Titans (6 page)

S
amantha threw back the covers. She'd lain in bed long enough indulging in past memories. Time was burnin' itself, as her father would say. She must get back to the ranch. Many of the heifers—females having their first babies—were calving now, and they needed more help than birthing cows. This was also the last week of the month, when bills had to be paid and profits and losses tallied.

She dressed in the work attire she'd brought along to wear back to the ranch: denim pants, long-sleeved flannel shirt, leather vest, and high-topped boots. Buttoning the fly of the “blue jeans,” designated such because of their color and style, Samantha anticipated her mother's sniff of disapproval. It was Estelle's opinion that “Levi Strauss never meant for women to wear his copper-riveted work pants when he created them,” leaving her daughter to wonder if her mother had forgotten she'd worn men's trousers in the early years of helping her husband run the ranch.

There were so many things her mother wanted to forget from that time. She'd been the daughter of a poor dirt farmer in 1867 when Neal Gordon came calling and married her the same year. In becoming Mrs. Neal Gordon, Estelle had gained a proud family name. The Gordons were landed gentry. In 1820, the patriarch of Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad had come to what was then a province of Mexico and established a ranch he stocked with a breed of cattle native to the region known as Longhorns. In 1867, Neal, along with his father and two younger brothers, owned the beginnings of what would become one of the largest ranches in Central Texas, but prosperity was nearly fifteen years away. Comanche raids and Reconstruction were wreaking financial havoc, and that year Neal's father and his two unmarried brothers succumbed to a yellow fever epidemic that swept up through Texas from the coastal city of Galveston. Estelle was left to fill the boots of the depleted labor force. Not until the end of the Indian Wars and Reconstruction when the Texas and Pacific Railway arrived in Fort Worth did Estelle enjoy the lady-of-the-manor life she'd dreamed about during her courtship. By then, at thirty-six, she was middle-aged.

Samantha had long figured out that her mother had hoped to live vicariously through the little girl she took to raise. Impoverished as a child and a far cry from beautiful, Estelle Gordon would experience through Samantha what it would have been like to be pretty and graceful, to wear fine clothes, and to enjoy the frilly feminine amusements she'd longed to know growing up. Samantha was sensitive to this side of her lanky, rawboned mother and did her best to satisfy her yearning.

For a while, Samantha had wished that it was possible to be two daughters, one for her mother and one for her father, but then she'd matured to realize she could be only one, so Estelle Gordon had lost the daughter she would have preferred to see in lace and silk to leather and denim. There had been no division of loyalties when both her parents had lived at Las Tres Lomas, but when her mother came to live in town, visiting the ranch only occasionally and her father remained behind, Samantha had begun to be pulled in two directions. Her mother wished her to take her place in society. Her father wanted her to learn the business that sustained their livelihood.

“She's the heir to Las Tres Lomas, Estelle. Can't you understand that the only way for Sam to learn the workings of the ranch is to
be
there?”

“She'll get old before her time, Neal. The land will sap the youth right out of her. Like it did me,” Estelle said.

“Why, you're as pretty and youthful as the day I met you, honeybee,” her husband declared. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, Neal! You're as impossibly blind as you are stubborn!”

“I'll encourage her to wear a hat and gloves when she's on the range, Estelle. I promise.”

In the beginning, her mother had hoped her daughter's attendance at Simmons Preparatory would give her a taste for city life, but it had not, and with reluctant grace, Estelle had let her go. Samantha had been relieved. She was accommodating only to a certain point and would not live in town with its mud streets, uneven boardwalks, raw sewage in the gutters, drunken cowboys shooting up the place on Saturday nights, lack of a water system, and
flies
! In the summer, it was nothing to see them swarming like a hive of bees around crates of fruit and meat hanging in grocery markets or in restaurants where the pests were so numerous, the help would tack two-inch strips cut from newspapers onto broomsticks and wave them over the tables to keep them off the food.

Samantha would have dressed this morning in her fashionable three-piece riding habit with top hat and veil she usually wore when arriving and departing the town house, but the costume was meant for sidesaddle, and she'd brought along Pony, her quarter horse, for the ride back to the ranch. Immediate and dirty chores awaited her upon return, for which she'd already be dressed.

Samantha intercepted the housekeeper taking her mother her breakfast tray. “I'll carry that in, Mildred,” she said.

“You up awful early, Miss Sam, and already ready to leave us, too. Does your mama know you're going so soon?”

“I'm not sure. That's why I want to take the tray in so that I can break it to her gently.”

