But as they moved inside the sumptuous hotel lobby, her eyes caught a familiar figure and face. She paused, watching the woman until she turned.
Gavin looked down at her and then over to the woman in curiosity. “Moira?”
Moira stared at her for a moment, even after the older woman fully faced her. It was not her mother. But she looked hauntingly like her.
“Do you know her?”
“N-no,” she said, turning at once to resume their climb up the stairs. But the thought of her mother here, watching her, knowing what she was doing immediately robbed her of any glory she had felt. In its place was a sense of foreboding. Her stomach pitched.
“Are you all right, Moira?” Gavin asked. “You’re suddenly flushed.”
“I’m only a bit weary. Do you think you might leave me for a bit, allow me to rest? I have a sudden headache.”
“Certainly,” he said. “I’ll go and fetch some ice from the barkeep, so you might have a cool cloth upon your forehead. It is a bit warm for the end of April. More like summer, I’d say. Perhaps you got a bit overheated?” They moved into the room and he threw back the covers, then moved to help her undress, slowly unlacing her corset. “Mmm. Are you certain you have a headache, darling?” he asked, kissing her shoulder and then her neck.
“I’m afraid so,” she lied. “Forgive me.” Moira knew Gavin would respond to her complaint of a headache, since he so often suffered from them himself. She moved away from him and slid underneath the covers. “That cool cloth? It would be divine,” she said, raising the back of one hand to her forehead.
“Of course,” he said slowly, giving her the impression he did not believe her act. But as he slipped out the door, quietly closing it behind him, she had difficulty caring whether he believed her or not. Because all she could see was that woman in the lobby, the cut of her nose, the hollow of her eye, all so hauntingly familiar. Mama, I miss you.
She shoved away the thought of her mother seeing her here, in this hotel room shared by a man who was not her husband but masqueraded as such. Her mother and father were long gone. Her family—Odessa, Nic—were far away. This was her life now. Hers to make of it as she wished. She grasped for the fleeting glory she’d felt that morning, the brief respite of power, but failed to find it again. All she could feel was a burning in her chest, a burning that took her a while to name.
Shame.
Shame? She let out an unladylike snort through her nose and threw back the covers, just as Gavin arrived with his small towel and chunk of ice. “Thank you,” she said, lifting a hand to her forehead again. “Honestly, I can’t tell if I need to rest with the curtains closed and that atop my head, or to get out again under the bright sun. I’m so antsy, and yet weary too.”
He sat next to her on the bed and handed her the towel and ice. “That woman downstairs … did she remind you of someone?”
Moira paused and glanced nervously his way. “She … she reminded me of my mother.”
“Ahh.” He lifted his chin and then dropped it. “I see. How long ago did your mother die, Moira?”
“Five, almost six years ago now.”
“And your father?”
She pushed back the covers and rose, striding to the window to peek out the narrow slit to the street below. “I’d really rather not talk about it.”
Gavin came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her torso, kissing her head. “Then we shall not discuss it. I could take your mind off of—”
She squirmed out of his arms and turned to face him. “Gavin, perhaps I do need that nap. Forgive me for being so discombobulated. Could you do me a favor and give me an hour alone?”
Gavin straightened his shoulders and jacket. “But of course, darling.” His words were smooth, but his tone was sharp. She had hurt his feelings, the first time she could remember doing so. But before she could make amends, he strode over to the door and snapped it open, then closed it behind him with exaggerated care.
Chapter 12
Robert climbed up the fence of the corral to sit beside Bryce. They remained in companionable silence for a while, watching the men work a few of the mares. Bryce was considering his stock, which mares to breed with which stallion. But now that his brother was here, he could think of nothing more than the day before, when he pored over the ranch ledgers. And then said nothing.
“You’re in some serious trouble,” Robert said at last.
“That and then some,” Bryce returned, his eyes still on the mares before them.
