with western boots, bending toward each other and obviously kissing. Above their heads was an array of floating hearts and Xs. Below, he had written, Jesse and Alex Get Married 1889.
Alex looked at it and couldn’t stop giggling for a time. “Well, let’s hope maybe it’ll be sooner than 1889.” She looked at it again then leaned over to kiss him. “I tell you what, Jesse Makepeace—you hang on to this for me, and anytime you think I’m being miserable and ornery, you hand this to me and make me laugh.”
Chapter Sixteen
September blew in with a chill that was ominous. The punchers had more trouble than they had ever had in previous years with wolves coming down from the hills. The birds, too, seemed to be leaving early on their journeys south. Terry took down a mountain lion, and a herd of wild horses was spotted coming south from Wyoming. The ranch had a round-up, but only to cut out other outfits’ cattle who were sending them to the rail. Calthorpe had decided to keep his steers on until spring, take his chances that prices might go up.
Alex kept busy finishing her paintings and getting them crated for New York. Her exhibition opened Thursday, October 14th, although she had decided to go to New York in time to get there for the Monday before. She would oversee hanging the paintings in the gallery, stay for the opening as Jonathon wanted, and then come back. She planned on leaving Friday the 8th and being back around the 18th or 19th, taking Rose with her.
There were no further chances to be alone with Jesse. About mid-September she told him she was not pregnant so he shouldn’t worry, but the disappointment was obvious in her voice.
“Alex, it’s for the best,” he consoled her, but she just shook her head.
She went in to see Miss Bea for commiseration, knowing it was not something she could easily discuss with Annie.
“Hell, child, any time you an’ Jess want a bed for a couple of hours, you let me know. I can clear on outta here and get downstairs. Just say the word.” Yet the organization to do this was not something Alex could contemplate at the moment. Her mind was now on her work and making money.
****
New York was strange after life in the country, crowded and busy and distracting—and frightening. Jonathon sent a hansom cab to the hotel for Alex and Rose every morning, and put them back into one every evening. Alex wondered how she had ever managed after Madame Helene had died, but then recalled she had been quickly whisked away by the horrible consular officer. She ate with Rose in the hotel suite in the evening, declining both Jonathon’s various invitations to meet people as well as proposed reunions with family friends.
“This is business,” Jonathon finally told her on the Wednesday afternoon. “You may get commissions, people want to meet you,” he added with some exasperation.
“Then they can meet me at the opening tomorrow. I agreed to that, and I shall go, but that is it.”
“You’ve already marked three paintings as Not for Sale. The one of the cowboy sunning himself has already had several offers from my special clients, and the children too. In addition to which, I’ve had to remove the painting of the nude madam for fear it would be considered scandalous for a young woman to have painted. You never showed me that in Colorado.”
“It was hanging in the saloon in town, Jonathon. I…” She thought of her promise to make Bea famous but let the matter drop. Bea would never know anyway, and Alex felt she could not endanger her career.
“Lady Alex, please, please be reasonable,” he begged.
“I’m always reasonable, Jonathon. Always.”
****
She arrived for the private viewing party almost an hour late. Chaperoned by Rose who soon stood aside, Alex made a grand entrance, smiling good-naturedly at her audience. Everyone was captivated, everyone wanted to meet her, talk to her, know her—own her, she thought. Although some of them were either friends of her father’s or David’s, she found it wearing and couldn’t wait to get home.
But it was the money. Commissions were requested. While virtually all the paintings sold the first night, it was the commissions where the big money was to be made. New Yorkers, it seemed, wanted nothing more than their own portraits hanging above their imported marble fireplaces, and for it to be done by the daughter of an English Duke was quite a bonus. To Jonathon’s disgust, Alex declined them all—until Mr. and Mrs. Bell approached her to do a giant mural on the wall of their new home in Newport.
Alex proved a shrewd businesswoman; the money proffered for this fresco was five thousand dollars. Alex rejected it outright, saying it would take her three weeks and she wanted to get back to Colorado. They doubled the offer. Alex laid down her terms—there would be no socializing, no parties, no introductions to visitors, only work. She and Rose would have use of their private railway car there and back and, in addition, into New York for the unveiling of the statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” on October 28th. The deal was made.
