Titans (42 page)

O
n Thursday, September twentieth, Nathan appeared at the thick, iron-hinged front door of Las Tres Lomas with Zak and Todd Baker beside him. They'd ridden the train to Fort Worth and rented a horse and wagon, onto which they unloaded from a railcar the equipment necessary to map out the location of the oil rig to be erected at Windy Bluff. A telephone message, received at the Triple S, had been relayed to alert Neal of their arrival, and Samantha was waiting to greet them when the men alighted.

Todd's obvious surprise made it clear that he'd expected Neal Gordon to open the door to them. In an officious tone to hide his discomfort at the strain that had come between them, he announced, “We're here to begin, Sam. We'll be heading out to Windy Bluff to set up camp.”

“Not before you have a cup of coffee and one of Silbia's cinnamon rolls, I hope,” she said, the invitation directed at Nathan.

“Well, I don't know that we have time,” Todd said. “We're eleven days behind schedule already.”

“Ah, well, delays are bound to happen when little things like a death in your employer's family and a hurricane occur, Todd,” Samantha said tartly. “In that light, surely a half hour's more delay for coffee and rolls can have little consequence.”

Nathan cleared his throat diplomatically and removed his hat. “That sounds awfully tempting, Samantha. It's been a long morning. We accept with pleasure, don't we, Todd?”

“I suppose,” Todd said.

“Then come on into the house,” Samantha invited. “You too, Zak.”

The men stamped the mud from their boots and followed her inside to the great room. “Thank you for your kind note,” Nathan said to Samantha. “It meant much to my grandmother and especially to my father. He read it over and over.”

“Would it be inane to ask how they are?” Samantha asked, leading them to the lounging area.

“Not at all. They're better than you'd expect,” Nathan said. “The tragedy has brought them closer, and they've drawn comfort from each other.”

“And you? How are you, Nathan?” Samantha asked gently.

“We miss her, Zak and I.” He looked down at his dog. “That's why I brought him along. He's… lost without her and I couldn't go off and leave him.”

“Certainly not,” Samantha said, patting the shepherd's head. “You men have a seat while I tell Silbia you're here.”

They'd had time for a full cup of coffee, and Todd had made appreciable work of the cinnamon rolls before Neal arrived, summoned by Silbia, who'd had to go to the barn to fetch him after she'd served her guests. “You were to come get me the minute they showed up, not a second less,” Neal scolded his housekeeper.

“I'm sorry,
patrón.
I didn't see the harm in serving your guests first.”

Well, he did, Neal thought irritably, his annoyance increased, which had begun when Samantha insisted on being on hand when the men arrived. He'd hoped to forestall needless conversation between Nathan and his daughter.

At the door to the great room, Neal paused when he saw Samantha and Nathan quietly talking, a dog lying at their feet. Todd sat stiffly apart, excluded, his posture shouting
Let's get on with it!
Again, like buzzards returning to feast once more on long-dead carrion, guilt tore at Neal's conscience. Samantha had told him of Nathan's recent loss, and Neal had seen how deeply the little girl's death had affected her. She'd ridden over to Las Tres Lomas the morning after she'd heard the news—how glad he'd been to see her!—but almost immediately, in relating the tragedy, she'd begun to cry. “Sweetheart,” he'd said, “you hardly knew the child. Why are you carrying on so?”

“I don't know… I can't account for it, but I feel so sorry for Nathan and his family, as if their loss is mine, too.”

Of course she'd feel that way, Neal had thought. The little girl was her half sister, Nathan her twin. Sam and Nathan had gestated in the same womb. Once again, seeing the pair together, Neal wondered at the hand that had brought them here today. But for Dr. Tolman's letter—but for Samantha collecting the mail that day—Neal Gordon would have had no idea that the young man sitting in his house drinking coffee with his daughter was her brother or that the man who'd be drilling his oil well was her father. Daily, he would not have suffered the mouth-drying fear that Samantha would find him out and despise him for what he knew and had kept from her. What divine bliss that ignorance would have been. He made himself known.

Todd leaped up, his happy smile beaming
An ally
! Neal extended his hand to the men, warmly to Nathan, coolly to Todd. “Well, boys, are you ready to get out to Windy Bluff?”

“Yessir!” Todd said. “Can't wait.”

Samantha smiled at Nathan and indicated the basket of cinnamon rolls. “I'll have Silbia package those and bring them along.”

Startled, Neal said, “Bring them along?”

