Centennial (109 page)

“Ferguson? I was told he left you.”

“He did. But we’re still married.”

“Get a divorce. That’s no problem. We’ll go to court tomorrow.”

This innocent phrase had a terrifying effect on Clemma. She drew back, and a real look of terror came into her eyes. Without another word she ran past him and out the door, and for three days Jim could not find her.

Eager for any clue to her strange behavior, he went to the Kerry Roost to ask the mournful proprietor, “Has Clemma been here?”

“Nope.”

Jim stayed at the counter, explaining that things had gone well with them until the mention of divorce sent her flying away.

“She’s never been divorced, so far as I know,” Kilbride said.

Jim toyed with his coffee cup, trying to re-create the scene. “I did mention divorce ... said she could go into any court ...”

“Well,” Kilbride broke in. “That explains it.”

“You mean court?”

The Irishman seemed hesitant to explain, but Jim reached out and caught him by the wrist. “Has she ever been in court?”

“Just that once ... when the judge gave her a year.”

“You mean in jail? A year?”

“It wasn’t her fault. Even the judge admitted that. It was that fellow Harrigan who gave her the bad checks to cash.”

“Where is he?” Jim asked, instinctively reaching for his belt, as if he were once more carrying Mule Canby’s army Colt’s.

“He skedaddled ... and she went to jail.”

“Jail!” Jim repeated with all the anguish he would have experienced if the sentence had been his. “God, I’ve got to find her.”

But as he started for the door the weary Irishman said quietly, “Young bucko! Finish your coffee.” And when Jim returned to his seat at the counter the old man leaned forward to confide, “I’ve seen all sorts in my time, and I’ve learned one thing. If a girl takes it in her mind to run away, no man on earth can stop her. I couldn’t keep Clemma in my restaurant, and you can’t keep her in your bed.”

With each word Kilbride spoke, Jim’s tired and muddled brain visualized a headstrong young woman with high cheekbones and squarish jaw; she was fleeing the prairie as if braves of an alien tribe were pursuing her, and there was no mortal way of stopping her.

With a pain so great he could not contemplate it, nor seek relief, he walked through the desolate streets and back to his lodging. There he packed his bag, then caught the train for Omaha. As the wheels rattled through the darkness he slowly began to gain control of his emotions. I’ll be a fool no longer, he pledged. There’s always the ranch. And a man never knows enough about Herefords. I’ll work. I’ll work.

He believed he had found the solution to his problem, and that he was at last free of Clemma. But then the rhythmic clacking of the wheels reminded him of the girl’s teasing laughter, and all his bold defenses crumbled. Covering his ears to stifle her taunts, he confessed: It must have been my fault. If I had been able to bring her back to Centennial ... And as dawn broke over the prairie, he could see in the flaming clouds the figure of an Indian girl, running and laughing.

After Oliver Seccombe shot himself, his young widow, not too surprised by this action, faced a series of perplexing decisions: Where to live? How to dispose of her castle? And especially, where to look for a new husband?

Her confusion was unraveled, as she might have expected, by old Finlay Perkin. Anticipating her troubles, he wrote:

You must come to Bristol. The directors will buy your castle, deducting such moneys as they feel you owe them. And as for the ranch, I want to assure you that I have every confidence in Skimmerhorn and Lloyd, two trustworthy and loyal men. They are ideally prepared to look after your interests.

It was a strange letter. “Your interests.” Why had he spoken as if the ranch belonged to her?

When she arrived in Bristol she understood. Earl Venneford was a very old man, and he had sold all his stock in the ranch except one large block, which he intended deeding to Charlotte, whose mother had been related to him. When Charlotte visited him to pay her respects she found him painfully thin, bundled up in tweeds, but bright of eye.

