Linda Castle (12 page)

Temple felt the cold seep into his bones. This was a subject he tried not to think about, much less discuss with strangers. “Not much to tell.” He set his halffull plate aside, no longer interested in eating.

“Nonsense, Temple,” Constance challenged. She looked at him over the edge of her spectacles and Temple felt a ripple of satisfaction at having her attention. “Tell them the story, Temple.” Her voice was soft. He could not deny her no matter how much he wanted to.

“All right, Connie, if you want.” His voice lowered to a husky whisper and he felt his throat tighten at the memories. “I was orphaned. My mother died after one of the worst blizzards of the century swept through New York. After that most of my days were spent carrying baggage, messages or whatever else I could do to earn a crust. My nights were spent in Central Park.”

“Central Park?” Peter was suddenly alert and listening.

Temple glanced at him. “Yes, like a lot of other homeless children.” He heard the defensive tone in his own voice and wished these old memories were not as raw as a fresh wound. “Benjamin Waterhouse-Hawkins had begun work on some models of dinosaurs. I guess that was where my fascination really started. I bedded down near them most of the time. It gave me a sense of comfort. I suppose because of their size, to a small boy they appeared indestructible.”

Bessie Morgan cut several slices from a tall layered cake. “I have a feelin’ there is more to this story than you are tellin.”

“Temple is leaving out the best parts.” Connie smiled at Bessie and then looked back at him. Temple didn’t want to dredge up all the old memories, but how could he refuse Connie when she gazed at him like that?

“I was sleeping near the sculptures on a particularly dark night. It was quiet. I don’t mean peaceful—I mean silent—unnaturally so. I hate that kind of quiet. It means something awful is coming. It is always like that before a terrible storm—or someone dies. Anyway, a gang of thugs with torches came out of the trees—they started smashing the statues with sledgehammers and fire axes.” Temple shivered involuntarily as if the memory still had the power to buffet him.

“Go on, Mr. Parish,” Bessie urged. “This is startin’ to get interestin’.”

“There’s not much else to tell. I tried to stop them, but I was just a skinny kid. One thug saw me and started pummeling me. Another fellow stopped him.
He actually saved my life that night. He shoved me into the bushes where I watched while they destroyed those wonderful statues. Word of the vandalism hit the streets next morning. Professor Cadwallender was one of the people who came to look. He found me there. I was kind of a mess.” Temple glanced away.

“His nose was broken and both his eyes were black,” Constance explained. “He had taken quite a beating while he tried to save the statues. Papa was certain he had some cracked ribs as well, but Temple refused to see a doctor.”

Temple’s head snapped up. When their gazes locked across the plaid blanket she was no longer his adversary. For half a heartbeat they were simply Connie and Temple—old friends—new companions. Something lodged in Temple’s chest just below his heart at the futility of this discovery.

“So what happened then?” Holt’s eyes were wide with interest. It gave Temple some satisfaction to know his story had diverted Holt’s attention from Constance for a few moments.

“C.H. took me under his wing and started to train me. For eight years I studied with him—I learned enough to become his assistant.”

“And then?” Bessie prodded gently.

“And then things happened and I went my own .way.” Temple smiled crookedly. “I told you—nothing interesting at all.”

“You are bein’ modest, Mr. Parish.” Bessie smiled and the skin around her eyes created a fine network of lines. “I find this story very interestin’. What I can’t figure out is how Constance came to be out here—in Montana—challengin’ you for that endowment.”

Everyone turned to stare at Constance. She
squirmed and shoved her spectacles up and for the first time Temple realized she used them as a shield against the world. That insight filled him with mixed emotions. The more he learned about her, the harder it was going to be to do what he had to do. He clamped his lips shut and vowed to put a halt to this ridiculous infatuation—if that was what he was feeling.

“I…have come up with a…theory,” she said hesitantly, and shifted uncomfortably. “But it is silly.”

“Oh no, Miss Constance. Don’t stop. Please tell us,” Holt pleaded.

Constance fidgeted under Temple’s steady gaze. He made her feel awkward. Another small realization that caused a strange conflict of emotion to well up inside his chest.

“It really is nothing. I’m sure you would not find it interesting.”

“Tell us,” Temple said softly. “I told the story you wished to hear, now tell us about your theory.”

