Thea Devine (5 page)

He almost forgot what he was going to say, so struck was he by her unexpected beauty, a beauty that warred with the descriptions his mother had given him. He shook himself mentally and met her smile eagerly.

“Let’s be friends, Maggie.”

Her expression clouded for a moment. It was such a strange thing for him to say. “Of course we’re friends,” she said, and stretched her hand across the table. There was something about him, a vulnerability, perhaps, she didn’t know. He was very likable, and he took her hand in a strong hard grip and squeezed it. The arrogance was gone altogether, and in its place was the same boyish appeal that had drawn her to Frank. But as he paid their bill and helped her out of her chair, she didn’t stop to wonder what depth of flaws it hid. She ignored the issue
completely as he escorted her back to the
Morning Call
offices, ignored the internal warning gong that sounded deep in her consciousness.

She was up early after a restless night grappling with all the surprises of the day before. Coffee, which she prepared on the office stove, calmed her, and as she listed the day’s chores she felt more in control, more able to cope as long as she could take action. Everything else she shunted aside, because there was no point in worrying about things she couldn’t change.

A.J. came in an hour later, carrying the brown-wrapped bundle of readyprint. “Think we’ve got enough advertising this week to add another page, Maggie. And Lord knows, Danforth’s article will eat up a half page itself.”

“Oh Lord, really? All right. Let me see what you’ve done with Warfield’s copy.”

He dropped the newsprint in the printing room and came back with a cup of coffee. “Here.” He tossed her some pages and she scanned them quickly.

“All right. If he must have his say, he must.”

“And he must, Miz Maggie. I do think Mr. Coutts settled it in the best way possible.”

“I did not libel him. I never mentioned names.”

“There’s some as don’t understand why you’re quite so het up about the railroad coming anyway, Miz Maggie,” he said, settling in opposite her. “Fact is, I heard an interesting new speculation yesterday.”

“Really? And what would that be?”

“Well, there’s folks that say you’re raising all this opposition to drive up the price they’ll offer on the land, seeing as how you stand to make out real well if you decide to sell.”

“Oh, A.J.!” She was appalled. “
Who
said that?”

“Rumor said it, Miz Maggie; I wouldn’t necessarily be attributing it to the one I heard it from.”

“No, of course not.” She bent her head for a long moment. This was really too much. Her resistance was a puny thing, if the reaction of Harold Danforth was anything to go by. It hardly counted for anything. No one was scared of Maggie Colleran. Offended, perhaps. Angered, most likely. But not scared. Nor did she command a particle of the influence Frank could have exerted were he alive and actively opposed to the encroaching trunk line.

She sighed. “Well, let’s see. The survey team will probably be out this morning; they’ll start just below Colville, to the point where they’ve already acquired land—Danforth land, right, A.J.? I wonder if I should …”

“Now, Miz Maggie …”

“Well,
someone
should. Just see what they’re doing and where.”

“You scared they’re going to go across Colleran land?”

“I’m scared for all of us up along the basin. It’s me and the Mapeses and Logan. As far as I know, Annie and Sean are holding on tight, but the ranch is a family business, and if either of them leaves or gets married, it’s gone. I wonder if Denver North can wait that long.”

“Oh, them big companies got a lot of resources we don’t know anything about,” A.J. said comfortably, but his words sent a chill through her.

“Especially money,” Maggie added sarcastically. “Can’t fight that money. Lord, I wish …”

“Now, Miz Maggie, we got work to do.”

“I know. But I can’t send Arch. I just can’t. And I have to know, damn it. I think … A.J., I think I’m going to drive out there anyway.”

“Oh, Miz Maggie, now you can’t go gallivanting, you have to do the editorial today.”

“I don’t have to
do
anything,” Maggie retorted. “I’m the boss, remember.”

“No, ma’am. Everybody thinks I’m the boss.”

“Nonsense. It’s an open secret, A.J.”

“I’ll go.”

“And what will you look for, A.J.? You know about boundaries and water holes and downed fences, covenants and titles?”

“Only in the Bible,” he admitted with a trace of humor.

“So, you see …”

“Miz Maggie, I just reckon you ought not to go riding out there alone, given how high tempers are running about this whole thing.”