“I don’t see how you’ll make it, Bryce,” Robert said. He turned and stared at him, but Bryce stubbornly refused to meet his gaze.
“I’m still thinkin’ on it.”
“You have to go to Spain. Pick up new stock, enough to sell some for profit upon return, and enough to replenish the herd. Even then, it’ll be lean for a few—”
“You think I haven’t thought of that myself?” Bryce cut in, looking at his brother then, eye to eye. “You don’t know anything about ranching. What makes you think you should come in here, tell me how to run the Circle M?”
Robert stared at him a moment, then turned back to the corral and licked his lips. He tucked his head and glanced at his hands, then back to Bryce. “My business is shipping. Yours is ranching. It’s been the way of it for years. But the family still has a stake in the Circle M, just as the family has a stake in my shipping yard.”
“And you don’t see me out there in Maine questioning you about your next keel, right?”
Robert sighed. “If you had only listened to me last fall, Bryce. Built the snowbreaks, the extra stables. Given up the added water rights …”
Bryce shook his head. He pulled off his hat and looked over at him again. “I don’t see a way out. I go to Spain, I’m bound to get sick again. And I can’t leave, not now. Not after all that’s happened, not with Bannock anywhere near Colorado, let alone stateside. I won’t leave Dess, Samuel alone. I can’t.” He shoved his hat on his head and looked to the mountains, a brilliant blue line in the near distance, capped with receding white snows. “And yet if I don’t …”
“Sell some land.”
“Sell it? At a loss? That makes no sense.”
Robert eyed him. “You have to do something. You’re not going to make it through winter.”
Bryce let out a scoffing laugh. “I lose if I do, I lose if I don’t … I didn’t need you here, brother, to tell me what I already knew.”
23 April 1887
I know Bryce longs for the sea; he has longed for the spray upon his face, the rhythm of the waves as long as I have known him. And yet his paintings have become more monochromatic over the last year, as if he’s forgotten the stormy gray azure of the Atlantic, the unique green of the Caribbean, the same green that he claims he remembers every time he looks in my eyes.… In the last months he’s not painted at all. We’ve had the storm and the losses with which we’ve had to negotiate, and it’s also been foaling season and then breeding season, keeping him busy, but we have fewer horses than at any time in our marriage. So I can only think that it is the longing for the sea that dampens his spirit, mutes his palette.
Might it be a good risk for him to take, to go to Spain to replenish our stock? It would give him the plan he needs to assure his brother he has things in order despite our current troubles, as well as give him a dose of the ocean he so loves. And yet it would leave him exposed to the consumption and me exposed to an attack from Reid. Try as I might, I cannot find the answer. I only know that something must be decided soon, for we are like three dancers, all without a partner.
When they reached Westcliffe the next day Bryce accompanied her into the General Mercantile, and Robert went off to explore the town. He was intent on finding a pram for Samuel, regardless of Odessa’s protest against the unneeded expense and the fact that the mercantile didn’t have one. “Do you really see me pushing your nephew around the ranch in a pram?” she asked wryly.
But he was adamant. “Mother would want to
know Samuel was in a proper carriage,” he said. “Indulge an uncle, would you? And his grandmother from afar?”
“Oh, all right,” Odessa said, throwing up her hands and letting out an airy laugh. “Do what an uncle must.”
They purchased flour and sugar and several flats of canned beans and carrots and berries. “Oh, I cannot wait to add these to our normal fare,” she said to her husband. “I’m sick to death of roast and potatoes!”
He smiled at her and loaded in three crates of chickens to supplement their own flock. “Summer’s around the corner, darlin’. And with it will come a harvest from our own garden!” He dropped a sack full of seed packets for that garden—rhubarb, cabbage, carrots, peas, beans, potatoes, corn, and even some flowers like hollyhock and larkspur. Most crops only did modestly well in the Colorado extremes, but they’d take what they could get. The men took turns aiding her in the garden, weeding, watering, harvesting. It was one of the things Odessa liked best on the ranch. And after running out of canned vegetables in April, she was anxious to expand it this year.