She stared at the cake in front of her and sighed heavily as if she were giving up her last shred of resistance. “I have noticed that the earth is layered— much like this cake is between the icing. Look at the sides of this canyon—each one of those stripes you see contains little bits of the past.” “That makes sense,” Holt agreed.

“But I have a theory that goes a bit farther. I believe there are only one or two of those layers that ever contain dinosaur bones.” Constance glanced at Temple as if she expected him to denounce her idea.

“Your father must be so proud.” Bessie put a large piece of cake on a plate and passed it to Temple. He took it without thinking while he focused on Connie.

“Actually Papa and his colleagues feel my theory
is in error. That is one reason I came out here. I need this opportunity to prove I’m right.” She glanced at Temple. “And to help Dandridge, of course.”

Her words settled in his mind and understanding sizzled through him. She hadn’t come to challenge him but to prove herself and her theory.

He had believed she was part of the group at Dandridge who lived to see him discredited. Now he saw that she was not so very different than he was. They were both oddities—unique among the academics who discounted their opinions and skills. She was ignored because she was female and he was discounted because in their eyes he would always be no more than an orphaned street urchin.

Disquiet seeped into Temple’s mind. It was almost impossible to see her as his adversary, yet even though her motivations were different than he had originally thought, it meant the same thing.

Both of them needed to win Montague’s endowment—but only one of them could claim the prize.

T
emple read the last newspaper in the stack despite his mounting rage. Someone at Dandridge University had gone out of their way to dredge up the shadows of his past. He was fairly sure he knew who that person was.

“Damn you, C.H.” Temple growled. “Why can’t you just let the past stay buried?”

A grimace curved his lips. C.H. had made a career out of digging up antiquity. Why should Temple’s saga be any different than the burial ground of longdead dinosaurs?

Temple put the various editions of New York papers back into a stack and tied the twine around them. Every paper had carried tidbits about the ten-year-old mystery—the lingering and still unsolved mystery. Each editorial left the question of his guilt openended—not one reporter had entertained the possibility of his innocence. Temple shook his head in disgust. As usual, people would look for the easiest target, and they would find him.

It wouldn’t be long until Ashmont University started to squirm under this kind of scrutiny. It would not
matter to the wagging tongues that there was no proof—never had been. It would not matter that all the clues had led in an entirely different direction. They would look at Temple Parish and see a thief—a street rat. Then he would be an outcast again, struggling to find a place to work in the profession he loved. His gaze fell upon the top paper.

The bold headline announced Montague’s additional twenty-thousand-dollar bonus.

“With that kind of money, I wouldn’t have to worry,” Temple murmured. “I could finance my own expedition—I could be independent and the ghosts from the past couldn’t touch me.”

He closed his eyes and a weary sigh escaped his lips. Now that Montague had announced his intention of awarding the winning digger a cash bonus separate from the university endowment, Temple could not allow himself one more minute of sentimentality. His very survival was at stake.

“I have to win,” he said aloud. “And I cannot allow Connie to stand in my way.”

He stepped outside into the blazing sunlight. It was quiet again. Two days had gone by without a glimpse of Holt Morgan. Temple grimaced at his continued jealousy. If he did not get his wayward feelings about Connie under control, the rugged Montana silence would truly be the harbinger of his professional destruction.

Temple snagged his shovel and a canteen of water. He did not even allow himself so much as a single furtive glance in the direction of Connie’s camp. He kept his eyes on the stubby grass as he walked to the area he had been inspecting. Now was the time to stop
this crazy preoccupation before he lost all pretense of control.

Constance stood and stretched the kinks from her back and shoulders. She had finished the last of her sketches and fulfilled half of her promise to her father by ensuring that Dandridge’s archives would benefit from her expedition. Now she could begin to put her theory to the real test.

If she could document that all dinosaur bones were in the layer she believed them to be, and nowhere else, then her father and his colleagues would be forced to acknowledge her abilities. Each time one of them dismissed her with an indulgent smile or condescending word, she wanted to scream. It simply was not right that her possible contribution to the scientific community should be overlooked because of her gender.

“Papa will have a fit if I succeed,” she muttered. But even as she said it, she knew it was not true. Her father would support her theory if she provided proof. He was a hard man in many ways, but one of the fairest she had ever known. That was one of the reasons she could not fathom what had happened between him and Temple, and why he refused to discuss it with her. It was one of the few incidents in her memory where he absolutely refused to satisfy her natural and abundant curiosity.

