The Titans

by John Jakes

  “Yet you’ve stayed with him.”

  “I said it before—he’s my father. And there’s Klaus to look after. The strong man doesn’t pass by the weak merely because the weak man’s flawed. We’re all flawed.”

  Her free hand came to rest on the dark pebbled cover of the Bible on her knees.

  “Christ taught that.”

  With her head bowed, she drank, then resumed. “Whatever happens to Papa, I’ll stay in the territory. Mama’s belief in America was justified, that much I’ve learned since I’ve grown up. And perhaps it’s not Papa’s fault that he isn’t strong enough to take advantage of the opportunity this country affords. Nebraska is a good land. All it needs are good people who believe in God and hard work. In a few years Grand Island will have schools, and churches, and be as fine a town as any other. I’ll stay—even after Papa’s gone.”

  “You do have a strong faith,” Michael said, hoping she understood it as a compliment.

  She bobbed her head, self-effacement. He was conscious again of how lovely she looked with her face patterned by the firelight. But he still didn’t quite know what to make of her odd combination of piety and vulnerability.

  All at once Hannah set her mug between her boots and opened the Bible.

  “Mama taught me to believe in three things, Mr. Boyle. Work. Cleanliness. And this book. I know some people would laugh at me for saying that.”

  He raised a hand. “Not I. Truly, I do wish I had things to believe in other than this infernal railroad. The family I worked for had such things. But they turned away from—never mind. Go on.”

  “There’s little more to say—except one thing. I do believe what’s in these pages. And I believe this country offers greater hope than any other land on earth. America will always be a blessed place if we abide by its purpose, and this book.”

  He looked dubious. “At the moment, I wouldn’t classify the East as a blessed place. It’s poisoned with hatred.”

  “No more so than here. That fellow you fought—how is he different from all those politicians tearing at one another? Or the businessmen the papers rail about? There’s always wickedness in the world, Mr. Boyle. But we can turn away from it and enjoy the blessings of life here. We have guidance.”

  She patted the book. “I was reading something along those very lines when you arrived. Second Chronicles, chapter seven, verse fourteen—”

  He was envious of the peace he saw on her face as she quoted without looking up the passage.

  “‘If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land—’”

  He wished he could believe her answer was the right one—and easily implemented. Their eyes met for a long moment. Then she succumbed to embarrassment. Resting her palms on the book, she gazed down at them. He was gripped by an impulse to stand, circle the fire, and touch her.

  He didn’t. If she knew that a certain tension below his belly was in part responsible for his feeling, no doubt she’d run inside the tent for the Hawken—

  What in the devil’s happening to you, Michael Boyle?

  The answer was the same as before: a normal reaction to a long period spent without speaking to a woman more than casually.

  But he tended to reject it. This woman was the one who fascinated him.

  He tried not to deprecate her obvious faith in the words she’d quoted. But he couldn’t help a touch of cynicism. “That’s a laudable message. Perhaps I should copy it and have it delivered to Captain Worthing.”

  “The man with whom you had the trouble?”

  “Yes, have you met him?”

  Distastefully: “No, but Klaus keeps me informed. Worthing is one of Papa’s better customers. I hope you’ll have no more to do with him.”

  Something prickled Michael’s backbone.

  It isn’t up to me.

  “I’d better not,” he laughed. “General Casement warned me. Any more brouhahas and I’ll probably be discharged.”

  “Let me say something, Mr. Boyle—and I beg you not to be offended by it.”

  He was on guard. “Go ahead.”

  “I believe a man finds what he seeks, whether it’s trouble or peace.”

  “I fear it’s not quite so simple.”

  “Not always. But in a general sense, yes.”

  “Well, it certainly hasn’t worked in my case. I look for peace but don’t find it.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t looked in the proper spot.”

  “If you mean the Bible, you’re correct.”

  “You might try it sometime.”

  “I wish I could—believing in what I was doing, I mean.”

  “That comes eventually. First there must be the intent.”