Samantha said, “I'm coming, too. I want to see where the platform will be laid.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to make sure the boundary is set up as promised and does not encroach farther on the site where I discovered my dinosaur skull,” Samantha explained. “Any objection?”

Neal said, tone innocent, “None. None at all, daughter.”
Damn
, he thought.

Daniel fretted. He was mad at his boss. Rather than being sweet back to the Triple S with Nathan and Todd, he'd been ordered to accompany a load of drilling material to Beaumont in the morning to replace Spindletop's equipment lost during the hurricane. Damn it all to hell! He'd already been away from Billie June four days, having left her to return to Dallas last Sunday. He was bewildered at himself. In the past, he would have welcomed her absence from the city. He'd then be free to enjoy its more lascivious pleasures, but now he hadn't the taste for them. He missed Billie June, and the evenings spent before the fireside within the Singleton enclave. Her house gave him the only experience of family and home he'd ever known. Besides, Billie June looked unwell, and he was concerned about her. He'd telephoned every day, encouraging her to see a doctor, and she'd assured him there was nothing wrong with her but anxiety over the future of the Triple S. “I don't know what we'll do, where we'll go,” she said.

The calamity of that ancestral ranch, Billie June's birthplace, passing out of family hands had begun to rub him raw. Singleton had nine more days to come up with the money, or the Triple S was gone. He and his family would be practically homeless. He and Samantha would move into the house on Las Tres Lomas—Old Man Gordon would love that!—but where would Millie May and Billie June go? What would happen to their household goods, their family treasures?

So, too sunken in spirit to go home to his empty apartment the last three nights, he'd worked late at his drafting table, putting the final touches on the blowout preventer designed to cap the flow of oil before it could shoot out the top of the derrick. The patent for it had already been granted, and he hoped it would be manufactured in time to be in use when the Windy Bluff well came in. That would please Samantha. Daniel was as convinced as Todd that it would be a gusher.

Tidying his draftsman table before he went home to pack, Daniel's glance fell on his drawings. A sudden idea struck like a hammer blow. He stared at the design of the blowout preventer, and sheer joy, like an electrical charge, surged through him.
By damn!
He believed he'd just figured a way to save the Triple S! He left his workroom and hurried back to his boss's office.

That afternoon, a box on which was printed
LIBBY'S STRING BEANS
was delivered to the curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There was no return address. Opening the box, the curator removed an object swaddled in cup towels and inspected it in drop-jawed surprise. He held a relic that he immediately identified as the snout and jawbone of a dinosaur head. “Where did this come from?” he demanded of the staff member who'd set it on his desk.

“I can't say, sir,” he replied, “but it's a rare find, isn't it?”

In San Francisco, California, at 505 Canal Street, the postman inserted the occupant's letters in the opening of the metal mailbox and deliberately let the lid bang shut. The racket was enough to have startled the widow next door from her afternoon nap, but she was used to it. The postman smelled freshly baked cookies. He paused on the stoop before moving on down the steps, ostensibly to organize the collection of correspondence in his hand for delivery at other houses down the street. Immediately, he heard footsteps approaching from inside the house and smiled. As usual, his strategy had worked. The lady of the house opened the door.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Kilburn,” she greeted him, the roll of her
r
's declaring her of Irish descent. “You're just in time for my chocolate cookies, Mr. Mahoney's favorite.”

Bridget Mahoney always mentioned her husband's name when she fed him treats on his rounds lest he forget she was a married woman. She baked around this time every other afternoon, and the postman made a point of timing his delivery just when he thought the pan would be coming out of the oven.

“Oh, now, I don't want to be a bother,” he demurred, as usual.

“Nonsense. Wait right here, and I'll fetch you a few.”

“Then allow me to retrieve your mail for you,” the postman said, like always. “Wouldn't want you to scrape your hand on the metal, now would we?”

When Mrs. Mahoney returned, they exchanged their offerings. “I see you have a letter from Texas, postmarked September thirteenth, seven days ago,” the postman said, chewing the cookie. “Amazing it got delivered with all the destruction to the rail system from that awful hurricane.”

“I don't know anyone from Texas who'd be writing to me,” Bridget Mahoney mused, studying the return address.

“Nice handwriting, I'd say. Well, I'll be on my rounds,” the postman said. “Thank you for the cookies. Delicious as always.”

