Domino. Part 23

"Because I mean to let Miss Cullen go," I told him. "I want Belle Durant to stay with my grandmother, if she will."

"You have no authority-" Caleb began.

I didn't let him finish. "I'm her granddaughter. I have the authority of blood. I don't think you are going to put me out, are you?" I walked past Gail to Belle. "What do you think?"

Belle shrugged. "Doc Burton's probably right Nothing to be done till she wakes up. Wish I'd caught her sooner, got some coffee down her, stopped this from happening."

"Will you stay?" I said. "Not for me, Belle. For her."

Gail stepped forward. "I won't have this interference with a patient. I don't know how she came to take those extra capsules, and I can't be held responsible-" She threw a helpless look at Caleb, who said nothing at all.

"I'm taking the responsibility out of your hands," I said. "You've already failed at your post, and it's best if you leave as soon as possible. I'll see that arrangements are made to take you where you want to go."

Her mouth dropped open and her stare was one of astonishment. A small, warm feeling of triumph spread through me, I hadn't known I could sound like this. I hadn't ever tried to take charge of anything before. Yet now neither Caleb nor Gail was standing up to me. With Belle's help perhaps I could do the right thing for Persis Morgan. With Belle's help and Jon's. I still had to talk to Jon.

"Belle," I said, "you'll stay?"

She gave in. "All right. I'll stay. For a while, anyway. I'll J.

need to go over to the hotel and talk to Mark, pick up a few things. That can wait until she begins to come out of this. But you don't have much of an army to stand against what Mark Ingram wants."

"Jon Maddocks will help," I said. "If you'll stay with my grandmother until I get back, I'll go and talk to him now."

I knew by her look that I had her promise. She drew a chair near the bed and sat down. When I went out the door I found Gail and Caleb talking in the hall, and I pa.s.sed them without speaking.

The scratch on my leg was superficial, and so were my cuts and bruises from the mine. I could walk well enough, and once outdoors, I found the clear air bracing. For a long while it was as if I had been swimming under water, moving in some element that was strange to me, in which I couldn't think clearly, or be entirely sure of who I was. Now, at least, I was making a stand. I had taken hold of something.

Red came to meet me with his usual uninhibited joy, and I bent to fondle him before I went to the open door of Jon's cabin and looked in. At a wide table near the galley kitchen Jon sat with a loaf of dark bread on a board and a piece of cheese before him.

"I'm hungry," I said. "I seem to have skipped lunch. May I come in?"

XVI.

Jon's smile held nothing back. He was my friend and I could trust him. He looked more jaunty than ever with a clean patch of bandage on his head-like a wounded hero. Which he was. Red came in with me and lay down on the hearth. He felt at home here too.

"Help yourself," Jon said, pus.h.i.+ng the loaf of bread toward me, I wanted a lot more than food. I wanted to talk openly and honestly-about even thing. No-not quite everything. But at least about what had happened since I'd seen him.

I brought a plate and mug from the cupboard near the sink and sat across from him. The bread was home-baked-his mother's recipe, he said-and I covered a slice with a chunk of longhorn.

He was waiting. "Go ahead," he invited. "Tell me."

"Grandmother Persis is unconscious because of too mam sleeping pills, but she'll be all right. Burton thinks she ma^ have taken them absentmindedly. I don't. I think she was gien them on purpose. I've brought Belle Durant over from the hotel to stay with her, and I think I've fired Gail Cullen."

Jon's eyes were bright with approval. "Good for you! I always thought there was something fishy about that woman coming here."

"Now she can go back to her employer-Mark Ingram-if that's what he is. He seems to be getting stronger and more sure of himself all the time, and he wants to come over and talk to my grandmother when it's possible. If she doesn't want to see him, I'll try to keep him away. Jon, have you done anything about what happened to you yesterday, and about the mine this morning?"

"After the attack on me I listened to Caleb's advice and didn't report it."

"Why didn't he want it reported?"

"He said it was pointless and nothing could be done. He said it would only upset Mrs. Morgan to have the police coming around again, and unless I had some means of identifying the attackers I'd better let it go."

"I wonder what Caleb is up to."

"Anyway, after you were shut in the mine, I phoned and a couple of officers from the highway patrol were reached by radio and came over right away. As Caleb said, there's not much they can do. They'll want to talk to you, and they'll keep an eye open, but there's no one to arrest, no proof I can give them, except that I was beaten up. At least they've been put on notice. They borrowed horses and rode over to the mine to have a look."

"Where I suppose they found the padlock hanging open and the door firmly jammed?"

"Who suggested that?"

"Mr. Ingram didn't think I'd really been locked in the mine. I expect the door was taken care of right away."

"Too bad we didn't go back and have a look."

"I checked for the key to the mine, and Caleb said it was in 259.

the drawer where it's always kept. But Gail could have put it back if she was in on this."

"What else has been happening?"

I chewed for a while on bread and cheese, and then I told lim everything at once.