  He couldn’t help feeling irked, and would have expressed the feeling if she weren’t so sincere. He did make one admission.

  “To a certain extent you’re correct about finding what you seek. I could have knuckled under to Worthing. I refused.”

  “This is a difficult place. Among rough men, you’ll always face such choices.”

  “And you don’t face them in Grand Island?”

  “Not as many.” She smiled. “That’s one of the few benefits of what people call the advance of civilization. In any case, before I go to bed, I’ll pray Mr. Worthing won’t force you into a situation in which you’ll be tempted to fight again. If you do it will only make your unhappy feelings that much stronger.”

  His mingled amusement and anger faded when he realized she was utterly serious. Serious and concerned. He didn’t know what to say.

  The singing was over. The cooling air carried a winy tang. For no reason he could fully explain, sitting quietly beside Hannah produced a sense of calm he hadn’t known in months.

  The silence lengthened. He was acutely conscious of the woman’s femininity. His body kept responding in a way she’d certainly find objectionable. He decided he’d better leave.

  He drained his coffee—cold now—and contrived to stand up with a kind of twisting motion, so she wouldn’t catch a glimpse of his trousers.

  “Miss Dorn, I thank you for the company, the coffee, and the conversation.”

  “I enjoyed it, Mr. Boyle,” she said with a little nod. “You’re a sensitive and literate man.”

  “No, only a rust eater,” he laughed. “Your speech is finer. I’m wondering how you learned English so well.”

  “Mama. She believed that since this was to be our country, we should study the language, and its finest usage. Papa wouldn’t but I did. I had no formal schooling here, mind, but I had great men for teachers. Shakespeare. John Milton. Wadsworth—”

  She lifted the Bible. “And the translators who worked for good King James.”

  She laid the book, on the stool as she rose, mercifully keeping her eyes on his face.

  Boyle, you’re behaving like the worst adolescent!

  So he was. He couldn’t help it.

  Hannah Dorn walked around the dying fire. Her stride was long, determined.

  “Wait here one moment. I still have a bit of doctoring to do.”

  Shortly she emerged from the tent with a small milk-glass pot. The salve it contained had a foul color and a tarry smell. But it proved marvelously cooling as she spread it on his blistered palms and burned thumb. She rubbed vigorously until the salve was absorbed into the skin.

  “Feels much better,” he muttered, amazed anew at the reaction the feel of her fingers produced.

  “I’m glad.” She extended her hand.

  After a moment’s hesitancy—his palm was still slick—he clasped it. He squeezed a bit harder than necessary. She didn’t seem to mind.

  “I thank you again, Miss Dorn.”

  “The pleasure’s been mine.”

  “Perhaps when Christian’s awake tomorrow, I might look in a second time?”

  The gray-blue eyes held his. “I wish you woul
d.” Then, with more animation, she added, “A second visit might even result in a halfway peaceful Sunday with Papa. He’s given up all hope of gentlemen spending more than a moment speaking to me. The Hawken and the Bible seem to get in the way. But I”—she was forcing herself, wanting to say something and not quite able; at last she managed it—“I am not a shrew, I hope.”

  “On the contrary. Grand company! Sometime tomorrow, then—perhaps late in the day?”

  She teased again, “But there are no worship services to keep you occupied in the morning, Mr. Boyle.”

  “There’s the Platte for taking a bath. If you were downwind of me you’d understand why I’ll be occupied for a while.”

  She laughed. “Fair enough.”

  He waved as he left, unconsciously beginning to whistle “Corcoran to His Regiment” without a single thought of the song’s significance.

  ii

  He walked by the whiskey wagon. The customers had departed. Klaus Dorn was slumped over the crate with his plump cheek squashed against his forearms and the Hawken on the ground. The whiskey merchant lay against a wheel of his wagon, the backs of his hands in the dirt, his mouth opening and closing. Spittle trickled from the corner of his lips as he snored. The dipper on its chain swayed slowly back and forth in the wind, inches from his lolling head.

