Heresy

by Melissa Lenhardt

  Forgive me, Grace. I’m becoming maudlin. It happens more often than not, though I have done a magnificent job of keeping those thoughts out of this journal.

  When I finished, I sat back in my chair while Bohai poured the sherry. I sniffed it, toasted Callum, and drank it in one shot.

  —Is this my last meal, Callum?

  —I’m sorry?

  —You obviously hold Dorcas and her opinions in little regard since you’ve ordered an elaborate picnic of silver and china for the woman who confessed to stealing from your father.

  —You see, there is the key point: you stole from my father. I couldn’t care less. By the time I came to Colorado, that loss had been absorbed. The check you gave me was, to my mind, pure profit. You confessed, you seemed to have a legitimate complaint against him. For me, it’s ancient history.

  —And for Dorcas?

  —Oh, she holds a grudge. She doesn’t understand why you would turn my father’s marriage proposal down. I, on the other hand, admire you for it.

  —Why?

  He leaned forward.—I like strong women.

  I laughed.—Do you?

  —Indeed, I do.

  —You like the idea of strong women. When confronted with a woman who speaks her mind, who challenges you, who won’t do as you bid, your opinion will change quickly, I venture.

  —Are you willing to challenge me, Garet?

  —Are you propositioning me?

  He leaned back in his chair and hooked his arm over the back in an insouciant manner.—Isn’t that why you’re here? Why you came with me?

  —To be your lover? No. I came to see my ranch.

  —That is disappointing.

  —Why would you think that?

  —It’s widely known you took Jed Spooner into your bed almost as soon as your husband was buried. Knowing your husband was missing an arm, I thought that you had a soft spot for deformed men.

  —Jed wasn’t deformed.

  —But he was an outlaw. That is its own kind of deformity.

  —You think so?

  —Deformity of the soul.

  —If Jed suffers from that, then so does every businessman I’ve ever encountered, especially your father. Businessmen are as much outlaws as gangs like Spooner’s, or even the James Gang.

  —Murderers?

  —You aren’t so ignorant as to think your business decisions don’t affect people’s livelihoods and in turn their health and well-being. You may not pull the trigger, but you are responsible for their deaths.

  —Interesting argument, but full of holes. You forget we live in the land of opportunity. If a man works hard he can, and will, succeed.

  —And a woman? I worked hard. My family worked hard. We succeeded, but in the end, our livelihood was stolen from us.

  Callum shrugged.—I don’t make the rules, Duchess. I just play by them.

  —Don’t call me that.

  Callum stood and stretched.

  —This conversation took a turn I didn’t expect, though I suppose I should have. Dorcas told me you were opinionated.

  —I prefer intelligent.

  —I’ll get the horses.

  We swam our horses across the river and continued on at a sedate pace, though I was stewing in anger at Callum’s proposition and our infuriating conversation. Too many businessmen were crooks and liars, but society rewarded them for their transgressions. Whereas women …

  I’m sorry, Grace. No more talk of that. I’ve thought of it too much these past five years, the injustice, and I just do not have the energy to put it all down on paper. I’m sure you understand my thoughts. You are an intelligent woman trying to make it on your own. If you don’t understand yet, you will one day.

  The sun was high overhead, and it didn’t take long for our clothes to dry. The land around became familiar, and I started recognizing landmarks from my past. We were getting closer to my ranch, and the only way to keep my anger at bay was to keep talking.

  —What have you done with your father’s business since he died? It’s quite the empire, I understand.

  —Empire? My father would be pleased to hear you call it that, but it is much too grandiose a name for a group of businesses, most of which barely break even, and the others are so expensive to run they’re almost not worth it. This weekend, I look to remedy that.

  —How?

  —By stealing from and murdering people, of course.

  —Touché.

  —I didn’t mean to anger you earlier, Margaret. You are correct that bad behavior in men is seen as strength and rewarded, but in women as weakness and punished. I am correct in that I didn’t make the rules, and I would be a fool to not play by the same set as other, more ruthless men.

  —Justify it however you want. I, for one, don’t want to talk of it anymore. You and I won’t change anything this weekend. Am I to understand Dorcas ran your business while you were in South America?

  —For someone out of the territory for years, you know a lot about my family.

  —I read the papers, and I’m always on the lookout for news about Connolly Enterprises. To torture myself, you know.

  —Yes, Dorcas ran the company. Made a few solid moves, but most of her acquisitions are the failing ones.

  I made a noncommittal noise and suspected he was lying.

  —I confess I was surprised to hear that you had come out west to run your father’s business. You and your father had … a strained relationship, from what I remember.

  —He spoke of me to you?

  —Not frequently, which is why I assumed your relationship was strained.

  —He wanted me to come west with him, take advantage of the distraction of the war. I decided to stay, and then I fought for the wrong side.

  —You were a rebel?

  —I was, and I do not apologize for it.