Bridget did not acknowledge the compliment. Her attention still on the return address, she lowered herself onto the porch swing of her trim little two-story house, proudly purchased and paid for with the earnings from her husband's ferry business, begun when the Mahoneys first arrived in San Francisco in 1885. The postman was stepping up to the porch of the widow's house next door when he heard Mrs. Mahoney cry, “May the merciful heavens be praised!”

I
t was the end of a long day. The brief reappearance of summer was over. The sun withdrew its warmth as it began to sink, leaving a threat that tomorrow it would rise on the return of a cold and blustery autumn. None who had ridden out to the drill site in the morning—Samantha, Neal, Nathan, Todd—had broken for a meal or rest. First they had unloaded the wagon of the tools and equipment to be used for the start of the drilling operation, then the Waverling contingent had set about plotting the various areas for the mud pit, latrines, and ditches to imbed pipelines to the underground spring.

Samantha had kept a wary eye on the proposed placement of the oil storage tanks and portable steam engine and boiler, the service road, and the crewmen's camp, sometimes offering her opinion of better locations.

“For holy sakes, Sam, let the men do their job!” Neal wailed.

“I'm not interfering with their jobs, Daddy. I'm seeing they abide by the contract to preserve as much of our land as possible.”

Samantha had wanted to know everything about the drilling operation from boring the hole in which the rig was to be set (which she understood would first be cemented in “surface casing”) to the working of each part of the machinery used to penetrate the Earth's crust for the purpose of drawing up oil. No foreign term uttered between Nathan and Todd escaped without her asking for a definition.

“What is a marmon board?”

“It's a five-foot-long board pulled by a team of draft animals to scrape dirt over a pipeline in a ditch.”

“What does ‘spudded in' mean?”

“The very first date the drill bit hits the ground. In other words, the day the drilling begins.”

At long last, it was time to call it a day. Nathan called to Todd, “We'd better get the tents up.”

“Be right there,” Todd called back.

Samantha, standing nearby, heard the summons. “It's too late to pitch your tents tonight, Nathan. You and Todd can stay at the Triple S. We've got room to put you up, Zak, too.”

Nathan's eye strayed to Todd, surveying the plot they'd set off with wire strung between pegs to cordon off a one-hundred-yard area for a platform that would support the derrick. Nathan had not expressed his suspicion to anyone that Todd was responsible for the theft of Samantha's prehistoric find, and he never would unless the geologist gave him further cause. Todd had remained under a cloud with his boss over doubt that the failure of Samantha's camera to arrive at the Kodak Company in New York was the fault of the U.S. Postal Service. He would be under Trevor Waverling's scrutiny for the rest of his employ. And Todd's reversal of his initial belief in the authenticity of Samantha's dinosaur skull—her betrayal for his own gain—had severed their lifelong friendship, a break that Nathan sensed the geologist deeply regretted. So, in Nathan's mind, to a degree, justice had been done without his having to put a hand in it. However, he did not have to subject Samantha to Todd's company in order to offer her hospitality to him and Zak. He opened his mouth to respond when a loud “No!” came from Neal, so startling that it caught Todd's attention.

Neal, weary to his spurs, had overheard the invitation as he was coming to break up the confab between Nathan and his daughter. Already exasperated that she had hung around the entire day when she should have been back at the Triple S so that he could return to his duties at Las Tres Lomas, he had bellowed out before he thought. “I mean—I was just coming over to invite you and Todd to bunk with me tonight, Nathan. It's been damn lonely cut off from everybody this past week, and I was sort of looking forward to the pleasure of some company. We could have a bite of supper, drink a little bourbon, play some cards.”

“That's most kind of you, Mr. Gordon, but as you can see, I've got my dog with me, and, uh, well, he stays with me at night.”

Neal flapped a hand. “Hell, he's welcome, too. I don't mind a dog in the house.”

Samantha heard her father in disbelief. He
never
allowed dogs in the house. She'd feared he would rudely banish Zak when he found him in the great room that morning, and during contract negotiations, he'd adamantly refused to feed and house Nathan and Todd and Daniel as the supervising crew. These baffling spells of sudden mind changes were becoming a deep concern. Todd had drawn up to the conversation, his face brightening at Neal's offer of overnight room and board, and said eagerly, “I say it beats the cold ground and colder beans, Nathan.”

“Well, all right then, it's settled,” Neal said. “Pack up what gear you'll need and come on to the house.”

Samantha said, “Daddy, we were planning on having you for supper tonight. It's been a while since the girls have seen you.”

“Thanks, hon, but it would be too late to ride home in the dark. Come on, boys.”