She sent two wires. To Oliver Calthorpe: Staying three extra weeks STOP Visiting friends in Newport STOP Alex. To Jesse Makepeace: Persuaded to take important commission STOP Three extra weeks STOP Huge amount money STOP Start building dream house STOP I love you STOP Alex.
Jesse didn’t compare telegrams with Oliver Calthorpe but he heard about Alex’s alternative version from Tom. He envisioned Calthorpe as thinking “At least she has the sense to mix with the right people. Maybe this will put that puncher out of her head.”
Jesse read his and his heart sank but when he showed it to Tom, the older man said, “So where you gonna build that house of yours, Jess?”
“I can’t live on her money, Tom. That’s not right.”
Tom sighed. “I think, Jess, if you want the girl you’re gonna have to take the whole package. I knew the first day I met Alex, when she was eight years old, she was never going to be easy, she was going to try Annie and me constantly, but she’d always be worth it. She’s a dang perfectionist. Not for others, not for her surroundings, but for her—herself. And she doesn’t want to be dependent on you any more than you want to be dependent on her. Marriage is a partnership, anyway, give and take, half and half all the way. I know you got your pride. We all do. But Alex has got hers too and I tell you one thing—she’s not goin’ to change. Since that dang marriage her father forced her into, and since Madame’s death, she’s like some wild thing. Calthorpe don’t pay her no mind, and she certainly doesn’t listen to Annie or me much.”
Jesse grimaced thinking Tom didn’t know quite how wild Alex actually was.
“So where you gonna build that house?”
On November 11th Jesse got to the station a few minutes after the Express had left. He spotted the luggage but no Rose or Alex, so he loaded the bags into the wagon and waited, wondering where they had gone.
“Jesse?” said a voice behind him. It was Barney from Miss Bea’s. “Miss Bea said she had to see you real quick—said it was urgent and to take the back stairs.”
But Jesse knew it wasn’t Bea. He ran up the stairs and knocked on the office door. “Come on in, cowboy,” simpered a phony drawl.
He opened the door to see a trail of Alex’s clothes leading to the bed where she was comfortably ensconced. “Now what would you have done if it weren’t me, is what I want to know, Alexandra Calthorpe.”
Alex laughed. “Been very embarrassed, I guess.”
“Where the hell is Rose?”
“So many questions.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, charmed by her shamelessness, her lack of a girl’s prim modesty as she reached to unbutton his shirt.
“Rose is conveniently visiting relatives in Chicago. She’ll be back next week,” she said at last.
He bent to pull off his boots and remove his pants, then slipped under the covers, pulling her over to him. “Oh Gawd, I missed you!”
Their lovemaking was self-perpetuating—the more they made love, the more they wanted each other
, couldn’t get enough of each other, couldn’t stop. His body heat enflamed her, while the generosity of his lovemaking captured her heart and made her more giving. Alex had a white-hot heat that only Jesse could satisfy; his power over her was manifest. Only Jesse could make her body sing. Time and again his hard sex found the soft damp center of her core, their two bodies moving together to fulfill each other.
Two and a half hours later there was a knock on the door. “You still in there, sweetheart,” came Bea’s voice through the door.
“Which one of us are you calling sweetheart?” Alex called back, lying sated in Jesse’s arms.
“Time’s up, Lady A., less’n you all wanna be sharin’ that bed with others. You got twenty minutes to clear out or it’ll be a foursome,” to which she added in a lower voice, “Don’t suppose it’d be the first time here, neither.”
Alex laughed and said, “Yes, Ma’am!” She looked at Jesse. “I missed you so much. I couldn’t believe how much I missed you.”
He kissed her breasts then gently ran his hand around the curve of them.
“Not much there, I’m afraid.”
“No, but what there is, is prime quality.” Alex laughed again and Jesse held her face just looking at it. “You know how much I love you?”