The housekeeper widened her gaze and swept it over Samantha's seasoned work wear. “You ain't going to break it to her gently in that gear,” she said. “Your mother was hoping you'd stay at least through luncheon.” Mildred was half American Indian, half white. Her mother had been abducted by a Comanche raiding party in 1864 and impregnated by one of its warriors. Mother and daughter had been rescued and returned to her mother's family by the Texas Rangers in 1871, when Mildred was six years old. As a young woman, she had come to live at Las Tres Lomas as a kitchen maid when Samantha was two. When Estelle moved to the town house in Fort Worth, she had brought Mildred along as housekeeper.

Samantha took the tray with the familiar thought of feeling like a rope tugged between two giant oaks. “I can't, Mildred. Will you please tell Jimmy to saddle up Pony for me?”

Awful early.
It was past eight o'clock. At the ranch, long before now she'd already have had breakfast with her father and begun her duties for the day. He would be anxiously waiting, glad for Estelle to have had their daughter's undivided attention for the traditional yearly week of her birthday, but pawing at the ground for her return.

Her mother's sudden, happy smile at Samantha's entrance with the breakfast tray melted when she noted her ranch attire. “I can't entice you to stay another day?”

Samantha positioned the bed tray over her mother's lap. “You know I can't, Mother. The boys will need my help with the heifers, and I've got the books to do this afternoon. Daddy is expecting me.”

Estelle spread the napkin over the bodice of her nightgown. “Well, we can't have your father disappointed, now can we?”

“Mother…” Samantha's sigh warned Estelle not to start with the old resentment.

“I know, I know.” Estelle's tone conceded defeat. She placed her hand over the lid of the silver pot and poured a steaming cup of coffee. “But speaking of your father, I have a concern that I must mention before you leave.”

Samantha drew up a chair and set her wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat on the bed, feeling a clench of alarm. Was this about the whistling sound back in her father's chest she and her mother had heard at her birthday dinner? It had come and gone for years. Neal Gordon declared it normal for a man shot in the lung by a Comanche arrow. “What concern?”

“Sloan Singleton.”

“Sloan Singleton?”

Estelle blew on the surface of the hot coffee. “Don't say his name and look as if you don't know who and what I'm talking about.”

Samantha forced a blank stare. “No, Mother, I'm afraid I don't.”

“Is he going to marry that supercilious fraud?”

“How would I know?”

“Don't you two talk anymore?”

“Not for a long time.”

Estelle sipped her coffee. “That's what your father and I were afraid of.”

“What were you afraid of?”

Carefully, Estelle set her coffee cup in its saucer. “That you two have grown apart. Neal says you don't invite him to supper anymore and decline invitations to the Triple S. That's opening the door for Anne Rutherford to waltz through, Samantha. And she will, too, and lock you out. That girl's got her sights on Sloan as the man she intends to marry.”

Samantha felt a sudden loss of air from her lungs. “Even if Sloan and I were still close friends, what makes you think she wouldn't waltz in anyway? Sloan has never thought of me in any way but as another sister.”

“Good friends make the best spouses, Samantha, and you and Sloan were made for each other. Don't deny it. What other beautiful woman does he know that fits to ranching like you do? Good God! Anne Rutherford doesn't know the back end of a cow from a pig's snout.” Stirring sugar into her coffee, Estelle made a face. “Seth Singleton, God rest his soul, will turn in his grave if his son marries that holier-than-thou piece of fluff. From the time you and Sloan were children together, your father and Seth were dead-set on the two of you marrying and combining the ranches as one.”

“That must have gotten by me,” Samantha said wryly, surprised by this new information. “By Sloan, as well.” She reached for her mother's coffee cup and took a hot swallow to loosen her tight throat. “Daddy's main concern wouldn't be that if I don't marry Sloan, I won't marry at all, would it?” She did not add:
And have those heirs he wants?

A blush bloomed on the flat, weathered planes of Estelle's cheeks. All the face creams now on the market and easily affordable to her mother's budget had not effectively bleached years of her skin's exposure to the sun. Estelle looked disconcerted. “What other man is out there that you would consider, Samantha?”

“You mean what other man is out there to
be
considered?” Samantha said.

Estelle sighed. “Why did Lawrence Hendrick and Tom Bedford have to go off and get themselves killed in the Spanish-American War, a conflict the U.S. shouldn't even have been in? Who in the world ever heard of Cuba? Those boys would have been knocking each other out for your hand.”

Samantha pushed back the chair and stood. “I'm only twenty, Mother, not an old maid yet. A candidate wearing the right spurs might come along for my affections yet.”

