The Rich Shall Inherit (7 page)

“No more foolingm, boy-o. I told you, I’m a lucky man. Now come on, will ya—or do I get somebody else to be my partner?”

Nik was on his horse in a flash. He didn’t know whether to believe the Irishman or not, but he would follow him anyway, because Jeb Mallory had that magical quality of
almost
making dreams come true. And even if they weren’t quite what they seemed, somehow, when you were with him, it didn’t seem to matter.

From the crest of the Santa Rosa hills to the Santa Ynez River snaking along the valley miles below, lay acres of rolling green pasture. Searching the horizon to the west, Nik could just make out a ridge of paler, golden-green young grain, while behind them were the dark shadows of canyons where grizzly bear lurked, emerging at nightfall in search of prey. In the distance, a coyote howled, and as if on cue, a breeze rippled the grasses, forcing dazzling silver reflections from the fast-moving river.

The valley was lush and green from the tumultuous early spring rains, and its spacious serenity seemed to promise a life impossible in ice-locked, darkly forested Arkhangelsk. Nik knew then that Jeb’s words were not mere dreams. This was truly the land of plenty.
This
was the richness of Amerika.

As Jeb stared across the valley, for the first time in years he recalled the old cottage in Ilskerry, in Ireland. He saw in his mind the bare, malnourished earth, as poor and starved as the people who scraped their existence from it. He remembered his father—a hunched, defeated figure at only thirty—his own age now. He thought of his mother, struggling to grow a few flowers, a patch of pathetic beauty in the rutted earth by the cottage door. And he compared all of his memories with the lush greenness he saw before him. Sniffing the deep, moist fragrance of fertile earth, he imagined it dotted with sheep and cattle, seeing it productive—
earning him a fortune!

Swinging from the saddle, he unfurled the roll of title deeds with a flourish. “We may not own all you can see,” he said, grinning at Nik, “but fifty of these acres can now be called the Rancho Santa Vittoria.” And then—because Jeb always played a big game—he added, “It’s enough for a
beginning
anyhow.” Nik grinned back at him as he shook his hand.

“You know something, boy-o,” added Jeb with a laugh, “my old father used to say that nothing comes to you in this life without hard work. It seems I’ve been proving him wrong ever since.”

1856—1873, CALIFORNIA

The old adobe house had been built under the curve of the hill. It was shaded with sycamore and oaks and had only two rooms. In one of them an old Indian, wrapped in a striped serape in heat and in cold, cooked smoky-tasting meals over an open fire; the other room was used for sleeping.

Nik spent the first few weeks just riding alone across their land and marveling at his luck, while Jeb went off to Santa Barbara to “scout out the scene” and to register their title deeds. Nik was not lonely, though he went for days without seeing another soul, camping under the stars at night with one ear cocked for the coyote’s howl and the stealthy rustle of prowling bears. But nothing disturbed his solitude and he was happier than he had ever been in his life.

When Jeb returned, it was with the news that he was going to Missouri to buy sheep and that he would need Nik’s five hundred dollars to do so. “How many sheep we buy for that?” demanded Nik excitedly.

“Trust me, boy-o,” Jeb replied evasively, “we’ll have plenty of sheep.”

There were three thousand of them. Nik didn’t bother to ask how this time, he just got on with the job of being a rancher and looking after his sheep while Jeb negotiated for more acres of grazing land.

At first Jeb seemed content with his new role, riding the ranch with Nik, but after a few months the old restlessness took over and he began to spend more time in Santa Barbara, and when that proved too genteel and small-town for him, he headed back
to the bright lights of San Francisco. Sometimes Nik wouldn’t see him for weeks and then suddenly he’d be back again, looking tired and pleased with himself, and more often than not with a wad of bank notes in his vest pocket. But he didn’t talk anymore about the big ranch house with the grand piano in the parlor and the fine cook in the kitchen, and Nik realized that his friend was too restless ever to belong totally to life on the ranch. He shrugged off the problem easily. No matter, he was strong enough to do the work of two.