  We rode in silence for a mile or more. Soon we came to the fence line that delineated my old ranch. Colonel Connolly had not been pleased when Thomas and I decided to fence off our land. But it made sense since our stock was our livelihood, and we couldn’t very well have it running off into the foothills to return to its herd of wild mustangs. I was surprised to see the fence still there and in good repair. I’d expected the colonel to tear it down as soon as the girls and I rode away.

  Mares and foals grazed in the distance. Ducks swam in the tank that provided water for the herd. The mountains behind hadn’t changed, nor had I expected them to. Memories of sitting on our back porch together, Thomas and I, drinking coffee in the morning, whisky at night, watching the sun rise behind us and set in front of us, conversations about running the business, about the horses to keep, the ones to sell, and the ones to breed. In the distance some seemed familiar, though none of those horses could be from my stock, stolen by the army.

  Colonel Connolly had planted trees along the fence line near the entrance to our ranch, but they were young enough I could see my house before we arrived. A sharp pain shot through my abdomen, and I grasped my stomach and leaned over.

  —Duchess, are you ill?

  I glared at Callum for the use of that infernal nickname, said that the pain comes and goes and that I had a tincture I could take once we dismounted. He nodded and looked me up and down. I think that until that moment, Callum had doubted my illness. I smiled. It was one of the few things I hadn’t lied to him about.

  When we turned onto the lane leading up to my house, I kicked my horse into a lope, eager to arrive, to see if Callum had been truthful himself when he said my home hadn’t changed much in the preceding five years. I pushed my horse faster and faster until his hooves thundered on the hard ground, kicking up dust, alerting the cowboys in the corral that we had arrived. I reined in my horse, and he slid on his back legs to a stop. He reared when I gave him his head, and I knew I had to have this horse.

  —How much for him?

  —Too much for a woman with only months to live.

  —I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do than ride this fine an
imal every day until then. It helps me forget my pain. What is his name?

  —Whatever you like.

  —Me?

  —He is yours.

  —Oh, I couldn’t let you give him to me.

  —Of course you could. He’s from your stock, anyways.

  I paused.

  —The army took my stock. There was nothing left.

  —They gave most of it back to my father.

  –What are you saying? That the army did not requisition my horses? That not only did your father steal my ranch, but he stole my horses as well?

  —That’s about the sum of it, yes.

  —And you think giving me a horse will make up for all your family has taken for me?

  —I did not take anything from you, just as you have not stolen anything from me. Right?

  —Yet here you are living in my house, riding my horses. I was left destitute, Callum. My family and I were starving, and all because of your father’s greed. When I speak of the consequences of greed, it isn’t hypothetical. I lived it. Barely survived it. And you seem to have no remorse whatsoever about what was done to me.

  –This is why women should not be in business. They’re too emotional and take everything that is done to them personally, just as you did.

  —Yes, I consider starvation personal. Though I imagine you have never wanted for anything in your life.

  —You know nothing about me, Duchess. There’re plenty of times during the war where me and my men went without food. We boiled leather to soften it up to have something to eat.

  —You expect me to feel sorry for an army that fought to enslave others? You will not get my sympathy, Mr. Connolly.

  —And you will not get your ranch back.

  A cowhand arrived and Connolly gave him the reins of his horse, and I did the same. Thrumming with rage, I followed Connolly up the steps of my house and walked to the front door for the first time in four years. Connolly was right, nothing had changed. And that makes it all the worse.

  The main room was the original cabin Thomas and I had built when we arrived in 1864. Over the years, as we accumulated family members such as Jehu and Hattie and Joan and Stella, along with countless other women who used our ranch as a way station to get their lives back together before moving on, we added rooms as they were needed until we had four bedrooms, a kitchen, and the main room with an office in the corner where I would do our books every night. The rag rug Stella and Joan had made when they first arrived still lay in front of the fireplace. Thomas’s desk, which in truth was my desk, hadn’t moved, though it didn’t look as well lived-in as it had when it was mine. The leather chair behind the desk showed more wear, and a rack of moose antlers hung on the wall behind the desk.

  —Those are new.

  —Those were here when I arrived. I suppose it was my father’s trophy.

  A Chinese woman came in from the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel and stopped at the sight of me. My anger dissipated at the sight of my old friend.

  —Hello, Zhu Li.

  —Miss Margaret.

  —I suppose Julie came with the ranch, too, Callum said.

  —Something like that. How are you, Zhu Li?

  —Good. Was lunch to your satisfaction?

  —It was delicious, thank you, Callum said.

  —Yes, it was. I should have known you were behind those rolls.

  —It is Hattie’s recipe.

  —I realize that now.

  —Would you like to see the barns? Callum said.

  —Yes.

  I grasped Zhu Li’s hand as I passed and told her we would talk later.

  The barns and corrals had been expanded to accommodate the larger horse operation. A bunkhouse had been built behind the barn near the creek. I counted ten cowboys within my sight and knew that to run a ranch as large as what Colonel Connolly had obtained through cheating and theft, there had to be at least as many more out working the land.

