Sundancer (Cheyenne Series) (17 page)

      
“Hating someone for something they can't control isn't fair, but when it comes to Indians, it's the code of the West,” Cain said with a bitter half smile.

      
MacKenzie steepled his big blunt fingers and leaned back in his chair, studying the younger man.
Like yerself.
“Go on,” he prodded.

      
He knows where this is leading.
Damn, he should have known the wily old Scot would be one jump ahead of him—MacKenzie was two jumps ahead of everyone else. “I'll marry Alexa.”

      
Jubal bit the end off one of his cigars, lit it and inhaled deeply before he replied. “Are you in love with the lass?”

      
Cain met his level gaze head-on. “I've never lied to you, Jubal. No, I'm not in love with her, but I'd treat her kindly. She's a beautiful woman—and I happen to be the only man in a position to know she's never been touched.”
      
“Would it bother you if she had been?”

      
A strange look passed over Cain's usually inscrutable face for an instant, then vanished behind the mask. “I don't honestly know. Being part Indian, I shouldn't look at it the way a white man would.”

      
“But yer white in yer thinking, not Cheyenne.” MacKenzie was pleased when Cain's bronze face flushed.

      
“I don't suppose I'd like it any better if a white man had used her rather than a red one, but that's beside the point. She's still a virgin and there's not a man alive outside this room who believes it.”

      
“And yer willing to marry a ruined woman who's the brunt of everyone's gossip. Christian charity, lad? Or do you want something in return?”

      
A dark smile etched itself across Cain's swarthy face. “You finally cut to the chase, I see.”

      
“Aboot time somebody did,” Jubal retorted.

      
“You fired Brent Masterson two months ago and never replaced him. I know you figured young Powell would take over. Now that's out. I want to be the operations chief.” The words hung on the air like cigarette smoke in a crowded saloon.

      
Jubal took a long slow draw on his cigar, then exhaled. “So you want to be ‘the man.’ ” He grinned wryly. “You certainly have a prize set of ballocks on you, lad.”

      
“You know I can do it. Hell, I've been doing half of Masterson’s work for the past year already.”

      
Jubal knew that was true. Cain possessed keen intelligence, a surprisingly good education and fierce ambition. His Indian blood was the only impediment to his success in the railroad business—or any other business, for that matter. “Alexa is my only heir. The man who marries her will inherit my estate when I die.”

      
“You're not apt to curl up your toes anytime soon that I can see. I want the chance to prove to you what I can do, not the opportunity to squander your damned millions.”

      
“To prove it to me...or someone else, I wonder?” MacKenzie murmured almost to himself.

      
Cain did not respond to that, only asked, “Will you consider it?”

      
“Aye, I'll consider it, Cain.”

      
After Cain had left, the old man stared at his desktop, lost in thought. Eventually, a smile spread slowly across his face. Then the smile gave way to a chuckle. Jubal MacKenzie, schemer and builder, had a very interesting idea.

* * * *

      
Roxanna could feel the stares as she rode down the street. Some fresh clean mountain air would be welcome after the reception she had received in Denver. How long until they returned to Cheyenne? Perhaps she could convince Jubal to take her with him to the Union Pacific work camp farther up the line’. Even if she was the center of gossip, she would enjoy the excitement of seeing history made on the transcontinental.

      
Lawrence Powell watched Alexa ride out of the city, headed toward the mountains. The grizzled old stableman accompanying her for protection looked mean enough to bite off a buzzard's nose. Not much of a chaperon, but then her days of worrying about such social niceties were certainly over. He cursed his rotten luck and wondered if what his father had intimated was possible.

      
She was a real beauty, with all that silver gilt hair, milky skin and wide turquoise eyes, the kind of woman any man would be proud to have on his arm. Her body was exquisite as her face, slender and fine-boned yet nicely curved. The elegant rose pink riding habit she wore accented her tiny waist and the soft swell of her bosom.

      
Yes, she was stunning. A pity, but he knew what he must do. Kneeing his horse into a canter, he rode out to intercept her, glad for her choice of such an isolated route. If his father learned that he had approached her, Lawrence knew the old man would be livid.

      
Roxanna recognized her former fiancé almost immediately.
Fiancé.
For all of a few hours! She wondered if he had been the one to spurn her. Somehow she suspected not after seeing the way the elder Powell controlled his son. She felt a bizarre stab of pity for Larry Powell, then laughed at the incongruity of that—she the fallen woman feeling sorry for the millionaire's fair-haired son.

      
“Good afternoon, Miss Alexa. I'd say I ran into you quite by accident, but I'm afraid I'm a terrible liar.”

      
Roxanna watched his fair complexion pinken. He's embarrassed. She smiled coolly. “Good afternoon, Mr. Powell. I take it you intended to speak with me discreetly?”

      
“It would have been awkward going to your hotel after all that's happened.” He gestured vaguely with one hand, then lapsed into silence, eyeing the old man who had reined in his mount a distance behind them.

      
“Yes, most awkward indeed,” she agreed. For one awful moment Roxanna imagined that he had come to ask her to be his mistress now that she was too tarnished to be his wife. This would scarcely be the first time in her life that she'd been offered such a tawdry proposition.

      
But then he dispelled the thought as he stammered, “Alexa, I apologize for what's happened. You're a lady who deserves better. If it weren't for my father...well, I would never have broken the engagement. I suppose you think me a cad for going along with his decision.”

      
“Considering everything, no,” she replied evenly, relieved at this turn in the conversation.
I could never have married him.

      
“I tried to reason with Father, to explain that nothing happened to you, but he never listens to me.”

      
She detected a sullen note of bitterness in his voice.
Being Andrew Powell's only son and heir must not be an easy life, not an easy life at all.