“You’re a spunky girl,” he said. “I’m giving you my share of the ranch. I want to think of those wild acres as belonging to someone who will appreciate them.” He asked what her plans were, and when she proved vague, he said, “Find yourself a good man ... someone who’s served in India ... or an army man with African experience. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Prime of life. Woman’s never better. Has some sense to go along with her beauty, and you always were a beauty, Charlotte.” Then he asked bluntly, “Was it Seccombe who stole our money out there?”

“He stole nothing. He managed the ranch well, and if the blizzards hadn’t come ...”

“I’ve found that blizzards usually do come,” he said.

Later that afternoon, when she informed her father that through the kindness of the old earl she now owned a substantial portion of the ranch, he surprised her by confiding that one day she would own a great deal more, because it was he who had bought the shares the old earl had disposed of. “When I die, you’ll own nearly half the stock.”

“Is it a good investment?” she asked.

“Excellent. Of course, you’ll never make any money running cattle—too much book count.”

“Where will the profit come from?”

“Land. Each year that enormous spread of land will become more valuable. Never sell, even if you have to borrow money to pay the taxes, because that land is gold.”

He advised strongly against her ever returning to Colorado. “Keep out of their way. It’s a man’s job, and your job is to stay here, rely on Finlay Perkin and collect your dividends.”

“What if Perkin dies?”

“He’ll never die,” Buckland said. “He’ll wither down to a little lump, but he’ll still be able to scratch a pen.”

When she met with the old factotum she found him as vital as ever, a wisp of a man with only one concern in life: to keep the distant ranch profitable. “Miss Charlotte,” he said in an effort to erase the bitterness which had marked their last encounter, “one day you’ll own a great ranch ... that is, a fair portion of it. I hope to serve you as faithfully as I have served your predecessors.”

“I couldn’t get along without you,” she said, and having placed her confidence in the little Scotsman, she turned to her major problem.

She spent her time in Bristol society, renewing old acquaintances and learning afresh how pleasant life could be in the placid west of England. She was more handsome than ever, in a horsy way, and since she was known to be an heiress, she became an attractive target for bachelors either eligible or ineligible, who were seeking rich wives.

Most of them seemed interchangeable, like the parts of those new guns, where you could switch stocks and barrels and sights and never know the difference. There was one widower of forty-eight, home from India, but his life was dictated by his regiment, and when Charlotte was invited to dine with some of his fellow officers in London, it was painfully obvious that she was there on approval. Her being a good horsewoman enhanced her chances of acceptance, but her strong views on justice for Indians rather shot holes in her score, and by the time the evening was over, she knew that she had failed her tests. She was not for the regimental mess in India.

And then, in rapid-fire succession, two deaths made her desultory courtships seem unimportant. The old earl died peacefully one day, and scarcely was he buried when Henry Buckland, a much younger man but grossly overweight, dropped dead. It fell to Charlotte to supervise both funerals, and in this distressful time it was Finlay Perkin who helped her most. He was a canny gnome, and on the way home from her father’s funeral she confided, “I’ve received a perplexing letter from Colorado. All about cat-hamming and what I must do to avoid it.”

She showed him Lloyd’s letter, which he immediately saw as a way for diverting her from her sorrow. “What we must do, and promptly, Miss Charlotte, is search the countryside for a good bull.” So he took her from one farm to another; they found many bulls, but none with the characteristics they sought. And then one afternoon, as they rode home in disappointment, Perkin startled her with a proposal she could not have anticipated.

“When we do find our bull, Miss Charlotte, I think you should take him out to Colorado.”

“I never expect to see the place again.”

“I know, your father told me he advised you to stand clear. But I’m afraid he gave bad advice.”

“How?”

“Isn’t it obvious, child? Bristol’s not for you. The men you’ve been wasting your time on ... you’d marry none of them. Go back and find yourself one of the Englishmen working the ranches in Wyoming—daring men like Moreton Frewen and Claude Barker.”