“We should plant a few fruit trees too, Bryce,” she said, eyeing the tender young saplings at the corner of the mercantile. “A few peach, apple, and plum.”
He cast a doubtful glance in the trees’ direction.
“Just to see,” she added. “You never know.”
He moved around the corner of the wagon and edged near her. “You never know.” He reached up to touch her cheek and then bent to kiss Samuel’s back. He was asleep on her shoulder. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Odessa McAllan,” he said, “you’re always so full of hope.”
She smiled and lifted a brow. “Does that mean we can try it? A little orchard?”
He gave her a wry grin. “We can try. But I’m betting those little saplings will be next winter’s kindling.” He shook his head. “This just isn’t fruit country.”
“It works in Penrose. And on the Western Slope.”
“Different conditions, temperatures. But you can try it if it’ll make you happy.”
“Oh! Thank you!” She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.
“Heavens, Mrs. McAllan, what will all these fine people say?”
“They’ll say ‘those McAllans must be a happily married couple.’”
“They’d be right,” he said, smiling into her eyes. “I’m proud of you, Dess. It’s come to my attention how much you do at the ranch, for our family, for the boys. I see you, Dess. I know what you put in, day in and day out. And I appreciate it.”
She hovered there for a moment, relishing his kind praise. “Should we go, then? Grab those saplings?”
“Sure,” he said. “Sure.”
Bryce, Robert, Odessa, and Samuel were eating at Fanny’s Restaurant, enjoying a delicious dinner of roast chicken and new potatoes with a healthy portion of early peas—“just came in on a train from California,” the waitress announced proudly—with Samuel happily asleep in the new large pram perched beside their table. Odessa had no idea what she would do with the pram once they returned to the ranch, but it satisfied her brother-in-law to have accomplished what he set out to do.
They talked of life in Bangor, of the family’s shipping business, and new trade routes that were opening around the world.
“Deciding to take part in some of the trade, rather than simply build the ships, was some of the most clever advice I ever took,” Robert said with satisfaction. “You would not believe the loads of Victorian nonsense we’re importing from China—shiploads of furniture, bolt after bolt of silk fabric … I tell you the truth, we could keep ten more ships busy full time, simply on that venture. And thank God for it! After losing those two ships this winter, we’d be in dire straits ourselves, had we not expanded in such a fashion.”
Odessa studied him as he spoke, waiting for him to broach the subject of the shipping business success versus the ranch’s struggles, but then Robert asked Odessa about growing up in Philadelphia. They realized they knew a couple of the same families, connecting them, albeit loosely, but connecting them all the same. Robert told a hilarious story about his friend trying to woo a girl that Odessa once knew, all to no avail. But the story amused her, bringing back happy memories of Philadelphia society. It all felt like so long ago …
Odessa sat back against her chair, uncomfortably full after a slice of apple pie, but completely satisfied. It felt so grand to be out, away from the ranch for the day. Most times when she came with Bryce to Westcliffe, they bought their supplies and made their way home. It never occurred to them to eat a little early and head back using the last of daylight to reach the ranch. “I love this,” Odessa said to Bryce. “This is the ultimate luxury, not cooking—having someone else feed us for a change.”
He smiled over at her. “You deserve it. We’ll need to make it a habit, every time we come to Westcliffe.” A shadow crossed over his face. Money. He was thinking about money again, the future.
Robert paid the bill, and they rose to depart. But as they were pulling on their jackets, Sheriff Olsbo and his wife entered the restaurant. The sheriff glanced over to his wife and said, “Would you mind if I take a moment with these folks?”
The short, well-rounded woman waved him onward as she followed a waitress to a small table for two in the corner. Odessa instinctively knew she didn’t want to know the words that would come from Sheriff Olsbo’s mouth. But Bryce reached out a hand to her, and Robert was already proudly pushing the pram out the restaurant door.
