Titans (39 page)

They all waited in various modes of shock and grief in the parlor for the police to arrive. Dry-eyed, Mavis sat in her wingback like one grieving the long-ago loss of a loved one for whom all her tears had been spent, face pale, lips pressed firmly together, Scat curled in a ball in her lap. Lenora cried quietly in a corner, and in another Benjy fingered his Catholic rosary, his lips moving in a requiem for the dead. Trevor brooded in his customary chair by the window, his profile rigid as a Roman bust. Nathan sprawled, sickened, in the wingback across from his grandmother, Zak at his feet with his head on his paws, the door to Rebecca's room closed against him.

“Why?” Mavis asked vaguely of no one in particular. “Why? I knew the child was fascinated by the river, but she'd been warned so many times about going down there without someone being with her. Why of all days did she go down there?”

Nathan glanced at his father. Only he and Trevor knew the answer. Rebecca had witnessed her uncle drown. Today, because of the storm, her mind had become trapped in the memory of that day, and she'd gone down to the pier to rescue him. His little half sister had tried to tell them, but none had listened. He remembered the promise he'd made to his father:
I'll see after Rebecca for as long as she lives.
Nathan turned his gaze to his grandmother, and to his utter astonishment, before he could put a clamp on his tongue, no more able to prevent himself from speaking than he could keep a boil from rupturing, he heard himself answer, “Rebecca saw her uncle drown himself and went down to the river to save him.”

B
illie June and Daniel caught the first afternoon train to Fort Worth and managed to arrive at the Triple S just as the rain and wind laid siege to Dallas. On his round to punch tickets, the conductor had told his passengers of a rumor that Galveston had been struck by a terrible storm coming from the Gulf of Mexico, and the Central Plains would probably get its share of it. “I hope Sloan got his hay in,” Billie June said. “Winter feeding will be awfully slight if he didn't, and of course if it floods, he'll be worried sick about his cattle. Neal Gordon, too. Livestock have a natural instinct to move away from floodwaters, but there's only so much high ground on both ranches, and of course, there's always danger of crowded animals stampeding if lightning strikes.”

“What happens if they can't make it to high ground or there's not enough room?” Daniel asked.

Billie June had looked bleak for a moment. “It means they lose some of their herds and a sizable chunk of income. Raising cattle is an awful hard way to earn a living, because so much of successful ranching depends on the weather. If this storm is bad and lasts long, the Triple S may be in trouble.”

Daniel heard Billie June in surprise. He'd assumed a ranch the size and prosperity of the Triple S could weather any storm. “The Triple S in trouble? How so?”

Billie June looked as if she regretted divulging the information. Daniel encouraged her to share family news, hoping for a morsel about Sloan that might be useful, but Billie June had become closemouthed about her brother in the last months except to say something favorable. Daniel half suspected that Billie June may have had another reason other than his comfort in insisting that he lodge at the Triple S during his assignment at Windy Bluff. She might hold the hope that once her brother and Daniel got to know each other, they might sheathe their swords. Not a chance. Sloan Singleton represented the type of man Daniel most despised, the ones who thought themselves better than anybody simply by the luck of their birth. Daniel had been born in the gutter, no say about where he'd popped out, but he'd climbed out of it almost from the minute he'd shed his nappies. He hadn't much to show for it until now, and in a way, he owed the upward direction in his life to Sloan Singleton. If Mr. High-and-Mighty Big Britches hadn't humiliated him that day, Daniel might not be where he was now, but that didn't mean he had reason to forgive and forget. The man was still a condescending, self-serving snob. If for no other reason, he'd get even with Sloan for the pain Samantha would suffer when she learned the real reason he had married her.

Billie June's worry was as raw and exposed as an open wound, and Daniel suspected she could not keep it to herself long. He wondered how she hadn't yet figured out his motive in continuing to see her. He had never spoken of love. He had drawn a line at that deception. That he desired her, admired her, enjoyed her company more than any other woman he'd ever known—those were endearments he could truthfully shower upon her, but love, no.

“Why would the Triple S be in trouble if the storm is bad?” he prodded.

Billie June pulled nervously at the sleeve end of her jacket. “Let's just say that every cow is needed right now to pay the bills,” she said, and after a moment, as if forced by anxiety, volunteered, “especially Sloan's loan from the Rutherford City Bank.”

Daniel could hardly keep his jaw from dropping.
Sloan Singleton in hock to the
Rutherford City Bank?
After his ditch of his daughter, Noble Rutherford would not hesitate to call in the loan if Sloan failed to meet his obligation to the bank. “Surely your brother's debt is not enough to be too big a worry,” Daniel said.