  A sorry sight, Michael thought, wrinkling his nose. Even at a distance he could smell the liquor on Dorn. No wonder the girl retreated to her Bible.

  As he entered the darkened sleeping car and approached his bunk, Sean Murphy whispered from the bed below his.

  “That you, Michael Boyle?”

  “No, it’s Worthing come to lie in wait.”

  “Don’t jest,” Murphy grumbled. “Greenup ran into him earlier. He’s staggering about with a face dark as a rotten pudding. He’s promising things.”

  Michael laid his churchwarden up on the bunk and started to unbutton his shirt. “What things?”

  “Very ugly. You be on watch.”

  “I am.”

  Murphy sniffed. “Jaysus, you smell like a pill shop!”

  “Miss Dorn gave me some salve for my blisters.”

  “Ah, yes, one of the lads did notice you callin’ on her.”

  “Merely to ask about Christian.”

  “Took you an hour or more to ask, did it?”

  In the lowest bunk of the three, Liam O’Dey stirred, then whined, “Will you both shut your claps so a man can catch a wink?”

  “Up your arse, O’Dey,” Murphy replied. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

  “I’m tuckered from Saturday!”

  “Fiddledeedee. You’ve an entire day to relax and pursue your favorite activity, which is complaining.”

  The thought of Sunday pleased Michael as he dragged off his shirt and tossed it up beside his pipe. What an odd, flinty woman was Hannah Dorn! A rifle, a Bible, a tosspot father, a witless brother—and loneliness. Yet he was anticipating the day—anticipating seeing her again—as he hadn’t anticipated anything in a long while. He’d have a bath, slick his hair, and drop by early in the afternoon.

  The prospect made him chuckle.

  “Ah, that’s a dirty laugh if ever I heard one!” Murphy said. “What did the dear girl do after she doctored you? Admit you to the privacy of her quarters and give you a peek at her rosary?” The last word was juicily lewd.

  “She has no rosary. She’s one of the Luther crowd.”

  “Oh, God, don’t mix with them!”

  “Jesus and Mary, must we get filth an’ theology blabbered all night?” O’Dey grumbled, thumping his mattress with his fist.

  “Screw yourself if you’re not too feeble, you sour old man,” Murphy said, then let go with a loud, rasping fart to heighten the insult. O’Dey exclaimed, “Agh!” and thumped the mattress a few more times.

  Again Murphy whispered, “I share but one thing with O’Dey downstairs. Exhaustion. Good night to you, Michael.”

  Michael’s hands ached as he braced one against the bunks and used the other to pull off his boots. Undressing standing up was easier than doing it flat on his back. All at once it struck him that no thought of Julia Kent had crept into his mind for quite a while.

  “I said good night, Michael Boyle.”

  “Good night, Sean.”

  Hannah’s eyes glimmered in his mind. Part of the scriptural quote lingered too.

  If my people seek my face—turn from their wicked ways—I will heal their land.

  The second boot came off. He pushed his trousers down and pulled one leg free. A strained muscle in his thigh shot pain to his hip and calf. Too bad he couldn’t get Miss Dorn’s biblical message to the Virginian. Worthing’s land, the South, still wanted a deal of healing. Instead, it was receiving punishment. That was a big part of the man’s trouble, Michael was sure. On the other hand, he might be letting his imagination run too free. Perhaps Worthing had been sufficiently chastened by the beating.

  As he tossed boots and trousers to the bunk and started to climb up, he decided it was ridiculous to worry over the captain when he wasn’t at all sure the man would take action. Though Murphy had mentioned threats, there was a vast gulf between words and deeds.

  At that exact moment he pulled himself so his head was level with his blanket.

  “Christ Jesus!” he breathed.

  iii

  “D’you say something?” Murphy asked drowsily from below.

  Stricken speechless, it took Michael a moment to answer. “Just blathering to myself.”

  His eyes remained riveted on the knife. A carving knife pilfered from the kitchen, by the look of it. He’d been unable to see it from the aisle below.