“About half as much as I love you, I think.”
“Now what makes you say a thing like that?”
“Because I learned one thing while I was away, one very important thing.”
“Which was?”
“Being independent doesn’t necessarily mean not wanting someone with you always. All the time in New York, working, meeting people, dealing with Jonathon and his clients and their, oh, I don’t know… I did it all, but all the time it was like there was a part of me missing, a huge part. I don’t think I can live without you, quite honestly.”
She sat up to get dressed, wondering if she had told him the truth, knowing now that a career as an artist wasn’t only doing enough paintings for two exhibitions a year—it involved being away from home, taking those commissions which would make her name. Where did having a family fit in with all that? She looked across at Jesse again. Jesse with his intense blue eyes and his shaggy fair hair, Jesse slipping his shirt on over the taut muscles of his lean body. And she wanted him again, wanted all of Jesse, 100% of Jesse, even though she could never give him 100% of herself. “No, I can’t live without you. Does that make you feel lassoed,” she asked quietly, “or hog-tied or corralled? Or just plain trapped?”
“No.” He reached across and kissed her again. “It makes me feel loved.”
Two days later all hell broke loose.
Chapter Seventeen
On November 13th it started to snow and continued almost solidly for nearly thirty days. The reduced number of punchers had trouble getting feed out to the increased number of winter cattle, and after what had been a very dry summer, the grass under the snow cover was virtually gone. Cattle perished, the fat on the steers disappearing almost by the day. Then, around the end of the first week of December there was milder weather and a thaw began of the deep lying snow. Rose managed to get back from Chicago at last, and Christmas festivities were planned in the belief the crisis was over.
But on Christmas Eve it snowed again. Oliver and Alex were left alone while the men were sent out to trail feed the cattle that followed each other and huddled to stay warm. As the days went by, thawed slush turned to solid ice as temperatures dropped to minus 30. Horses plunged after the cattle in the deep snow, their legs cut and blood freezing on their coat as the wounds opened. Cattle feed was buried and the herd started drifting with the wind, walking and lowing, bawling, with empty stomachs and nothing more to eat than underbrush, bark from the few trees, lower branches and twigs, if they could find them. Hair wore off their legs to the hocks and soon it was hide peeling off from frostbite. Tails froze like icicles and snapped off. In many cases, their hooves froze and dropped off and they limped on with hoofless stumps while others became encased in the solidifying crystals and unable to go further. Those endless plains Alex had so admired now proved deadly with their lack of woodland as the snow eddied and swirled into the great emptiness.
In January, there was a three day blizzard, and on the 14th, the temperatures plummeted to forty-seven below. Alex was frantic for Jesse, whom she hadn’t seen since before Christmas Eve, and also worried for the Yosts in their much smaller home. Firewood and coals were running out, as was food, and she tried to keep herself busy with endless sketching rather than watch Oliver pacing the floor and shouting every time he was asked a question.
In late January, a Chinook melted the top layer of the crusted snow. Yet the winter was not over, and it turned cold again. On the third of February, another two-day blizzard started. The feed sleighs were practically useless now.
The men had been moved into the house to camp when they weren’t out, as the bunkhouse proved too cold for human habitation. Ropes ran from the stables to the house and outbuildings because the wind was so fierce at times it could blow a man off his feet, and the billowing snow was blinding. Food had to be rationed and snow melted for water consumption. In the evenings the men became almost sentimental for the old days, the trail rides, the hardships of a land that was filling with a civilization they did not want. They told Alex stories of this past and, although she had heard many before, she still loved to hear them—the Indian raids, the rustlers who hit the herd coming up, the river crossings and wild nights in cow towns (although these were toned down somewhat for her female ears). Alex almost knew the stories as well as the men remembered them, and would say to one of them, “tell me again about the time you did so-and-so” or “let’s hear about the…” and they would laugh and sit a moment and repeat the tale again.
