“I know, I know. It will kill the town, and it’s going to kill us because no one understands that we didn’t take that ad.”
“So we just keep on going, Miz Maggie, best as we can, and only you can decide whether we’re going to tussle them down to the wire or whether we’ll let up and see what happens.”
“I don’t know,” she groaned, “I just don’t know.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something, Miz Maggie. Neither would Mr. Frank have either. He wouldn’t have known which way was the best road not taken, so don’t you fret about that.”
“No, A.J., you’re wrong. Frank would have gone exactly the opposite way from me. He was a salesman, A.J. He would have given the people just what they wanted.”
But even knowing that was no consolation. Frank’s name was invoked so often that day she was sure he had been canonized.
And then there was Dennis. “Maggie, are you insane?”
And that word again.
“I beg your pardon, Dennis?” Polite, she had to be polite, and she had to make everyone understand that she was taking nothing, that the ads were not hers, that she was as opposed as ever to Denver North, and that there was no amount of money that would make her give in.
But she knew: his copy of the Morning Call was open to the insert, where he had encircled the Denver North ad with a bold black pencil.
“And you turned down their offer!” He was incredulous.
“Say it louder, Dennis. Everyone thinks I’m about to sell out to them because my supplier accepted their lousy little ad.”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
“I do not want to go anywhere. I’m tired of defending this. It is and it will be and I can’t do anything about it.”
“Then you’ll do the right thing and curb your criticism before we get hauled up before a magistrate for defamation or some other such charges.”
“God, you’re all so afraid of what Denver North can do. Obviously they’ll railroad me and get what they want anyway, am I right?”
“You’re too flippant, Maggie. You don’t wield the same kind of power as …” His voice trailed off, and she finished in a clipped voice, “… as Frank would have, if he were still alive.”
“I didn’t mean to say it quite so baldly, but yes, you don’t.”
“Then tie me to the tracks, Dennis, and let them run right over me.”
“Look, Maggie, it doesn’t have to be so black and white.”
“But this is a newspaper, Dennis. Of course everything is black and white.”
“Maggie …”
“Dennis, I can’t listen to much more.”
“Fine, I’ll end it, but I don’t want you to think that that ad has pushed everything else out of the limelight. I read what you wrote about Mr. Brown and his offers, and I swear Maggie, it is just short of libelous.”
“Or right on target with the truth,” she countered.
“Only if the majority agrees with you, which they don’t, and it’s a sure thing that Denver North is going to put a lot of money into promoting the positive aspects of their building here.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “That’s Mr. Brown’s purpose.”
“No, Maggie. Mr. Brown’s purpose is to buy land, short and simple. Your land first, the Mapes’ and Logan’s land if he can get it. That is it. And I think you’re losing your mind if you see ulterior motives where there are none, and if you refuse to see the advantage in selling your property. I think that is as much as I have to say about it today.”
“And it is more than enough, thank you, Dennis,” she said so dismissively that he turned on his heel and marched out the front door. He didn’t want to take care of her today, she thought broodingly. He looked ready to strangle her for being so obtuse.
She felt a thickness in her throat, almost as though there were hands around her neck, slowly slowly choking the life out of her. But it was almost the same. She could really begin to think she had enemies everywhere.
With all that, she was not thinking of Logan at all, and she was hardly in the mood for Reese’s company either when he joined her in the back room late that evening.
“Hiding again, Maggie?”
“No, repositioning type. Want to help?”
He waved her suggestion away, but he thought he might have stayed if she had been dressed the way she had been the previous night. “You’re very good at it.”
“I’ve been doing it since I can remember. My father taught me, you know. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in this room. I love it.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “no one will run you out, Maggie.”
“No, I don’t think so,”
“I’m on your side, Maggie. I hope you know that.”
“That’s nice to hear,” she said noncommittally, without looking at him. “What about your mother?”
“I have a feeling she always takes the line of least resistance. She wants everything to be easy for her and she never counts the cost for anyone else.”
“I suppose that’s true. She certainly has a fine old time haunting me with all her rude and suggestive comments. I have never heard a word of gratitude that I didn’t throw her out into the streets after Frank died. Believe me, she was impossible enough to live with then.”
“Maggie, you have to understand, she’s had such disappointments in her life.”
“Me too,” Maggie said shortly.
“All right. I’ll talk to her again. I will, Maggie. Between us, we’ll get her to understand.”
“I think that’s too much to ask, Reese. I’m not sure she has the mental capacity for understanding.”
“Maggie, she is my mother.” His voice took on the faintest tone of censure.
“Of course, Reese. To you she must be heart-warmingly lovable.”
“You are in a mood, Maggie.”
“It’s been a gut-wrenching day, if you don’t mind.”
“It must be wrenching to turn down twenty thousand dollars.”
Her hands stopped their constant motion for a fraction of a second. “Ah, I see. Well, I’ll tell you, Reese, when they offer you an equivalent sum for your property, I’m sure you will snap it up faster than you can toss a drink down your gullet. And quite rightly too.”