Samantha received his usual kiss on her cheek in further bewilderment. No matter how late, her father had never before appeared afraid to ride home from the Triple S in the dark.

The next morning, dressed in his Sunday best, his legs crossed and bowler hat resting on his knee, Daniel Lane waited in the reception area for Noble Rutherford to receive him. He had scrubbed his nails cleaner than usual (Billie June had a fetish about clean fingernails) and knew he had caught the admiration of the receptionist—herself an eyeful—trying primly not to show it. Daniel had to admit it. He was one handsome dude, a commonly held opinion among the ladies that never seemed to faze Billie June. Other plain women, courted by a younger man of his masculine appeal, would feel threatened and insecure in the presence of her lover under the eye of a beautiful woman, but not Billie June. If she were sitting beside him, she would take up a magazine and allow the woman her look without a heartbeat's flutter of apprehension. Or at least not one she'd ever show. No one in the world had more pride than Billie June, and that was why he was here.

A bell on the wall behind her pinged. “Mr. Rutherford will see you now,” the receptionist announced.

Daniel followed the curve of her hips into the banker's luxurious office, overpowering in its ostentatious elegance. With obvious reluctance, Noble rose from behind a desk of gigantic proportions and offered a lackadaisical hand without bothering to button his coat. His barely civil greeting raised Daniel's ire. Noble Rutherford topped the list of the breed of man he most despised. How could he have ever thought Sloan Singleton one of his kind?

Noble sat down again and gestured that Daniel do the same. “I must say I'm puzzled, Lane. Why ask for a private audience? If you're seeking a loan, surely one of my clerks could assist you?”

“They couldn't with the loan I'm seeking, Mr. Rutherford.”

“Oh? And what kind is that?”

“Not kind. Whose.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I'm not here to seek a loan, but to buy one that your bank is carrying, Mr. Rutherford. It's in your best interest to sell it to me, no pun intended.”

Noble Rutherford observed Daniel in surprise. “And whose loan do you wish to buy?”

“Sloan Singleton's.”

That afternoon, on a rented horse, Daniel rode out to the Triple S. He did not go to the main house, but asked one of the cowhands where he might find his boss. The dining hall, the man said.

He found the target of his former vengeance seated with the ranch cook over cups of coffee, Sloan looking drawn and worried, years older than his age. Daniel entered the dining room quietly and allowed the cook to finish his fuming before announcing his presence. Apparently the cook was still stewing about a mystery that had occurred a week ago. Somebody had stolen into the pantry during the night and confiscated a cardboard box that had held cans of string beans. “Who in the crew would feel he had to steal a box, leave the cans on the floor and make off with half my drying towels?” the cook fussed. “At first, I thought the box and towels might be for a litter of kittens or pups, but we ain't had any of those about for years now. Besides, all any of our boys would have had to do was ask.”

“It's a mystery all right,” Sloan agreed. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Daniel behind him. “What are you doing here? Billie June said you were headed down to the coast today.”

“I had some business to attend here in Fort Worth,” Daniel said, chuckling inwardly, “and it included you. May we speak privately?”

Sloan glanced at his cook, who immediately got up from the table and made himself scarce. “Have a seat, Lane. Included me? How so?”

“Well, first read this,” Daniel said and handed Sloan an envelope from which he extracted a sheet of paper. As Sloan read it, his jaw slowly sagged. He looked at Daniel in disbelief. “What is this? It says my loan at the Rutherford City Bank has been paid in full.”

“That's right.”

“But… I don't understand. How did that happen? And what are you doing with the notification?”

“This will explain it.”

Daniel withdrew a legal document from another envelope and pushed it across the table to Sloan. Sloan read it, and his eyelids momentarily sank. He shook his head and pressed his lips together in the clear and painful expression of a man who should have seen it coming but hadn't, and now it was too late. He opened his eyes to stare at Daniel and said in a voice weary with resignation, “You've paid off the loan. You now own the Triple S.”

Daniel reached forward to take back the conveyance of title to personal property. “Sure looks like it.”

Sloan's face had become the color of granite. “It's what you've been after all along, isn't it—to get your hands on my ranch.”

“Well, yes… that was my intent at first. However”—Daniel scratched the back of his neck thoughtfully—“I changed my mind. There's something else of yours I'd rather have instead. In exchange for it, I'm willing to sign your ranch back over to you right now, free and clear, no conditions attached, and nothing need ever be said on the matter again.”

“And what in the world is that?”

“Your blessing when I propose marriage to your sister Billie June.”