“I've heard as much confidence in the song of a dying bird. You love Sloan Singleton and might as well admit it.”

Samantha picked up her hat. “So what if I do? He'll probably marry Anne, and who can blame him? She's stunning, and he's convinced she has a heart to go with her beauty. Maybe she does—for him, at least.”

“Oh, good heavens! Anne Rutherford's beauty is surface deep, not like yours that shines from the soul. And those noble causes of hers…” Estelle buttered a slice of toast with a furious swipe of her knife. “Only a show to make herself appear superior to everybody else. You'd think someone of Sloan Singleton's common sense wouldn't be taken in by her. His mother certainly wouldn't have been, God rest
her
soul.”

Samantha bent down and kissed her mother's cheek. “You've just never forgiven Anne for suggesting to Miss Sims that she take her Sunday school class out to Millbrook Orphanage when I was ten years old,” she said.

“And I never will, either. Anne did it deliberately to make you feel bad.”

“She succeeded. Now I must be going. Thank you for a beautiful birthday party and a wonderful week.”

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” Estelle said, doubt in her look. “I know I enjoyed having you here. I so wish you'd have had one of the boys come collect you in a ranch wagon that's easily recognized. I worry so when you ride back alone. Those drovers that come into town with the herds… nothing but a bunch of rowdies, and on horseback, they have no idea who you are.”

“I'm safer on a horse than I'd be in a wagon, Mother. Pony can outrun anything on four legs, and you know I'm not bad with a gun, either.”

Samantha could see the unease that image implanted. Was it the way of mothers that they were always anxious about their children's happiness and safety? Would she ever have reason to know for herself?

Mildred met her in the foyer as she was tying on her hat before the hall mirror. “You'll go by the post office to collect your father's mail? And what do you want to do about these?” The housekeeper had picked up Todd Baker's birthday present from the calling card tray where Samantha had left them.

Samantha took the tickets from Mildred's hand. The date of the lecture was in eleven days, scheduled on Saturday, when she'd return for the weekend to attend a christening on Sunday. She knew no one to give them to. Who but a scientist would be interested in hearing a paleontologist speak on the process of extracting oil from fossils?

Todd had spent a tidy sum for the tickets, Samantha read on the stubs. A shame not to make use of them. When she returned, she'd contact the Simmons Preparatory School. Perhaps a student or teacher in the science department might like to attend. “I'll just leave them here,” she said, depositing the pair in a drawer of the hat stand.

P
ony was saddled and waiting for her, the toss of his head and twitch of his tail irritably informing Samantha that he was eager to escape the restrictions of his stall. For a week he had been denied his daily work with cattle. “He's rarin' to go, Miss Sam,” Jimmy, the wizened stableman, said. “If yore goin' into town, keep a tight hold on the reins. Lordy, the traffic we got these days. A sorry sight. I 'member the days when Fort Worth was so quiet, it wadn't nothin' for a panther to crawl into town for a nap.”

Samantha smiled. How many times had she heard Jimmy, who had been with the Gordons since she was a child and described by her father as “a little slow in the head but mighty damn good with horses,” refer to the incident in his youth that had resulted in Panther City becoming the nickname of Fort Worth. Because of the devastation to the cattle industry by the hard winter of 1873 and the termination of the Texas and Pacific Railway thirty miles short of Fort Worth, the town had become so sleepy that an article in the
Dallas Herald
reported a lawyer seeing a panther asleep on its courthouse steps. Fort Worth's prosperous rival meant it as a dig, but the city thumbed its nose at the insult and enthusiastically adopted the panther as a symbol of its survival and indomitability.

“I'll keep a firm grip, Jimmy,” Samantha said, climbing up. Lord, it felt good to be in the saddle again wearing comfortable clothes. The morning was bright with sunshine and fresh from the last of winter's chilly rains that had fallen during the night. Spring was on the way. She wished she could hit the open road to the ranch right then and avoid the trip to the newly built post office situated on the other side of town. Except for Friday, when the carrier made morning rounds in her mother's neighborhood, mail was not delivered until late afternoon. The modern structure and boast of the city had replaced a convenient general store for collecting letters and packages at any time of the day, one of the many signs of progress offering mixed benefits to the no-longer sleepy town of Fort Worth. Samantha shared the neighbors' irritation at having to make the trek this morning when she was in a hurry. She patted the horse's muscular neck. “One more stop, Pony, then we'll head for home.”