“Come, Dess,” Bryce said, reading the hesitation on her face.
Together, they walked out the door and Odessa pulled her coat a little tighter around her. The evening still held spring’s chill. They gathered together, and the sheriff eyed Robert and then glanced at Bryce.
“It’s all right,” Bryce said. “This is my brother, Robert. There are no secrets between us.”
Odessa wondered, wondered when he had told his brother about that hateful day when Reid and Doctor Morton came to the ranch, murdered their ranch hand Nels, and kidnapped her.
“Reid Bannock’s been sighted in the county.” The sheriff’s voice was low, gentle, his eyes on Odessa.
Her breath came out in a swift whoosh, and she was glad that Samuel was safely in that ridiculous pram, because suddenly, her legs felt weak. Bryce wrapped an arm around her waist. “You all right?”
She ignored his question, straightened, focused on her anger toward Reid, and stared at the sheriff. “When? Where?”
“We trailed him for two days and lost him this morning, just over the pass. He was instructed to stay away,” he rushed on, his big hands bouncing in the air. “If I get a hold of him, I have the right to jail him immediately.”
“Where was he heading?” Bryce asked.
“Hopefully, he’s on his way West. Just took a shortcut to tell me he’s man enough to taunt me.”
“No,” Odessa whispered. She glanced at her husband. “He knows, Bryce. He’s found out about the gold bar … or he’s coming for us.”
The sheriff glanced around and then leaned in. “There aren’t but a few who know about the gold,” the sheriff said, doubt lining every word.
“But the legend is well-known around these parts, and Cañon City isn’t far away. If he caught wind of it, wouldn’t he come to the same conclusion as we did? That the treasure Sam was trying to direct us to was not a new treasure but rather an ancient one? And that bar might be just one of many more?” Odessa said.
She grimaced as both Bryce and the sheriff shushed her. In her agitation, she hadn’t realized how her voice had risen.
“All I know for sure,” the sheriff returned in a hushed voice, “is that if he dared to come ’round, he’d come up against Bryce’s shotgun, with twelve men to back him up. And I’m sayin’ I wouldn’t question a man who shot a trespasser like that on his property.”
“If Bryce is home,” Odessa ground out. “And what if word has reached Reid that we found that gold bar in Louise’s cabin? Rei
d has always thought we knew the way into Sam’s mine. He’ll find us even more irresistible if he thinks we know the location of conquistador gold, that he could simply lift and load.”
“What do you mean by ‘if Bryce is home’?” the sheriff asked, eyes narrowing in confusion. “You mean if he’s not in the house?”
“No,” she said, barely shoving back tears. “If he’s in the country. If he’s in Spain.”
The sheriff glanced from Odessa to Bryce. “You thinkin’ of takin’ a trip?”
“Thinking about it,” Bryce allowed.
“I’m thinkin’ you ought to consider different options,” Sheriff Olsbo said carefully, gesticulating with his big paw of a hand. “As I said, I don’t expect Bannock will come this way. But if he did … I don’t want your wife and child at home alone.”
“They wouldn’t be alone. I’d have the hands rotating watch.”
Sheriff Olsbo raised one doubtful, bushy brow. He shook his head. “How ’bout you take the missus with you to Spain? That’s a six, nine-month trip from here.”
Odessa’s eyes lifted in surprise. Hope surged through her. It was better to take the risk and be together than—
Bryce was already shaking his head. “Impossible. The consumption makes it too dangerous for Odessa.”
“Haven’t you struggled with bouts of consumption yourself?” the sheriff pressed. Bryce glowered in his direction, and the sheriff immediately backpedaled. “I’ve said enough.” He raised both hands. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, friends. Let’s hope Bannock’s simply on his way elsewhere. I’ll let you know if I catch wind of anything about him. And you let me know if you head East, all right?”
HT02 - Sing: A Novel of Colorado Page 13