  Someone must have come into the car earlier, while it was empty. His blanket had been hacked to pieces, left in tatters, with sections of Jephtha’s letter scattered about. The knife had been driven into the mattress where Michael usually rested his head.

  With a sweaty hand he pulled the knife loose and laid it on his clothes at the foot of the bed. He was shaking as he climbed up into the jumble of slashed wool and cut paper, calling himself the worst of fools for believing, even briefly, that Captain Worthing’s enmity would confine itself to threats.

  He hoped Hannah Dorn wasn’t praying too hard. It was wasted effort. He would be forced to fight again.

  Chapter IX

  At Lance Point

  i

  SLEEP CAME HARD THAT night. Michael lay with his hands clasped beneath his head, struggling to disconnect his thoughts from the significance of the tangle of hacked blanket and ripped paper on which he was trying to rest. Trying and failing.

  Worthing was determined to finish it with him—and to torment him with the realization that the reckoning would come unexpectedly, at a time of his own choosing.

  Michael’s eye wandered to the pale rectangle of Matthew Kent’s drawing of the Havana milk vendor. For some reason the drawing had been spared, further proof, if he needed it, that Worthing wasn’t entirely rational. A man whose violence was controlled would have destroyed everything in the bunk. Worthing had cut and slashed with such fury that he’d missed the picture. That worsened Michael’s depression.

  As did further introspection about his own behavior with Hannah Dorn.

  He’d come whistling back to the car like some moonstruck swain, delighted by the possibility of a friendship. Now he had doubts about his breezy mood. Had it been a trick of his mind? Perhaps he’d unconsciously deceived himself about the whiskey merchant’s daughter. Perhaps he was using her as an antidote for the altogether foolish longing for Louis’ wife.

  Images of Julia’s nude body slipped in and out of his mind as he tossed and wriggled in the ruins of the bed. Images of a woman he could never have.

  The uncontrollable desire humiliated him. It also cheapened and insulted Hannah Dorn. She’d treated with him in good faith, not knowing he wanted to be with her to attempt to submerge his feelings for another woman.

  Ah, what a nasty, tangled mess it had all be
come!

  He must have lain awake three or four hours before he dozed off, exhausted. Dreams of Worthing’s face haunted him through the night. When he drifted out of sleep again shortly after ten on Sunday morning, he felt no better.

  Men were leaving their bunks one at a time, moving at a leisurely pace, and keeping their voices pitched low so as not to wake those still in bed. As Michael stirred, Sean Murphy whispered his name from below. He remained motionless and silent. He didn’t reply to Murphy’s second whisper. Or his third. Finally Murphy rose, pulled on his clothes, and left the car.

  As soon as Michael was sure he wouldn’t be disturbed, he unrolled an extra blanket tucked at the foot of the bunk, stood on Murphy’s bed and spread the blanket carefully to conceal the havoc of Worthing’s knife. He’d dispose of the cut cloth and shredded paper after dark. The knife itself he wedged between the bunk frame and the car wall; he’d get rid of it after dark, too. He never even considered showing it to Murphy—or reporting the incident to Casement.

  Murphy hailed him as he entered the dining car. Michael couldn’t refuse to sit with his friend. Greenup Williams arrived a moment later. It registered on Michael that both men had dressed with unusual care. Murphy wore his one white shirt and an old satin cravat. Greenup had donned his best work clothes and an ancient emerald-colored velvet jacket, somewhat too elegant to be owned by any rust eater, white or black. Michael assumed the jacket had been given Greenup by someone for whom he’d once worked.

  “I heard you tossin’ most of the night again,” Murphy said between swallows of coffee. He nudged Michael. “Thoughts of Miss Dorn keep you roused, did they?”

  Michael shook his head.

  Greenup laughed. “My, he’s full of chatter today.”

  “Merely in awe of the splendid plumage of you fellows,” Michael murmured.

  “One of the boys who was shaving when I woke told me Mr. Stackpole and his wagon arrived in the middle of the night.”