On the ride into town, as she noted the paved streets and new buildings that had gone up, Samantha's thoughts returned to the surprising revelation of her father and Seth Singleton's hopes for her and Sloan to marry. She'd thought of Seth Singleton like an uncle, as her father was fond of Sloan like a nephew. From her first steps, siblingless, she'd considered Sloan, almost four years older, as a big brother, a role he'd played ever since, but no place beyond that. It was not so much a surprise that she'd missed her father's romantic hopes for them as that her father had overlooked Sloan's lack of romantic interest in her. The union of Las Tres Lomas de la Trinidad and the Triple S would never be. The daughter of Neal Gordon ignited no amorous spark in Sloan Singleton.

Which was just as well, Samantha thought. She and Sloan were definitely not a good match. As time had gone by, their differences in opinions, attitudes, and beliefs had arisen. Prejudices had developed. Had circumstances granted Sloan an ordinary adolescence, allowed him time and range to reach adulthood, perhaps the towhead she'd grown up secretly loving through the boy stages of changing vocal cords, acne, and awkward growth spurts would not have developed such a hard edge and an inflexible outlook. A turn of events had cut his youth short when Seth Singleton died unexpectedly, and his only son at seventeen was forced to take over the Triple S, become head of the household, and assume responsibility for his two older, unmarried sisters.

“He's got what it takes, but he'll have to prove it,” Samantha remembered her father saying. “It won't be easy ordering men around two, three times his age, making decisions for a ranch the size of the Triple S. The boy will have to earn his spurs, and God almighty, he'll have a job showing those older sisters of his who's boss. With the death of their mother, they've pretty much had free range to do as they please.”

Sloan had proved he had what it took. With the help of her father's mentoring and the impression that Seth Singleton's son had been born fully mature, with nary an irresponsible bone in his body, he had picked up the fallen reins of his father and held them firmly. At nearly twenty-four, deep-voiced, clear-skinned, and a graceful six foot two, Sloan was regarded as one of the most respected and influential ranchers in the state, and his sisters, Millie May and Billie June, had been left with no doubt who was in charge. Samantha's disenchantment with their brother began when he refused to allow Billie June, the younger of his sisters, to continue seeing a man he deemed unsuitable.

“He's a drifter, Sam, and five years younger than Billie June,” her father had argued in defense of Sloan's action when Samantha had voiced her objection at Sloan's high-handedness. “The man's got no established means of earning a livelihood.”

“Mr. Chandler says Daniel Lane is the best assistant he's ever had.”

“Assistant to a smithy? What kind of recommendation is that?”

“It recommends him as a hard worker. Claude Chandler is not an easy man to please.”

“Daniel Lane's got no background, Sam. No education, no breeding. He's certainly not the kind of man Seth would have a daughter of his marry. Sloan did right to exert his authority and put an end to it.”

Exert his authority?
How was it right for a brother to have “authority” over the heart of a sister? How was it right for a man to exert any control over a woman at all? The world had entered the twentieth century. Could Sloan, so willing to embrace the latest and most modern methods of cattle raising, not see that the cultural landscape of women was changing? The Civil War had forced female members of the household to undertake the responsibilities and make decisions formerly the province of their late menfolks. Such freedom and independence, according to what Samantha read, was spilling over from the domestic scene into occupations such as law, journalism, geology, medicine, and engineering. Women's labor unions had formed, and the suffragist movement was gaining momentum. All over the nation, the “new woman” was replacing the “ideal woman,” challenging male dominance.

Everywhere but in Fort Worth, Texas, it seemed.

“But Billie June loves him,” Samantha had protested.

“Makes not a whit of difference, daughter, and you must get it out of your head that it does.”

Yes, indeed, Anne Rutherford was the perfect mate for Sloan Singleton, Samantha would not argue. Content to bask in his light, seeking none of her own but a slice to illumine the complement of her good works to his status—having no
mind
of her own—Anne would make a splendid wife, mother, mistress of the house, charity organizer, hostess. Samantha saw herself as none of those things exclusively. She was well aware of her father's hopes for her to marry a man of his ilk, someone who understood the ranching business, but he thought she failed to see that, while he'd leave the ranch in her hands, he assumed her husband—someone like Sloan Singleton—would control the reins with her permission. It was the way things were done in Texas, but Samantha was determined such would not be the case when she inherited Las Tres Lomas. If she was to be groomed to take Neal Gordon's place, then she would take her position with no thought of sharing the driver's seat unless as an equal partner, another reason that she and Sloan could never be.