“Sorry, Maggie. It’s just so crazy.”
Another pause of her fingers. There wasn’t a thing she could say that wouldn’t sound like an agreement or a defense. “Are you on your way out, Reese?”
He looked startled. “I guess I was.”
She looked at him without a word. He grimaced and left her without any further comment.
At least her oldest friends did not desert her. The next day, she saw the Mapes’ wagon hitched up in front of Bodey’s store as she walked up for her usual Sunday morning visit.
The minute she entered the door, Annie Mapes launched herself at her. “Maggie, Maggie, how awful, how can you stand it? Is everyone being perfectly horrible? We don’t care, Sean and I, we …” She grabbed Maggie, and waltzed her down the main aisle of the store and almost smack into Arwin’s stove.
“Hi, Maggie.” This was Sean, in his usual measured tone, with his usual care and concern. She didn’t need to see them every day or even once a month to know they loved her. She always knew they were there, unwavering in their loyalty to her, as she was to them.
“Hi, Sean, Arwin.”
“How you feeling, Maggie?”
“Wrung out. How are you doing, Arwin? Getting a lot of business around the stove these two days?”
“I’d say, I’d say.”
“Well, we don’t care what anybody says, do we, Sean? We know Maggie’s got everybody’s best interests at heart and she always has.”
Artless Annie, Maggie thought, feeling a hundred years older than her childhood friend. “Thanks, Annie. What about you two? Everything going all right? Any rumbles about buying you out? Did you hear about my debacle with the Denver North lawyer?”
Sean answered her this time and Annie loo
ked faintly abashed. “We’re doing all right, Maggie, but in our usual straits. I can’t say that money wouldn’t look attractive to us right now….”
“Sean—” Annie protested.
“There are days,” he said slowly, “when I do wish that someone would make it easy for us to walk away.”
“I don’t want to hear that,” Annie protested. “I don’t. He won’t do it, Maggie. I don’t want to leave Colville and neither does he.”
She was so earnest, just on the point of tears almost, and she was the sweetest thing, with her silken yellow hair and pale complexion that no amount of outdoor work ever turned brown. Sean was her counterpart in looks if not temperament, with the same flawless features and skin. They were often taken for twins, or for husband and wife.
She wondered whether to tell them the dollar figure of her offer, but she knew they would hear soon enough. “They offered me twenty thousand dollars, Sean.”
He was astounded, and so was Arwin.
“I was so sure you had heard,” she said to Arwin.
“Maggie …” he growled at her, shaking her head. He didn’t know what to think.
“My God,” Sean said finally. “I wouldn’t turn that kind of money down, Maggie, really I wouldn’t.”
“I understand,” she said, because she knew how tightly against the line of utter poverty they lived.
“We, I, would go to Denver … in fact, I was even thinking about taking one of those jobs they’re offering.”
Annie looked stricken, as if this were the first time she had heard such a thing. “No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”
“He would be crazy not to,” Maggie said. She didn’t know why none of this surprised her.
Sean smiled at her wanly. “Thanks, Maggie.”
“No disloyalty to you,” Annie said caustically. “Everyone knows we’re such good friends.”
“It’s all right, Annie.”
“That damned railroad is tearing everything apart, just as you’ve been saying, Maggie. How soon before it comes between us, too?”
“It won’t.”
“But Sean …”
“That’s your business, not mine,” Maggie said, and she felt very strongly she had better leave right then before Annie’s distress escalated and something was said that could never be retracted later.
She hugged Annie tightly, and Sean with just a bit more reserve, and left the store. Still and all, she thought, the Mapes could be bought by Denver North. She wondered how much less their price might be.
She felt like a character in a play, walking in and out of scenes with people, all of whom were telling her things she did not want to hear.
Soon it would be Logan’s turn, and she was rather grateful that her malaise over the insert and her articles had preoccupied her to the point where thoughts of him could not intrude. She was in no mood for reliving their lovemaking. She could only remember the mechanics of it, and the compelling need. Anything else she did not want to recall, because it would lead to the extravagant yearning that had propelled her into his arms in the first place.
Perfectly right. Last Sunday was it, that he had possessed her in that erotic way? No more of that. He needed a proper mate who would put no boundaries and conditions on his feelings and her own. She even had a candidate, she thought, as the idea flashed into her mind. Just as she had told him: a farm woman, someone accustomed to his way of life, willing to bear all the children he could give her with all the ecstasy his heat could generate. And who would be so perfect for him but Annie Mapes?
It would solve all her problems. Sean could go off and seek some life he thought might be better, and Annie’s loyalties would remain intact, while Logan would acquire the kind of wife he deserved.
