Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (37 page)

ONCE CORD AND ANNE WERE
gone, Martha stopped bustling around and lowered herself heavily into a chair. When Judith poured her a cup of coffee and joined her, Martha started to lift her cup and put it down again. Her hands were shaking.

Judith noticed. “It’s been an awful day. Are you going to be all right?” she asked.

“Yes, I just need a little more time.” Knowing how Judith felt about Cord, Martha almost didn’t go on, but then decided Judith should know. “When I went out to get them, they didn’t hear me coming, and I saw…. I went back out and then called them so they’d know I was there because I saw….”

Martha took a swallow of coffee and started again. “It’s been almost thirty years since our baby died. Jimmy. James.” She smiled at the sound of her first son’s name, remembering. “The pain is still there but most of the time now it’s - softened by time, and I can remember the good things too now. But when it happened - the pain was so terrible I’d hold on to Ephraim so hard - because somehow the two of us could bear what neither one of us could alone.”

Martha pulled out her handkerchief, mopped her eyes, and blew her nose. “That’s what I saw today in the barn - two people trying to bear a grief too great for one alone. It brought it all back. We saw her hurt and recognized it, but because he doesn’t show anything we think he doesn’t feel it either. What Rob said was really directed at him. The Wells family doesn’t think it’s a tragedy that she’s married and expecting a baby. They think it’s a tragedy that she’s married to
him
and expecting
his
baby. I’ve agreed with Ephraim about them, but now I don’t know. No one can hurt that much unless they care.”

“What does Ephraim think?”

“About the same as Frank - that she’s strong willed and temperamental and is in love with him or thinks she is because he’s so indifferent he lets her have her own way. That he feels he owes her and finds a wife a - convenience - and doesn’t really care much so long as it’s not too much trouble.”

Judith nodded her head. “That’s about what Frank says all right, but Martha….” Judith told Martha about what she had seen the morning after the race.

“Have you told Frank?”

“No. He’d say I may have seen something like that but I was reading things into it that weren’t there. The strange thing is, after all these years - nothing ever helped the way I felt about him. It was just terror, and now I can’t even see why I felt like that. It’s hard to be afraid of a man who’s capable of that much tenderness. Are you going to say anything about what you saw?”

Martha was thoughtful. “No, I’m not. You’re right. Neither of them will believe us - at least our interpretation. If we’re right, they’ll come to it in time themselves. In the meantime, so far as I’m concerned a baby is good news, and anyone who doesn’t think so had better keep quiet around me.”

* * *

Chapter 36

ROB WELLS KNEW WHAT HE
had said to his sister was indefensibly, unforgivably wrong. His ugly attack on Anne disgusted even Rob himself. The joy that shone so brightly from her face and which seemed more obvious every time he saw her had not escaped him. It was also becoming more and more difficult for him to pretend to himself that he did not feel a grudging admiration for the quiet man who so affected her.

Unlike the Bennetts, Rob knew his sister would not talk herself into loving a man without reason. Somehow, in spite of the indifferent face he showed the world, Cord Bennett was meeting some deep, basic need in Anne, and Rob knew it.

Although Anne’s slap had been no light blow, Rob felt as if he had given, not received, a beating. The memory of the light fading from her eyes, even as the smile faded from her lips, made Rob feel truly ugly.

The worst of it was that he had not meant his own words. They were his father’s words, simply plucked from memory and parroted in the heat of the moment - because Anne’s news had roused something approaching panic in Rob. He had a very good idea of how his father would react to the news that Anne was, after all, carrying the hated half-breed’s child. Rob also was privy to, and more and more afraid of, his father’s latest plan to rip Anne from the misalliance he had caused and now found so unacceptable.

At last Rob had begun to think for himself, at last he disagreed with his father over more than a minor matter, and at last he had come to the conclusion that his father was totally, tragically wrong. But Rob still could not oppose Edward more than mildly and still did not completely believe Cord’s and Anne’s version of the events at the Bennett Ranch the previous year.

In the end, he decided that if his father went ahead with his latest plan to get Anne away from her husband so that she would “come to her senses,” at worst it would cause everyone some temporary unhappiness and inconvenience, but it would all come right in the end.

Rob Wells lacked the maturity to judge his father accurately and the courage to oppose his father openly, but he was cursed with an insight that sent dread coursing through him when his father greeted the news of Anne’s pregnancy not with the expected rage but with a self-satisfied smile. “Well, well, now sooner or later that damn Injun will come into town without her.”

THE LATE NOVEMBER MORNING WAS
heavily overcast with a sharp, cutting wind out of the north and the smell of snow in the air when Frank Bennett pulled into the yard with the team and wagon. Anne and Cord had not been to church or to the Bennetts on Sundays since the terrible scene weeks ago. Anne greeted Frank warily.

“Where’s Cord?” Frank’s engaging grin meant he was at least going to start the visit on his best behavior.

Anne just gestured. Foxface had sounded a loud alarm, and Cord was already on his way across the yard towards the house.

Warming himself in the kitchen over coffee, Frank explained his purpose.

“Everybody else seems to have something important to do,” he said, “so I’m the one elected to go for supplies today in this damned cold wind. Thought I’d see if I could talk you into suffering along with me.” He looked at Cord questioningly.

At this time of year no one with any commonsense traveled without equipment that would allow them to survive sudden severe weather. Traveling with company was better than traveling alone for the same reason. Even so, Anne now knew enough about the operation of the Bennett Ranch to be absolutely sure that there was no way Frank Bennett would ever be going for supplies in any weather unless he wanted to. What Frank wanted was to start patching things up with his brother, and Anne wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Cord regarded Frank thoughtfully. “Riley?”