The stench of the stockyards and the Fort Worth Dressed Meat and Provision Company assaulted her as Samantha tied Pony in front of the new post office. The Ladies' Society, of which her mother was secretary, had urged the city council to encourage the structure be built farther south where the finer residential areas lay. The powers that ran the stockyards and the Swift, Armour, and Libby's meat-packing plants soon to come to Fort Worth had won the debate with the United States Postal Department. They claimed that access to mail service was essential to their businesses.

Samantha noticed the fine workmanship of the hitching rings that were crowned with the city's logo, a reclining panther. Daniel Lane, a miracle worker with iron, was responsible for the design. The blacksmith's shop where he worked had been commissioned to forge the rings, and Samantha wondered if Billie June Singleton had seen them. She did not come to town as often since her brother had put a stop to her affair with Daniel Lane in a showdown before the whole community.

“She's become somewhat reclusive,” her mother had said of Billie June to Samantha in a discussion of the scandal that had quietly exploded with the fireworks when Daniel escorted Sloan's sister to the Fourth of July picnic last July. “What a shame. Daniel Lane is likely to be the only suitor Billie June will ever have, plain as she is, but the girl asked for her brother's wrath when she paraded that smithy's helper in front of the whole town. She should have known better.”

“Sloan should have known better,” Samantha had said.

Mildred had inserted her opinion into the rehash. “Young Sloan better watch himself with that ironmonger. Daniel Lane ain't one to forget the injury he suffered that day. Nothing sets deeper or burns longer in the human gut than the shame of public humiliation. The master of the Triple S has sowed the seed of revenge.”

To this day, Samantha winced at the memory of Sloan's public threat to Daniel Lane and Billie June's humiliation before her friends and neighbors and the townspeople at the Independence Day gathering. As Billie June was unloading her picnic basket, Sloan had arrived on horseback behind the family carriage. The men riding alongside him and driving the team were two of his top ranch hands, formidable bronc busters to whom people gave a wide berth. Calmly, Sloan had dismounted and approached the spread blanket. Without a word to his surprised sister and her companion, he'd loaded the fried chicken, deviled eggs, and lemonade back into the basket, picked up the blanket, and handed them to his riding sidearm. He then offered his hand to Billie June, his jaw set hard as stone, and stared a message into Daniel's face that could be read by every eye in the crowd.

Billie June, poppy-red to her mouse-brown hair line, ignored the offered hand and marched to the carriage, the door held open by the driver, and once inside yanked the window curtains closed. Still without a word spoken, Sloan and his ranch hand remounted, and the entourage ambled off toward the Triple S, followed by the gazes of a rigid Daniel Lane and the scene's thunderstruck witnesses. All understood that dauntless Billie June had gotten into the carriage, not out of fear of her brother, but for Daniel Lane. She knew her disobedience would result in severe consequences for her lover if she did not. Sloan Singleton had publicly flexed his muscle.

“Obviously, Billie June had been warned about seeing Daniel Lane, and Sloan did what he had to do to get her attention,” her mother had argued in favor of Sloan's behavior and of the man she had once dandled on her knee as an infant. “We all know that Billie June can rub raw the horns of a bull moose.”

“Not anymore,” Mildred had said.

Her father's post office box was crammed full. A postal clerk, sorting mail, helped her to dislodge it. “Glad you stopped by today, Miss Sam,” he said. “Nobody's been sent for almost a week, and there wouldn't have been room for more.”

“No wonder,” Samantha said. “It's hard to spare someone during calving season.”

Samantha glanced through the bundle, looking for business envelopes containing invoices that her father would hand to her without opening. One of her responsibilities was to see to the payment of Las Tres Lomas's bills. Most of the collection appeared to be periodicals related to the ranching business, but there were several letters, one from an army buddy who had served with her father in Hood's brigade during the Civil War, and another of heavy cream vellum from a doctor marked “Confidential.”
Confidential?
From a doctor? Samantha felt the spike of apprehension her father's wheezing had caused at her birthday dinner, but the imperceptible shake of her mother's head at Samantha's worried look had said there was no cause for concern. Her father was only agitated at the conversation.

The doctor's name was Donald Tolman and the return address listed a post office box in Marietta, Oklahoma Territory. Samantha had never heard either the name or place mentioned. Perhaps the writer, too, was an old army comrade getting in touch, but thirty-five years after the war? And why write and underline “Confidential” in bold black print as if a warning against anyone but the recipient from opening it? Disturbed, Samantha stowed the bundle in her saddlebag and set Pony to a gallop before she could be delayed, now even more eager to get home.