“Are you suggesting that I wouldn’t be welcome—alone—anywhere I chose to go, A.J.?”

“Oh no, ma’am, I wouldn’t think of it,” A.J. said, thunking his coffee cup down on her worktable as he got to his feet. “Though maybe Mr. Frank’s brother might be available to escort you out this morning, Miz Maggie.”

Maggie stared at him as he picked up his cup and ambled into the back room. “Humph,” she muttered. “Mr. Frank’s brother, indeed …”

“In word and deed, Maggie.” A moment later, as if she had conjured him up by her mere thoughts, Reese appeared in the doorway, dressed to the teeth, a cracked coffee cup from the supply in the back room steaming in his hand.

No more coffee, she thought. “Good morning, Reese. How did you sleep?”

“Fitfully. Frank wasn’t in love with comfortable beds.”

“Oh, he had a bit of the martyr in him. Besides,” she added cryptically, “he spent very little time there.”

He let the comment pass, storing it for a time in the
future when he would be powerful enough to make Maggie reveal all her secrets.

She was really something so early in the morning. She wore practical calico in a dark blue pattern, unhooped, without a bustle, the kind of dress that wore dirt very well: the dust of a bustling small town main street, the invariable spot of ink that coated her fingers and sometimes her clothing, the printing inks that smeared generously over the thick leather apron that she wore to protect her clothes. But she wasn’t wearing the apron now, and the slightly larger-than-fashionable buttons that fastened the bodice of her dress strained across the unexpectedly sensual dip between her breasts, which were accentuated by the tight fit of the dress. Her black hair was braided as usual, and curling strands that had not caught in the fastener tumbled around her cheeks. Even in the strong first light of day, she was as beautiful as she had seemed last night, more so, because he could see the creamy texture of her skin and the smooth firm line of her lips. Her eyes were bright and clear, and as she turned to hand something to A.J., he had a superb view of her straight, perfect profile.

All she needed, he thought, were the right clothes and the right surroundings. She would be a sensation in San Francisco society.

He could see why Frank had been taken with her. In the face of all that radiance, he would never have considered anything but her loveliness. He must have been shocked out of his wits when he discovered she was intelligent too.

“Tell me what Mr. Frank’s brother can do for you today, Maggie.”

So he had heard her. She slanted a look up at him. “Keep your mother busy and out of my business, if you please.” She had hoped to startle him with her rudeness,
but he took her comment with an equanimity that suggested he was well aware of his mother’s propensity to be dictatorial.

Downright interfering, in fact.

“Mother is busy with church things this morning, Maggie. I really am at your disposal if you need me.”

“Your mother? Church? Oh no, she doesn’t go to church. Don’t tell me she pulled the wool over your eyes.”

“Maggie, you’re trying to distract me.”

“Yes, because you were eavesdropping and I don’t like it.”

“I promise never to do it again.” He smiled at her winningly. “I thought we came to an understanding last night, Maggie.”

“Really? I don’t believe it included your poking your nose into my business as well.”

He sloughed off this candor. “But I’m here; you must let me help you when I can.”

He was so sincere. Her eyes swept over him assessingly. How much did he mean? How much like Frank was he after all? Her sleepless night was testament to her confusion. In the cold light of morning she still wasn’t sure. But he met her gaze squarely, hiding nothing. His expression was concerned, soft; the lines around his eyes crinkled as he smiled ruefully.

“You don’t trust me,” he said, absolutely sure that this plain speaking would elicit the denial he wanted.

“Maybe I don’t,” she responded. He was surprised by her candor and her refusal to be backed into a corner.

“Tell me what I can do.”

“I will,” A.J. said, ambling back into the room. “You can take Miz Maggie out to the survey site so she can assure herself that the team isn’t encroaching on her property or anyone else’s up at the basin.”

“No one is going to ‘take’ me anywhere,” Maggie contradicted firmly, getting up from her worktable and sending A.J. a warning look. “I will go. By myself.”

“Perhaps a friend might accompany you,” Reese suggested, carefully choosing his words.

She relented. “Perhaps … a friend … might.” She threw down her pen. “You win, A.J., but just this time, and only because Danforth’s article is coming out this weekend.”

“Yes, Miz Maggie,” he said meekly.