As the years passed Nik planted grain on his land and built huge barns in which to store it. He hired the best shepherds in the world—from the Basque country in Spain—to care for their sheep, and Mexican vaqueros to ride the range and tend their fine new cattle. He erected pens for the animals and he built long, low sheds to house the workers. He worked hard and for interminable hours and he loved every minute of it. He never felt tired, he was as strong as an ox, and the physical work gradually muscled out his body and his young, blond good looks hardened into those of an outdoorsman, with searching pale blue eyes in a stern, sun and wind-tanned face. He sent money home to his family in Russia, but somehow he was never able to shake himself free of the constant round of work at the ranch to return home to visit them.

Most of the time Nik was too busy and too tired even to think about women, and when Jeb came to Santa Barbara he was always the perfect gentleman, raising his hat politely to the maidens and their mothers, and setting young hearts aflutter beneath demure high-necked blouses of white lace.

Jeb kept his women in San Francisco, but it was Nik who fell in love first—and with a girl who was not only lovely, she was a “catch”! He was just twenty-five and Rosalia Abrego was the eighteen-year-old daughter of the owner of one of the greatest cattle ranches in the Lompoc valley. And her father was not inclined to see her throw herself away on some strange Russian whom nobody knew anything about!

The two had met at Loomis’s Saddlery Store in Santa Barbara and it took only one sidelong glance from Rosalia’s lustrous, dark-lashed brown eyes, and a faint but charming smile in his direction, to break Nik’s shyness and interrupt his seven-year love affair with the Rancho Santa Vittoria.

Lovesick, he spent all his time hanging around the saddlery
store or lingering on the stoop of the small hotel on State Street, hoping for a glimpse of Rosalia. When he finally saw her again, he plucked up courage to pass the time of day and she surprised him by inviting him to a picnic she was giving with some young friends out at the beach. Rosalia’s bubbling warmth made up for Nik’s shyness; she seemed to talk enough for the two of them. And a few weeks later, when he finally kissed her in the shade of a grove of sycamores, they knew they were in love.

Don Jose was a very rich man and he viewed the romance with suspicion, but after investigating the young Russian and hearing nothing but praise for his hard work and the prospering Rancho Santa Vittoria, he gave the union his blessing.

The wedding, with Jeb as the handsome best-man breaking countless feminine hearts, was the occasion of a grand fiesta, but afterward Nik was unable to take his bride home to the Rancho Santa Vittoria because her father refused to allow Rosalia to begin her married life in a two-room adobe hut. Instead, they rented a suite of rooms at the Arlington Hotel, where Nik joined her as often as he could escape work on the ranch. Meanwhile, two new ranch houses were being built on the property, one on the site of the old Indian house for Jeb; and the other around an old adobe house in the middle of the extra two thousand acres of land, running concurrently with the ranch, given by Jose Abrego to his daughter as a wedding gift.

When it was finished the Konstant House at the Rancho Santa Vittoria was one of the finest homes in the Lompoc valley, but Nik’s proudest possession of all was the partnership document, written on the old saloon card, now framed in gilt and hanging in the front hall for everyone to see. His joy was dimmed by the news of the death of his mother; but he still continued to send his sisters money regularly. The Konstantinovs of Arkhangelsk were no longer poor.

Rosalia often rode the ranch with Nik, sitting astride and wearing suede chaps like the vaqueros and helping with the new calves and lambs, but she also supervised her new home carefully. There was now a good cook in the kitchen and fine meals were served at their table and Nik lost his shyness and became an affable host to Rosalia’s friends and family. Nik Konstant was a happy man—except for just one thing. He’d hoped for a child to be born quickly—a son to bear his name. But two years passed and still Rosalia did not become pregnant, and though she said nothing, there was a worried look in her eyes.

The Mallory House on the Rancho Santa Vittoria remained empty for most of the time—though there was now a grand piano in the parlor and fine dark mahogany furniture in its many rooms, just the way Jeb had said there would be. But Nik knew that, as usual, by achieving his dreams Jeb had lost interest in them. Occasionally he would arrive from San Francisco with several carriage-loads of people and the big house would be lit up like a Christmas tree. Great banquets of food would be served at all hours while the wine flowed and singers—imported from the Italian opera or French revue companies appearing in San Francisco—would entertain. None of the local gentry would attend these dinners because it was said there were women at the Mallory House whose morals could only be described as loose—and who made no attempt to hide it.