Billie June's mournful nod disputed the feigned certainty of his statement. Shocked, Daniel said, “Your brother wouldn't have been d—” he caught himself before he said
dumb
, and said instead “desperate enough to put the ranch up for collateral, would he?”

Again the sorrowful fall of Billie June's face. “I'm afraid he did. We didn't ride out the drought like the Gordons, and Sloan needed money to buy breeding stock more suitable to our climate and grasslands when another dry spell hits. He expected our herds to increase twofold within a few years, and it was happening, too. Sloan would never have pledged the ranch if he'd thought it at risk.”

Of course it wasn't at risk when he made the deal, Daniel thought. He'd planned to marry Anne Rutherford, whose daddy wouldn't allow his daughter to suffer the stigma of foreclosure, so the ranch would never be in jeopardy. When his daughter married Sloan, Noble Rutherford would most likely forgive the debt—probably as a wedding present. But then Sloan had taken a gamble and cast his lot with Samantha, a potential oil heiress and a far more suitable wife to a rancher, with the same idea in mind that Neal Gordon, for the exact reason as Noble Rutherford, would never allow the Triple S to go under. What a scheming bastard! Sloan Singleton was turning out to be no better than any other man and a whole lot dumber than most. He hadn't even had the foresight to anticipate a catastrophe beyond drought that could wipe him out before the Gordon well came in—
if
it came in—and now the banker had him by the short hairs. It couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. Daniel had heard the
we
and
our
in Billie June's explanation. She was still very much tied to the ranch. “So now I guess he'll rely on your and your sister's trust fund money to bail him out,” he suggested.

Billie June turned to him with a look that could have fried bacon. Daniel realized he'd overstepped. No doubt about it. Blood was thicker than water. They were sitting together on the Pullman seat holding hands, and Billie June snatched hers away.

“For your information, Sloan would
never
take a dime of my or my sister's trust fund money for any reason,” she declared. “We offered him a loan when we learned he needed money, but he adamantly refused. He would never risk Dad's provision in the will that represents our own livelihoods in case we do not marry.”

Any other woman might have arched a look conveying a hint at the end of that statement, but Billie June turned her withering glare to the compartment window. Daniel felt a sudden, unexpected dip of his heart at her rebuff and tried to take her hand again. “I'm sorry if I sounded like I was maligning your brother,” he apologized.

“You don't know him,” Billie June said.

Yes I do, Daniel contradicted silently. Why would Sloan borrow from his sisters if he planned to marry a bank vault's daughter or an oil-rich rancher's pride and joy? Mr. High-and-Mighty Big Britches hadn't counted on a hurricane getting in the way of his strategy. It was going to be interesting to see how he got out of this fix—
if
he did. He smiled to himself and settled against the leather-padded back of his seat. He missed Billie June's soft hand and her trim little shoulder turned from him, but he was warmed by the speculation that the storm might accomplish his life's mission for him.

Millie May, Samantha anxiously standing behind her, had the front door open to greet her sister and Daniel before they could be completely drenched in the dash from the coach sent to collect them from the train station. Sloan ran out in the rain to help unload the luggage, grumbling that his sister must have brought everything but the icebox from her Dallas apartment. Along with Daniel's large satchel of tools, the entrance to the house was soon filled with several suitcases, valises, hatboxes, and a steamer trunk pooling the floor. The men did not shake hands. Daniel might have been a spool on the staircase banister for all the notice Sloan took of him. “For God's sakes, Billie June, this is more than you left home with!” her brother complained. “Where are we going to store all this luggage?”

“There's the upstairs hall cabinet where we keep Christmas decorations,” Billie June said. “We can put some things in there.”

“
No!
”
Sloan protested, his outburst so explosive it startled him as much as his wife and sisters and—dammit!—Daniel Lane. One of the ironmonger's eyelids lowered thoughtfully while the women gazed at him in surprise. “I mean… that's not a good idea, Billie June. That cabinet is full to the gills already, and there are some fragile decorations in there of our mother's.”

“Oh, that's right,” his sister agreed. “We'll make room in the storage compartment behind the stairs, and there's room under the beds for our valises.”

Luggage arrangements over, Billie June imparted news of the Galveston hurricane and that its aftermath was headed inland. “That will mean a delay of your drilling schedule, then,” Sloan said to Daniel, hoping the man would take the hint and go back to Dallas. He could not have him free to roam his house while he and his men were out trying to avert the damage the storm would inflict.

“I'll have to see what Monday's weather looks like. I expect my boss to telephone today or tomorrow with new orders. Mr. Waverling might send me down to the coast to check for damage on a drilling operation. Meanwhile, maybe I could be of help to you on the ranch,” Daniel offered.