Temple could be overbearing and infuriating, she would be the first to admit. It was easy to see how he could drive the most patient person to distraction, but that did not explain her father’s uncharacteristic behavior. It was as if Temple and C.H. shared a secret, one they would not allow her to be part of. Perhaps that was what really disturbed her. Even though
Temple had been out of their household for ten years, there were still areas that he shared with C.H. that she was not privy to.

“But after I prove my theory, then I will be in a position to find out why everyone at Dandridge whispers about Temple and why his leaving is still such a guarded mystery.”

Constance picked up the sketch pad and returned to her tent. She wrapped an oilskin around the charcoal and paper to ensure it would remain clean and dry, before she packed it away into a crate and replaced the flat wooden lid. Then she prepared to begin her own dig.

Sunlight blinded her when she emerged from the tent. Papa’s sand-colored trousers and shirt of the same color allowed a slight breeze to waft around her body in a way that her voluminous dress and corset never could. Papa would not be happy if he knew she had taken some of his field clothes, she thought. But then again, how would he ever know?

Constance plopped the huge hat, minus the netting, atop her knotted hair and adjusted the brim against the rays. She was ready to begin digging in earnest.

“Blast and stuff!” Livingstone called out from his iron cage. His screechy bird voice froze her at the mouth of the tent.

“You frightened the life out of me, you silly bird.” She leaned back into the dim cool confines of the canvas and watched the fowl fluff his feathers.

“Silly bird, awrk,” he agreed while he paced to and fro on the thick dowel that served as a perch.

“I suppose you want to go?” Constance focused on the round ebony eye studying her intently.

“Awrk. Go, go.”

She suppressed the urge to laugh. “Temple is right, you are a bother and a nuisance, but I would welcome some company.”

“Blast and stuff—Temple is a pirate” Livingstone sang out.

Constance wondered what kind of conversations her father had been having in her absence—and with whom. Or had the professors at Dandridge stopped whispering and begun to gossip openly about the black-hearted pirate named Temple Parish?

Temple crouched beside the pile of dirt. Disappointment folded over him in a suffocating wave. The vertebra that had held so much promise had led him to nothing. What he had envisioned as the beginning of a great find had turned out to be one solitary isolated bone—not the entire skeleton he had been banking on—perhaps the vertebra had not even been a dinosaur bone.”

“Probably one of Holt’s damn stray cows,” he grumbled dismally.

Temple squinted against the sun and unleashed a string of epithets. He had believed he was ahead of Connie—that he had all the time in the world. Now an invisible clock started to tick inside his head. He had to find another area before she finished her sketches and started to search.

He turned and looked across the grassy meadow toward Connie’s camp. Temple’s breath lodged in his throat. The same outlandish hat he had been looking at for weeks met his eyes, but Connie the chameleon had once again altered her appearance. Just when he’d managed to steel himself against her transformation from child in braids to water-soaked siren, and then
once again to a blooming beauty in the latest New York fashions, she had yet again thrown him off balance.

She was garbed in masculine trousers and shirt. The outfit displayed her long legs and small waist, but it also left no doubt in his mind that she was every inch a capable competitor and adversary. Sunlight glinted off the rainbow iridescence and bright yellow throat of the bird perched on her shoulder. Another flash of light drew Temple’s eyes to her hand. She was methodically digging with a small spade.

Hard-edged resolution settled in Temple’s gut. He was going to have to work his tail off if he hoped to be victorious. He had no time to waste moaning over a single backbone that had disappointed him. These things happened all the time. The sooner he found another site, the better off he would be. With that thought propelling him he set off down the canyon at à rapid walk, in search of the area where the Morgans’ cowhand had come across the first bones.

For hours Temple looked at the earth with the practiced eye of a digger. Finally, when frustration weighed in his gut like a stone, his gaze focused on something—elusive and difficult to define—but something that made his pulse quicken with hope.

“This looks interesting,” he mused aloud. He knelt and rubbed his dry dusty hands across the rocky surface where a slab of sandstone had broken away. A tiny sliver of pale beige caught his eye.

“It is petrified bone.”

A cautious grin blossomed across his face. He had found his new location.