      
“All he thinks of is what society deems proper. They're a bunch of backbiting gossips whom no one of consequence should regard.”

      
“But they do. We all must live by their rules, Larry,” she said softly, once again reverting to the familiar address as he had.

      
“I just wanted to tell you how much I regret breaking the engagement—and to assure you it was not my idea.”

      
He looked into her eyes, his face so round and smooth and boyish, almost like a puppy who expected to be cuffed.
Andrew Powell has much to answer for
, she decided. “I appreciate you taking the trouble to seek me out and say that.”

      
“What will you do...now? Go back East?”

      
She shrugged. “I don't know. Grandfather isn't one to slink away when he's been insulted.”

      
“But that's a man's reaction. A lady like you shouldn't have to endure such indignity because of his pride.”

      
She smiled at his own indignation in her defense.
If only you knew how much worse I’ve already endured
. “I shall survive, Larry.”

      
“I know I don't appear very reliable at present, but, Alexa...if you ever need a friend...I want you to know that you can count on me.”

      
“Thank you, Larry. I appreciate that, especially considering how unsettled my future is right now.”

      
He extracted an embossed card from his coat pocket and handed it to her. “My address in San Francisco and a place where you can wire me in an emergency.”

      
He really is serious
, she realized as she placed the card in her skirt pocket, then smiled at him. “If ever I'm in trouble and my grandfather can't help me, I shall call upon you.”

* * * *

      
“I’ve decided to accept yer deal,” Jubal MacKenzie said without preamble when Cain walked into his office on the Pullman railcar.

      
Over a week had passed since the debacle in Denver. Cain had returned to the construction camp outside Laramie the following day, but Jubal had other business to conduct in the larger city. He and Alexa had remained behind for another day, then made the dusty journey via private coach.

      
Cain had answered the old man's summons early this morning with considerable curiosity—and more than a bit of trepidation. Would he be summarily fired for his brass—or would he get Alexa and the position which he had wished for so long? He had his answer. He nodded to Jubal. “I wasn't certain you'd agree to mixing MacKenzie blood with a mongrel strain like mine. I'll treat her well, Jubal.”

      
“There's one condition,” the old man said, raising a gnarled hand in caveat. “Alexa has to agree to the marriage.”

      
The tension in Cain drained away, but a subtle simmer of anger replaced it. “You were willing to give her to Powell without asking her opinion.”

      
“Do na' get yer back up. If she'd told me she couldna' abide the Powell boy I wouldna' have forced her either.” A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Besides, yer the one who brought up yer mongrel blood, not me. I frankly do na' give a damn what color yer ma was as long as you do the job for me, but women...” He shrugged helplessly. “They set store by different standards and Alexa's been raised in a sheltered environment.”

      
Cain banked the anger, realizing the blunt old man was merely stating facts. MacKenzie had been, all in all, far fairer to him than most men in his position would ever have been. “Alexa will have me, don't worry,” Cain said with a confidence he was far from feeling.

      
“Will she, now?” Jubal gave Cain a measured look.

      
“Don't say anything about our arrangement. Just let me talk to her.”

      
The old man dug his fingers in his beard, which had been considerably shorn by a Denver barber, and said, “You seem awfully sure of yerself. Just exactly what passed between you and my granddaughter while you were alone together?”

      
“Nothing,” Cain replied flatly. “If I'd touched her, you'd have had me flayed alive and we both know it.” The fact that he had almost touched her in spite of that he judiciously did not mention.

      
“Aye, I would have. I suppose it's lucky for you things turned out the way they have now,” he added enigmatically.

* * * *

      
Roxanna had found the week on the road with the rail crews almost fascinating enough to take her mind off the mess in Denver. If Cain still invaded her dreams at night, the days were filled with new sights and sounds to distract her. Each morning at dawn the loud jangle of the cook bell awakened the Union Pacific town on wheels. The first day she had roused herself from a restless sleep to watch another mile and a half of track being laid in the relentless push to the Pacific.

      
The construction camp of track layers, which followed the grading crews, was itself mobile and ingeniously designed to Jubal's exact specifications and included over twenty work cars. Besides Jubal's own elegant Pullman in which the two of them had private quarters, there were bunkhouses for the men, kitchens, dining rooms, storerooms, tool houses and an arsenal built on wheels, even a blacksmith shop for the horses and mules which pulled the endlessly arriving wagons loaded with rails, spikes, fishplates and bolts, shipped all the way from foundries across the Mississippi River.

      
The polyglot of brawling workers ate in shifts in the long dining cars where they were crammed in like sardines. In the interest of efficiency, their tin dinner plates were nailed to the narrow plank tables and washed between servings by a boy none too carefully wielding a mop. The men staggered into the mess hall on wheels in the predawn light, grumbling and wiping sleep from their eyes, eager for a cup of bitter black coffee to revive them for the backbreaking day's labor.

      
And backbreaking it was, as Roxanna observed the amazing efficiency of the tracklaying crews from a discreet distance. Like the few other respectable women, all wives of higher-ranking employees, Roxanna was not allowed near the crude and blasphemous workmen. But even from a distance she could hear the oaths of teamsters rise above the crack of their whips as they urged their teams onward, heavily laden with thousand-pound iron rails and the fittings with which to join them into a metal ribbon stretching to the horizon.

      
She took to rising early and riding before breakfast. The jovial banter of the crewmen blended with the smell of boiled oats, horse manure and dust. As they neared the highest point on the transcontinental route, over eight thousand feet in elevation, the wind carried a brisk thin bite in spite of the clear blaze of the sun. Roxanna loved the clean smell of sagebrush and mountain yellow rose. She even grew accustomed to the less fragrant odors indicative of progress.