Nik began to buy even more cattle for Rancho Santa Vittoria’s ever-increasing acres and they were becoming richer, earning “leather dollars” by selling the hides to merchants in New England to make boots and shoes, and selling the horn for buttons, and the tallow for candles and soap.

By 1873—seventeen years after Jeb had won them their stake in the ranch—Nik Konstant and Jeb Mallory owned a hundred and forty thousand acres of land and more than eighty thousand cattle, as well as seventy thousand sheep. Nik worked hard on the ranch, and Jeb lived the life of a rich bachelor in his grand new house on Russian Hill in San Francisco. And to make Nik’s happiness complete, Rosalia finally bore him a son. He was called Gregorius Aleksandr Abrego Konstant, and was known as Greg.

Oddly, with the birth of the child Jeb began to spend more time at the ranch. He would show up unexpectedly at the Konstant House and take lunch with them, watching the growing boy with narrowed, bright blue eyes and a faint smile. “I never thought I’d say this,” he admitted to Rosalia one day, “but I’d give anything to have a son like Greg.”

“That’s easy,” she retorted, laughing, “all you have to do is get married.”

“Ah, Rosalia,” he replied with a sigh,
“that
is the hard part. I’m afraid I’m too old to change my ways.”

He met Margaret James a short while later, on board the ferry from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, where she had planned to take a little sketching holiday. Margaret had lost both her parents in the typhus epidemic of 1871, and to support herself worked as
an art tutor at Belmont, a preparatory school for boys in San Mateo. She was quite surprised when the dashingly handsome Mr. Mallory, whom everyone on board seemed to treat with great respect, struck up a conversation with her.

She was on deck at the time, endeavoring to capture the changing hues of the sky with her watercolors. Naturally she was shy, but Jeb talked easily, asking questions about Belmont and making her blush by complimenting her on her talent for painting.

Margaret was twenty-six years old with smooth, dark-copper hair kept firmly in a knot on top of her head, and a flawless skin the color of fresh milk. She had cool gray eyes and a cool manner to match, and her full mouth drooped slightly at the corners, as though she were a little sad. But despite her somber manner, Margaret was quick to laugh at Jeb’s little jokes, and her shyness soon melted under his expert charm. Still, she was the exact opposite of Jeb in temperament and it was totally unexpected on her part when he proposed to her … after all, Jeb Mallory was forty-seven years old and a well-known man about town, with a reputation for liking fast and fancy women. And he was very,
very
rich.

The Arlington Hotel in Santa Barbara was the scene of the grandest wedding reception held in those parts for years, and with Rosalia’s coaxing, Santa Barbara society forgave Jeb his indiscretions, and everyone attended.

The long windows of the gaily lit ballroom stood open to the warm summer evening as guests wandered happily in the garden beneath the Chinese lanterns strung from magnolia trees that were filled with white blossoms as though decorated especially for the bride. Mexican mariachis serenaded the happy couple and the best French champagne flowed into hundreds of crystal glasses to be raised in a toast to Jeb and Margaret.

For Margaret, her wedding day was a triumph. And Jeb Mallory knew he had chosen well—Margaret was intelligent, cultured, and attractive; she was strong and healthy. She would make a perfect mother for his son.

1873—1880, CALIFORNIA

Margaret Malloy was never able to tell anyone about her wedding night. It was a memory she preferred to bury in the darkest recesses of her mind. Of course, she had known what her duty would be as a wife, but she also knew that no
lady
could be expected to
enjoy
it—the way Jeb had said they did. “Everyone but you,” he’d shouted bitterly.

Afterward, she’d lain with her husband asleep beside her, thinking. Her bruised body ached but she was past feeding. After an hour, when she’d been quite sure he was asleep, she had gone to the bathroom and washed herself. Then she’d brushed her hair, put on a fresh nightgown, and looked at herself in the mirror. Surprisingly, she had looked very little different. No one would ever know about her shame and the terrible, humiliating experience she had endured that night. But there was no going back. She was Mrs. Jeb Mallory. And she knew that in the future, when her husband “needed” her, she wouldn’t fight him off. Oh, no, she’d just lie there and let him do what he must; she would simply put her mind elsewhere … on the color of the new curtains or what to have for luncheon the next day.