She did not respond to his counsel on marriage, but his mention of the west lingered most hauntingly. At times she would be looking at some cultivated, rock-walled English field and would see instead the sweeping prairie. Flakes of snow would fall and she would see a blizzard. Life in western America had a majesty, and the memory of it possessed her.

And then one day she and Perkin found their bull, and one sight of it made up her mind. She wanted to watch it grow on the prairie. She was homesick for Colorado. That night Perkin wrote to Skimmerhorn:

I feel every confidence that he is the bull we seek. He is from an admirable strain of dams, and I have always believed the inherent quality of a bull to be derived from the female side. In the rear he is most heavy, like his dam, and Charlotte has given him the appropriate name of Confidence. She has decided to bring him to you.

When she arrived with this excellent animal at the Centennial station, there was none of the awe that had greeted King Bristol, for the young bull lacked every characteristic which had made that noble beast so predominant: he was not heavy; he did not stride with kingly grace; he lacked space between his emerging horns. He had only two conspicuous qualities—extremely substantial rear quarters with never a hint of cat-hamming, and a pre-potent power to stamp upon his offspring, especially his bull calves, the physical attributes he possessed.

“Cat-hamming is ended,” Skimmerhorn said, leading the young bull to a dray. Then, turning to the new owner: “Miss Charlotte, it will seem so natural, having you in the castle again.”

“I’ll be traveling in Wyoming,” she said.

Her search for a husband in Wyoming proved fruitless. The kinds of young Englishmen she had once known had long since vanished, expelled by the blizzard and the economic disaster that followed. The levity and the long evenings of croquet were gone, and several times she had the dismal feeling that her return to the west had been a mistake.

On her ride back to Venneford she realized with a pang that the ranch no longer owned Line Camp Four, where she had spent so many delightful days. It had been sold to a Cheyenne merchant, who used it several weeks each year. She considered buying it back, but took no steps to do so, for she was at odds with herself, unable to determine anything.

One day as she was walking idly out to inspect Confidence, she happened to see Jim Lloyd approaching from the other direction, and for the first time she noticed how straight he was, how lithe. She had rarely spoken to him but did remember that morning when he came to report her husband’s suicide. He had been gentle and perhaps more stricken than she by the death of his long-time boss. Beyond that she knew nothing except that he had come north as a boy of fourteen and through the years had been mixed up in some way with an Indian girl.

Actually, she knew him best through the letters of Finlay Perkin, who held him in the highest regard. What were the phrases? “Absolute trust ... sober good judgment ... fine man with Herefords.”

“Hello, Mr. Lloyd,” she said as he reached the corral fence. “How’s the bull?”

“He’s doing great, ma’am,” Jim said.

“As good as you hoped?”

“Better. He’s ... he’s ...” She wondered what word he was groping for and was surprised when he said, “He’s voluntary. Moves right out. That’s a good sign in a bull.”

“He’s certainly not cat-hammed,” she said.

They began to talk about many things, and she was impressed with his broad knowledge. He had read widely, had studied economics and was capable of expressing strong opinions. He was really much better informed than Mr. Skimmerhorn, who stuck pretty much to ranching. But she also detected that he was an isolated man, extremely lonely, and she sensed that if these were critical years for her, trying as she was to settle upon patterns she would follow for the rest of her life, they were doubly crucial for this cowboy. For her, finding a new husband was merely following a style of life; for him, taking a wife could be life itself, the acceptance of another human being; and she supposed that she was the only means whereby he could escape from the prison of loneliness in which he had immured himself.

So one afternoon she said, “Mr. Lloyd, would you care to have dinner with me tonight?”

“I’d be most obliged,” he said and at six promptly, he appeared at the door of the castle.

“I had in mind about eight,” she said, and he replied, “I work early, ma’am.”

So she hurried up the cook and they sat in a kind of regal splendor in the round dining room, and she asked him how the sales were going, and then they got into differential freight rates and the possibility that if a sugar-beet factory ever started in the area, the beet tops might be utilized as feed for the Venneford cattle.