“Tell Jean I’ll be back by noon,” she added from the hallway as she reached into the under-stairs closet for her well-worn cloak. “Come, Reese; let me show you the countryside in and around Colville.”

What he saw was land, acres and acres of land, some of it free range, especially the farther away they traveled from town. Most of it was fenced in, claimed and now owned by a generation of first-comers who had ventured into the wilderness, or bought by the enterprising speculator who saw beyond the moment and the desolation.

The land was thick with forestation and creased by rutty roads that veered off in all directions. They followed one that led past several neat ranch houses that were visible from the road, and headed north toward Gully Basin, a small lake that was the point of the triangular meeting of the boundaries of the Colleran and Mapes acreages.

“Frank snapped it up before Sean could blink,” Maggie said reflectively as they jounced down the dirt track that led to the rough clapboard cabin that was euphemistically called the Colleran ranch. “He should have had first shot at it. We spent our first year here, Frank and I,” she
added as the house, a rectangular cabin that could not have been more than one room deep, came into view.

“Appalling,” Reese murmured, pulling on the reins to slow the pace of their wagon. But he saw immediately what Maggie could not have known: Frank wanted the land and, for some reason, Maggie herself, and with his usual cunning, he had gotten both.

“Oh, I don’t know. We had a spirit of adventure when we first moved in. You can see—it’s quite obvious—there is only one room, one side with the bedstead and the other with the stove and a table and some chairs. Quite luxurious by pioneering standards, of course.
They
had dirt floors and sod roofs and an open fireplace only if they were lucky and there were stones enough to build one.”

“What did you do? What did Frank do?” Reese could not even envision it, given what he knew Frank had been used to. And yet he had done it.

“We ran cattle. Or we tried to. I will say Frank had thought I ought to be in the kitchen churning butter all the time, and I was adamant about riding with the herd. But we made out. After, when he died, Sean Mapes or Logan Ramsey took what was left to winter pasture and to market. I think there’s still a few dozen head of calves between them. I did love riding out,” she added pensively, “almost as much as I love working at the paper.”

The morning was bright with a sun that picked out every wart and crevice on the surface of the walls of the rude house. Reese couldn’t get over it. Frank
here
, and Maggie!

“This land,” she went on, “is geographically dead in the middle of the course that Denver North wants to lay up to Cheyenne. Now, they didn’t buy near town except for what they needed to build the station, but this beyond
here is all free range, where drovers winter over on the way to Cheyenne. They’ve bought the rights to lay track there. But they’ll have to go wide around Gully Basin if the three families here won’t sell up, and Sean and Logan aren’t about to because they’re still running cattle on the land.”

“And the money is no inducement?” Reese asked curiously. He couldn’t understand her; the ranch and the acreage were useless to her unless she intended to ranch, and it didn’t in the least look like she cared about that.

“I’ll tell you what is no inducement,” she said suddenly, passionately. “Cheap housing for the track workers, camp kitchens that could burn down the forest, cheap entertainments that will set up shop in town and bring in gamblers and prostitutes …”

“And money—”

“And upset the balance of things. The people coming in won’t be builders, they’ll be transients. They’ll take the money all right, and maybe they’ll become indebted to the corporation or some gaming house, or they’ll get someone in deep trouble and they’ll just walk out and leave the town with the problems. They won’t care about options and freedom, just about the money, how much stake they can get from day to day until they can make it big anywhere from here to Cheyenne. And this town will have to clean up the mess. But the progress will look great in the company’s report to the Denver North shareholders, and they won’t have to be accountable to anyone, least of all to the towns along the way that they wreck.”

Her passion silenced him. Maybe this was what Frank had seen in her, but everything she said smacked of the kind of meddling Frank never would have tolerated.

“I grew up here,” she added after a while as they sat staring at the Colleran ranch house. “I’ll still be here
when Denver North has gone.”

She stopped abruptly as she listened to the bitterness in her words. She was saying too much and he was too skillful a listener. She bit her lip. It was so easy to sermonize when the fact remained that the town of Colville stood to gain enormously from the presence of the line north. No one, except she and perhaps Sean and Logan ever saw past that, and everyone always raised the exact same point as Reese: money.