  I stood on the corral fence and inspected the herd. Fully half of the herd came from our best stud, a gray thoroughbred that had somehow been bought, sold, and traded from Kentucky to Colorado, losing an eye and most of his value along the way. He didn’t need two eyes to mount our mustangs, and that he excelled at. Jehu pampered and petted Crockett, and Thomas remarked more than once that there wasn’t a man alive who didn’t envy a stud’s life of rutting every female in his sight and having his every whim indulged.

  —No wonder I liked my mount. He’s from Crockett.

  Callum leaned on the fence.

  —The one-eyed horse? Yes. Most of the mares here are. The foals aren’t. Crockett broke his leg last year. Had to be put down.

  It was a blow, but time waits for no man.

  Callum regaled me with the statistics of the ranch, how many acres it was, how many horses they had, cows, sheep, goats. He didn’t sound as if he was bragging, so what else could he be doing, telling me these things? He had to know it would infuriate me, especially after our conversation from earlier. But I would not rise to his bait. I would get back at him later by hitting as many of his businesses as possible before I died. So I congratulated him on his great fortune, on his ability to turn my ranch into the success I always knew it would be. I even said something about how since I wouldn’t be around much longer I was happy that my horses—his horses—would be so well taken care of, and that I had always worried about the life my stock had as army beasts. Apparently he liked the sentiments because he offered me a warm smile. His gaze slid down to my lips and back as he pulled a silver case of prerolled cigarettes from his inner pocket.

  —Would you like one?

  —May I smoke my own?

  I hoped to shock him, but he merely said,—By all means, and lit my cigarette when I produced it. I blew a long trail of smoke.

  —Why have you never married?

  —Isn’t it obvious?

  —Not to me, no.

  —Hmm. I was engaged before the war to a South Carolinian girl. She is why I went into the Confederate army. Her father wouldn’t let us marry unless I did. I didn’t care one way or the other about slavery or states’ rights, but I loved Constance. We wanted to get married before the fighting started, but her father refused. I think he was afraid I would desert to the Union, as if having me on their side would turn the tide of the war. I never wanted to be a soldier, but if I was going to enlist I wanted it to be as an officer. I was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Army of Northern Virginia. The first couple of years weren’t terrible. We won more than we lost, at least. When we finally started to lose, their belief in the South, and states’ rights, and the inferiority of the black man hardened. They never lost faith, but they were no longer fighting for a noble idea. Fear drove them.

  —Of?

  —What the world would be like with Negroes walking down the street next to them. Losing all that free labor.

  —And your injury? Is it from the war?

  —Yes. It happened in a skirmish after the surrender at Appomattox. My fiancée preferred the whole, handsome version of my face. In the years since, the only women who will look at my face I pay handsomely. Besides you, Garet.

  —I know that there is more to a man than what you can see. I also know I’m not the only woman who can see past your …

  —Deformity.

  —Injury.

  —Possibly. But how would I know they aren’t merely interested in my empire, as you called it?

  —I suppose it would be difficult to know. Which is why you’re lucky you have Dorcas, who is family and has only the family’s best interest at heart.

  Callum laughed.

  —Dorcas’s interest lies with herself. She knows that I’m the only thing keeping her from destitution, so she does whatever I ask, no matter how demeaning.

  —That is unbelievably cruel, to treat a woman, your own flesh and blood, like that merely because society allows you to.

  —Do you think Dorcas, if the situation were reversed, would treat me any differently?


  —Yes, I do.

  —You’re wrong. She would see in me what I see in her: a threat. She loved running the company and would like nothing more than for me to be met with a freak accident so that she would have control of the company once again.

  —If you two worked together, you would be a formidable pair.

  —You sound like you admire her.

  —We were friends before I turned down your father. Why she hates me now I can’t even begin to imagine.

  I flicked the end of my cigarette onto the dirt and ground it out under my boot.

  —I’m going to rest before dinner, if you don’t mind.

  —Of course. Though I do have one question.

  —Yes?

  —Why didn’t you go back to England to see your family? To be with them in your last days?

  —They are all dead.

  —What about friends?

  —They moved on.

  —You’re alone in the world?

  —No. Since I’ve been in Denver, I’ve made friends in the suffragist movement.

  —You’re a suffragist?

  —Of course. I’ve been thinking it would be a good way to spend my final days, helping future generations of women, especially since I leave no children of my own.

  —Why do you want to vote? It’s only more to worry about, to think about. The issues are complex and women do not have the education, or the turn of mind, to understand them well enough to make informed decisions.

  —I think we understand the complexities more than men. We are less concerned with what men think of us and with our own importance, and want to do what is fair and just, and to get things done.

  —Yes, of course. You think we are all thieves and murderers.

  —Men want to do what will serve them, and their pocketbooks, best. I suppose there are some men who care about the good of others before themselves, but they are rare indeed.

  —Like that Blackwell man.

  —You’re familiar with the cause? Is Dorcas part of it?