He looked up to get his bearings. Surprise brought his brows shooting upward. The canyon was a giant
wedge, much like a huge slice of pie with his and Connie’s camps at roughly the center. But now he found himself standing at the narrowest point of that wide wedge. And when he looked toward the site of his camp he found it was nowhere in sight. There was no sign of Connie’s tent either. In his quest he had walked the entire length of the grassy meadow, many miles from his starting point if the sun and his aching feet were any indication.

Now when he stood and looked from one edge of the canyon to the other, no more than a few yards separated “his side” of the canyon from the opposite slope.

“Good thing we didn’t set camp here,” he muttered. The thought of having to stare at Connie across this narrow space filled him with dread. It was bad enough when half a mile blurred the details of her face and form. It would be sheer torture to look up and be able to count the freckles on her pretty nose.

The man inside him tingled at the sensual prospect, but the weary digger who wanted to clear his reputation once and for all breathed a sigh of relief.

He glanced once more at the subtle indications in the dirt at his feet, then he turned and climbed out of the canyon and headed back toward his camp along the ridge. Temple decided he might as well get a look at the area from the top of the cut to see if he had missed any other good clues. Comforted by the promise of his new site, he strode toward the lowering sun, whistling a tune.

Constance frowned at the striations along the canyon wall. None of these was what she was looking for—had hoped for. She glanced at Livingstone,
perched upon her shoulder. His head was tucked beneath his wing. She glanced up at the sun and realized she had been at her task for many hours.

“Are you ready for a nap?” His feathers ruffled slightly at the sound of her voice. He roused himself enough to stare at her with one black eye. “I’ll take you back to the tent, you sleepyhead.”

Constance glanced once again at the slices of earth in the canyon walls. If there was nothing promising at this location, then perhaps she should simply follow the striations down the grade and see where they led her. She was convinced her theory was correct, and if so, then she need not worry about digging anywhere but in that band of color along the canyon walls.

When Constance reached her tent she put Livingstone in his cage, and filled a canteen with water. She glanced over at Temple’s camp, but saw no sign of him.

“He’s probably dug halfway to China by now,” she muttered. With that thought spurring her on, she turned and started walking down the center of the gorge. Time inched along while Constance examined the striations without success. Sweat dampened her clothing and her feet started to ache. And then when she had almost given up hope, her eyes fastened on the thick band of color in the dirt. She touched it with her fingers, then she started to break away small clumps of dirt.

The telltale signs she had been praying for began to emerge from the dusty soil. This was the first promising section she had come upon, miles from where she had first looked. Still, it was not unusual for things to get moved around by floods and redeposited elsewhere during the centuries. She thought about the long
walk back to her camp and a weary sigh escaped her lips. If she made this trek twice a day it would leave little time for digging.

“Temple will have found his specimen and be out of here while I am still strolling through the bottom of the canyon,” she grumbled. “Well, there is only one thing for it.” Constance pulled her hat down on her head and starting walking back the way she had come. “I’ll just have to move my camp.”

Peter used the leathers to direct the horses toward Miss Cadwallender’s side of the canyon. He was going to her side first to irritate Temple, but if he forced himself to be completely honest, it was also because of Temple’s revelation about those damned models in Central Park.

He shook his head and pondered the whimsy of fate. Out of the whole of Montana, and the dozens of men who could have been hired by Montague’s agent, Peter had ended up being the one to accept the job.

So far Temple had not recognized him, just as he would not have known Temple if he had not heard the story he told. No wonder, after eighteen years. Temple was a foot taller and filled out in hard corded muscle. And Peter had become an old man since Boss Tweed had sent him and his thugs to destroy the dinosaur models that night. Peter had come to Montana to get away from his memories of that life and all the terrible things he had done in his youth. And the plucky boy who had tried to save the statues had been the catalyst for that decision.

The team followed the faint trail from his last trip. He had little to do but let his mind wander and recount all the wasted days he had spent in New York. He was
paying little attention when the team negotiated the last turn. To his surprise, Miss Cadwallender—or he thought it was Miss Cadwallender—was walking along the same path, in the same direction, toward her camp.

“Whoa.” He gathered the reins and slowed the team. He swallowed his surprise and tried not to gawk at her clothes. After spending years around Bessie Morgan he should have been used to a woman in trousers, but when his cheeks grew hot, he realized that he was not

She stopped and waited until the wagon was parallel with her, then she raised her hand in greeting. “Hello, Mr. Hughes.”