Billie June patted Daniel's arm, her miff over, and said with pride, “Daniel cannot sit still unless he's reading. He's always got to be doing something productive. Surely you can find something for him to do, Sloan?”

Surprised at the offer, Sloan leaped at it. His stomach had knotted within seconds of hearing of the hurricane. The rain had caught the last of his hay to be baled, an unexpected and possibly crippling financial loss. If the storm was as far-reaching and long-lasting as Sloan suspected, every rancher's hay in the North Central plains would be hit. Little would be for sale and sold at sky-high prices, but he would worry about that bridge when he came to it. More pressing were his fears of blackleg, especially to his breeding stock. It was a highly fatal disease resulting from a soil-borne bacteria released after flooding. Then there were the infectious diseases like foot rot and pneumonia, caused by long-term exposure to wet weather and pastures standing in water. Somehow he had to get his cattle to higher ground. Also, the wind had gotten up, the strongest in years, which meant that for the next few days, a detail would have to ride fence to check for damage, and, when the weather cleared, comb the pastures for metal objects like nails and bits of wire that could be ingested and cause damage to intestinal tracts. Brush and debris, especially the poisonous leaves and branches of the black cherry trees, impossible to root out from the land, had to be cleared from the pastures and drowned animals hauled off to a lime pit and burned. There was plenty of work to be done, not even counting the care and maintenance of thousands of head of cattle if a fraction survived.

“You know anything about herding livestock in inclement weather?” Sloan asked.

Of all his sundry drifter jobs, Daniel had never worked on a ranch in any kind of weather. “I can ride a horse and use a rope as good as any man,” he said.

Sloan thought it didn't matter whether the ironmonger knew the difference between either one as long as the man stayed away from his house. “Follow me,” he said.

By the time the men and horses set out, premature darkness had fallen and the rain and wind increased in velocity. Through the sheets of water and blast of wind, they strained to see where the noises were coming from that cattle make in distress: calves bawling for their mothers, cows mooing for their young, bulls bellowing. All these and other sounds of snorting and grunting could be heard over the fury of the storm, but sight was useless. Sloan and his men, Daniel among them, had started out riding abreast in rain slickers, their trouser legs over their boots, to better find stray or imperiled cows, but the wall of rain prevailed over the wall of men and made it impossible for them to judge the animals' location. Sloan and his crew headed by knowledge toward the draws—the cattleman's name for deep, narrow gorges with steep sides—to search by hearing and experience for cows that in their panic had tumbled into them. They found to their dismay that their instincts were right, the most disheartening sight a cow mooing from the rim of the ravine for her fallen calf bawling from knee-deep water. The rescue procedure involved ranch hands dropping into the ditch and positioning a lariat under the forelegs of the hapless animals, then putting their shoulders to their rumps while other cowboys astride horses on the rim tugged them up and out by the ropes.

Daniel was the first to volunteer for ravine duty, but the wind played havoc with his rope. Its force tried to tear it from his grip, and on such slippery ground, the horse at the top of the ravine could not sustain its footing bearing the calf's weight. As hard as he tried, Daniel's first rescue effort to save the calf proved futile.

“We can't just let the little fellow drown,” Daniel hollered up to Sloan on the lip of the draw when the rancher let go the rope to preserve his horse.

“I'm afraid we have to,” Sloan shouted down to him, surprised at the anguish he saw on Daniel's rainwashed face. “There's nothing to be done, and we have others to see to. I'm sorry, Lane.”

Defeated, the men called it a day. Sloan and Daniel returned to the main house and the cowhands to the ranch dining hall to disrobe, wrap in blankets, and dry their work clothes before the room's gigantic fireplace. By orders of their boss, if the rain did not let up, they would spend the rest of the day and sleep that night on the hard floor rather than get another drenching in a sprint to the bunkhouse. Sloan did not need influenza sweeping the ranks of his crew on top of everything else.

Samantha fussed over him, getting him into dry clothes, tugging off his muddy, water-swollen boots, pouring hot coffee into him, but without the words of consolation with which other wives might comfort their men. She was a ranch woman. Samantha knew too well the heart-numbing devastation such a storm could wreak and no loving reassurances soothe. Both ranches had suffered floodwaters before, but in summer when ground and grass dried quickly. They were now into an early and chilly autumn, and the pastures had already given up their stored heat. Mildred's prediction was correct. There would be no Indian summer this year. The ground would stay damp for a long time, a breeding ground for the horrible diseases that could wipe out a herd within twelve to forty-eight hours of infection.