“Riley got banged up a couple of days ago. Nothing bad, but his old bones would ache worse than usual over a wagon ride to town and back.”

Cord raised his eyebrows slightly at Anne. Still unsure of her own feelings and knowing full well Cord preferred a difficult relationship with his family to none, she replied with a tiny shrug of one shoulder to let him know the decision was his.

“All right. I’m not working horses in this wind anyway.”

When Frank started for the wagon, Cord held back a minute, gave her a quick kiss. She went back to her work, humming.

The train was now speeding
across darkening flat prairie. The whistle sounded, forcing Anne away from the comfort of the past back into the terror of the present. Her father had not yet finished his self-congratulatory speech.

“He wouldn’t let Handler and his men pull you off the street under his nose because it would have offended his pride. I probably should have had them just try to buy you. Redskins sell their women for a bottle of whiskey.”

So Frank had sized up the situation perfectly those many months ago. The fight was a setup. Among the terrible mistakes she had made was underestimating the depth of her father’s hate, the strength of his obsession. And because of her mistakes - her misjudgment - the future was no longer to be filled with laughter and love. Instead there would be only long, hollow years echoing with grief and regret. Of Cord’s love she had no doubt, but the lying note went right to the heart of his inability to trust. For the rest of his life he would accept that she was so faithless, so shallow, she had been able to just walk away.

“Some of my friends thought I was crazy to wait so long, but a good military mind knows the value of patience. There’s nothing any of them can do now, even the lawyer brother. If we’d had to hide you in town until we could get the train, but no, it was Friday, Friday. Two trains out of town a week, and it happened the day of the afternoon train. The storm was looking more and more like a blizzard by the time we left. We were lucky to get away when we did. No one can follow us until Tuesday, and there may not even be a train on Tuesday. That Ephraim, he’s no fool; he won’t pursue it. Of course, that ignorant savage couldn’t find the City of Chicago with a map if he wanted to. I hope the other brother read the note to him. Then he didn’t even bother Robert.” He gave an ugly laugh.

Anne said nothing, ate nothing, drank little. Chicago came too soon.

* * *

Chapter 37

CORD EXPECTED THE TRIP TO
town to be awkward, hoped it wouldn’t turn downright unpleasant. To his surprise, once they were underway, Frank began telling him the news in the latest letter from their sister, Hannah. After the death of her alcoholic husband, Hannah’s life had begun to improve dramatically. The changes in Hannah’s life were an easy subject. Cord was as pleased with the news as Frank.

After that, Frank asked about Cord’s plans to cross Fortune on Red’s daughters and perhaps vice versa, upgrading his whole herd in a relatively short time. Frank had similar ideas about improving the Bennett cattle. Conversation wasn’t difficult after that, and the silences were comfortable. By the time they were almost home, Cord wondered if there was actually some small chance that things might someday come right between them after all.

Frank seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “You know, it occurs to me that if I got to know you, I might like you,” he said. The words were light. The sentiment was not.

“Heaven forbid,” Cord said dryly.

Frank laughed.

Good feelings evaporated the minute the house came into sight. In the bitter cold, no smoke was rising from the chimney. Cord was out of the wagon before Frank got it stopped. Anne wasn’t in the kitchen. By the time he had checked both bedrooms and behind the house, Frank was inside, standing at the kitchen table holding a piece of pale blue paper.

“It was on the table, under that cup,” he said, holding it out.

As Cord read the short note penned in blue ink, he felt a pain so intense, his vision blurred for a second. He crushed the paper, let it drop to the floor.

“Cord?”

He looked at his brother, feeling a yawning emptiness that made it difficult even to think what needed to be said. “Send Riley over here in the morning, will you, Frank? I’ll leave you a signed authorization. Have him take care of the stock till you can sell everything.” He headed for the bedroom.

Desperation laced Frank’s words. “Damn it, Cord, don’t do this again. You can’t have ever thought she’d stay anyway. You can’t be stiff-necked enough to throw your life away just because she’s walked out. What about the baby? We’ll raise it, but it’s still yours. Don’t you even care about that?”

Cord spun around at the bedroom door. “Leave it alone, Frank. Just go. This time I’ll send word.”

Frank met his eyes for long moments, the desire to argue written all over him, but in the end he turned and left, cursing under his breath with every step.

Cord began packing for winter travel on horseback. It was only mid-afternoon now. He would feed the stock early and leave before dark. South again, he thought vaguely. He’d once thought he might like to see the country to the north, but not this time of year.

Chores done for the last time, he reentered the house. Keeper would need time to eat and then he’d saddle up and go. He sat numbly in the cold. Except for that one stab of intense pain, he felt only an empty disbelief, and as he waited for the time to pass, it came to him that that was just what he felt - disbelief.

When exactly had he stopped believing that she would leave? Was it the night she had turned everything upside down and accused him of feeling trapped by the coming child? An image flashed through his mind of silver eyes and soft parted lips, of her face laughing up at him from a blanket spread in the hay meadow. All right, damn it, he cursed himself, you wanted to believe she’d stay and you convinced yourself of it, and now you can’t accept you were right in the first place. She’s gone. Gone like a thief in the night, stealing bits and pieces of your heart and soul. Gone without the courage to face you, gone leaving a damn note….

And that, of course, was the hardest part to swallow. Even when he’d believed she would go, he had pictured her looking him right in the eye - I’m tired of you, tired of living here, I’m leaving, going back to a better life, my own kind of people. She was not a coward, not afraid of him, would not just creep away.