Logan and Annie. They had known each other forever. It made such perfect sense. As she thought about it, she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t perceived Annie’s perfect qualities and sought her out himself. But there was an answer for that. He had had an impossible dream about an imperfect Maggie whom he glorified all out of proportion to reality. She thought it would be easy to point out the truth, especially when it was so blindingly clear to her.
Logan and Annie. Yes. Annie would work with him side by side, just as he had a right to expect, and just as she would never be able to do. Annie would want children. Annie hardly ever wanted to come to town.
And she never wanted to be anywhere else but in town.
But it would never work that way.
Sunday again, with blessed peace in the morning and Mother Colleran’s voice ringing in her ears as she left for church, “I’ll pray for you, Maggie.”
I hope they crucify you, Maggie thought hostilely, and watched from the window as Reese solicitously helped his mother into her carriage and climbed into the driver’s seat to take her to church like a dutiful son.
She could not understand Reese. Reese had become a visitor who had somehow removed himself from his mother and Maggie except when he was home to tend to necessities. They did not know what he did during the day, except when he volunteered to drive Maggie where she might want to go or took Mother Colleran to church. They knew he spent every evening at the hotel, but for what purpose other than to drink, they could not conjecture. It wasn’t as if there were contacts to be made in the elegant confines of the hotel.
Nor could Maggie understand why he insisted on staying. He struck her as a man who was restless and got bored easily, yet he endured evenings in his mother’s company, telling the same stories with different embellishments, and had somehow found congenial company in a farm and ranching town a hundred miles from nowhere.
It didn’t seem to be an ideal situation for a man like Reese Colleran, and he didn’t seem to be on his way anywhere with any great hurry.
He even sat through church services.
And when he was in her presence, she reflected, he hardly ever took his eyes off of her. She had the lurking feeling that he was always looking at her breasts, always remembering that one revealing evening when he could see them as clearly as if she had been naked.
She just didn’t understand the reason he had come and the reason he remained. She wished she could kick him out of the apartment and straight over to the hotel where he spent most of his time anyway.
She would suggest it to him.
Maybe she would go live there herself.
Imagine what might be possible if she lived there.
Privacy.
Visitors.
Overnight visitors, visitors who would not have to slink out into the middle of the night like criminals, because no one would ever ever interrupt her in her own room.
Lovely.
But not a solution. She knew what she was doing: she was looking for a way to continue with Logan, and yet she knew that even if she were alone and in complete privacy, there was still no way to avoid their union with all its tempestuous consequences.
Even the thought of it was arousing. She knew, she knew, and she could not let herself keep thinking about it, about what it would mean. There was such a temptation to discount the aftermath for the sake of those moments of pure, glistening pleasure.
She did not want to be lost in a sensual reverie on a Sunday afternoon. It was deliciously quiet, a time she did not have to do anything, feel anything, go anywhere, see anyone.
And yet she was consumed with a reckless restlessness because nothing was settled, nothing.
She wandered down to the office. The emptiness of it was not peaceful to her. She felt empty, and she swiped at the papers on her worktable futilely. The papers fluttered and scattered and several fell to the floor. She stooped and picked them up, cursorily glancing at each. At one. Logan’s firm handwriting: Come to me.
Her breath caught in her throat. Come to him? Come to him? Just hitch up a buckboard and drive out to him bold as brass, as if no one would be watching, as if his hands wouldn’t be around to see?
To him?
She could go to him, and she could tell him
the conclusion she had come to; that was a reasonable excuse for a visit. Damn, who would see her or question her anyway?
There was no one in her house, no one to whom she had to answer anyway … she wanted to go to him. She was overwhelmed by how urgent the feeling was.
A half hour later, as she barreled down the track toward his spread, she was shaking with perturbation. She wasn’t sure things would go exactly the way she planned. Perhaps he would take her appearance as sending a totally different message than the one she intended.
Another fifteen minutes and she had driven her team into his dooryard. She saw him waiting for her on the porch.
She hadn’t been there in years. She remembered a rough-hewn building there, the equivalent of what Frank had built on his ranchland, and here she saw a fully completed ranch house that looked large and commodious.
He came out to meet her without a word, unhitched the team, and sent them out to the pasture. After he had pulled the wagon to the side, near the barn, she thought: it looked like any other wagon. It looked like something he might have in his barn.
She felt his hand at her elbow and a firm push toward the house.
“You’ve never been here.”
“Never.”
They stepped up onto the porch and she turned, momentarily, to look at the view. It faced the long drive that separated verdant grazing fields. Towering trees in the distance marked the boundary of the property. To the right was the barn and more grassland, to her left, a garden, and beyond that outbuildings concealed by a giant hedge.
He opened the door and she preceded him inside, into a large square room with a fireplace and a sofa and some chairs. The walls were covered with hand-loomed rugs and animal skins, as was the floor. At the far end there were several doors leading from the room, and a narrow staircase winding upward.
There was a curious silence in the air. She looked back to see him leaning against the door, watching her, his eyes scorching her with his need that she knew was reflected in her own eyes.
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