She busied herself during the day looking after one of the men who had gone snow blind and a couple of others who had frostbite. And there was sketching, always the sketching. She talked with Jesse briefly but only long enough to know he was still all right, unhurt, and still had something of a sense of humor. “Ain’t you knittin’ for us all?” he asked.
The cattle looked like ghosts of themselves, Jesse said. Tom told her the men were nothing less than heroes, riding all day without a hot meal, in blinding snowstorms, their horses slowly plowing through the blizzard to try to get whatever feed they could find to the cattle. They mostly had to ride sideways into the wind, often unable to breathe in the inhuman temperatures, sometimes having to cup their hands over their noses and mouths to keep the wind and snow out in order to get the frozen air into their lungs.
Jesse came back in with Tom and Cal one evening in late February, and all humor was now gone. Alex was with her uncle when Tom told Oliver he believed they had lost between 60 to 75 per cent of the herd, the cattle had lumped together in places against the weather, heads lowered and crusted with snow, and starved or froze to death. Out on the rivers and lakes, they had drowned in numbers down air holes. Ravines and draws were filled with dead cattle, nothing but horns or noses sticking up through the deadly snow.
Alex fled the room to Oliver’s study. She couldn’t cope with all this loss, all this misery, and what she saw as probably the end of the ranch. She grabbed a pencil from a cup on his desk and looked wildly for paper to sketch on, opening drawers in his desk, pulling things out, shuffling through, trying to find any blank page on which she could work.
But instead of blank paper she found something unexpected, something she never imagined he would have—letters. A pile of them tied up with string, aging now, yellowing somewhat, but nevertheless there.
And she knew what they were.
****
In March, as Alex made her way to the stables to see Ranger, she heard what sounded like the gates of hell opening, steel screeching against steel. Joe came in to the stables. “It’s the ice. Breakin’ up on the rivers. It’s a thaw.”
The snow at last melted exposing a barren wasteland of earth and dead grass, a range that looked as if it h
ad never been anything more than dirt. Jesse told her you could almost walk from the Cache to the Thompson never stepping off the carcasses of dead cattle, and the ones that were living were emaciated, hollow and listless, searching aimlessly for food. He said the sight and the stench were unbearable and he hoped he would never live to see anything so miserable again.
Alex listened, hollow-eyed and gaunt, lethargic almost, unable to take it all in. Jesse believed she was worried about the ranch, about being sent home, about the two of them being separated, but he, too, was numb and unable to give her much comfort.
She rode out to see Annie but their meeting was strained. Annie and the children were fine but Alex couldn’t show any feeling. She felt languid, lacking any life, empty—and try as she might to talk to Annie about what was wrong, she couldn’t tell her dear friend about her discovery.
Things were slowly getting back to a semblance of normalcy. One evening, after all the men had moved back to their quarters, Tom came in to the main house with Jesse. Wilson opened the door but kept the two men in the hallway while he attempted to let Oliver know they were there. Alex and Oliver’s raised voices came from the study.
“You BASTARD,” Alex shouted, “you bloody bastard. You denied your own daughter, time and time again. You denied me, you bastard. How could you, you, you…how could you?”
“Alex, please, believe me, I wanted nothing more than to tell you...”
“How many times did I ask you? How many, FATHER? How many times did I come in here and ask you straight out, and still you denied it. And not only that, you denied me the right to hear my mother’s voice, to read her letters. Do you know what it is like to grow up without a mother? Do you know what it is like for a young girl not to have that woman who unquestioningly wants her in her life, to have someone to talk with, to love her, to hold her, to cuddle her, to kiss her goodnight? Do you know what it is like to grow up with a father—a supposed father—who hates you, hates your very being, hates the very sight of you, who wants nothing to do with you? And now I know why! I wasn’t even his. I was yours. What agreement, what deal had you reached, FATHER, that you couldn’t let me know, couldn’t recognize me as your daughter? Did he offer you money, you son of a bitch? You bloody bastard. Greed. That’s all it is, bloody greed. It’s run your life from start to finish—or at least I hope you bloody well finish it off because, believe me, I have a good mind to finish it off for you, you bastard. Really I do!”
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