"I nearly fell through the high gallery above the stage at the )pera House. Hillary rescued me. Ingram tried to get him to take me back to Denver, but I said I wouldn't go." I hesitated.

"And . . . ?"

"And I've had a proposal of marriage."

*'A busy day. Have you accepted?"

I shook my head, and Jon grinned at me. "Well, don't. Not for a while."

"Not ever from Hillary," I said. "I know that now."

"That's good. Because you're Laurie Morgan and } ou belong here. And because you're not in love with him."

"I thought I was. I always seem to be thinking that. And then it goes away."

"Fevers pa.s.s."

"But I don't like that. I don't like to feel that I can't trust m own emotions. I really thought I was in love with Hillary."

"So? We've all been there a few times-falling in love with something that isn't there, something we only want to believe is real. Then finding out that it isn't."

His words were not entirely comforting, because what if the wa I felt about Jon was only another mirage?

I ate my bread and cheese, finished ever)- crumb. And then even thing seemed to hit me at once. I did something that astonished me. I put my head down on the table and began to en . So much had been happening that I hadn't been allowed a quiet time to sit down and think about it, yet the moment when I'd opened a box and picked up a silver-mounted deringer was always with me at the back of my mind. The 260.

knowledge of what I had done was like an undertow in the ocean, ready to suck me down. Now, quite suddenly, it had.

Jon left the table and brought back a box of tissues. When I'd mopped my face and blown my nose, I stared at him angrily, though the anger was for myself, not for him. "1 don't know why I did that."

"Of course you do. And I suppose it will keep on hitting you for a while. But somewhere along the line what I've already told you still holds true. You have to accept the fact that it wasn't you, Laurie Morgan, who fired that shot. Not the you who is living now. If you learned this about any other child, wouldn't you understand and forgive?"

"I don't know. It's too awful. And how could I forgive if it was my son who died? I keep thinking about my grandmother and what a terrible time I put her through. And about what I did to my mother." What I had done to my father didn't bear thinking about.

"Your grandmother's over it now. She's had more time than you've had to get used to it, and she's fond of you."

"All these years she's been protecting me from having the truth known. I suppose if it all came out there could be an investigation, even now. I wish I could read what the newspapers said at the time, even if the story wasn't true. I was going to ask Persis to let me see those papers, but there's been no time."

Jon left the table and went to his desk. From a bottom drawer he took a folder and brought it to me.

"There you are. My mother clipped everything. If you really want to read about it."

While he finished his lunch, I ate an apple and read through the clippings. There was a picture of my mother and me as the bereaved. I looked as though I detested the photographer, and my mother seemed to be s.h.i.+elding me. I tried to read her face in the blurry reproduction. What an awful time that must have been for her to live through. Had she really cared about Noah?

26l She must have, to be ready to go off with him. Yet she could u ell have loved my father too, hating to hurt him. And then to have her child- I put the picture aside. In still another, Persis Morgan faced the camera indignantly, a younger Caleb at her side. There was a rather handsome picture of Noah too, taken earlier, and some speculation in the account as to his leaving Jasper. No one seemed to suggest, however, that he might have returned, and there seemed to be no suspicion of his death. The probable "intruder" was discussed at length, and the articles he had stolen ere listed.

My grandmother had sacrificed three valuable pieces to support her story of a murderer-thief. One was described as a gold plume brooch set with diamonds. There was also a topaz and diamond filigree necklace, and a necklace of cabochon garnets -all beautiful, valuable old pieces that had probably belonged to Sissy Tremayne as she came up in the world.

It was safer to think of the missing jewels than to dwell on tragedy.

"I wonder where Persis had them hidden," I said.

Jon began to stack dishes and carry them to the sink. "There are two likeh places. In the mine, or in the Trema ne house in Domino. The house seems the most reasonable choice, judging bv the way }our grandmother doesn't want anyone wandering around in there. Though I've done a lot of work in that house and I've never turned anything up."

Having slept quietly for a while, Red ambled to the door, and Jon let him out. I got up and washed our few dishes, taking my time because I didn't want to leave. Belle was with my grandmother, and there would be little change for a while.

"Do you have work to do?" I asked. "Is it all right if I just sit here quietly for a little while?"

"Sam's taking care of things. Stay as long as you like. Ill get back to work shortly."

262.

"I don't know why, but I feel safer here. The minute I go out that door everything can get at me again. I know I have to go out and face it-but not right away."

Outside it was clouding up as though it might rain, and the air had grown colder. Jon busied himself lighting the fire, and I stretched stomach down on the sofa, with my chin in my hands.

"Belle showed me your wife's grave up in the Morgan cemetery," I said. "What was she like?"

For a few moments he worked at the hearth with his back to me, and I hoped I hadn't offended him. The question seemed a natural one because I wanted to know all that had happened to Jon in those years since he had ridden up the valley to rescue me.

"She was a pixie," he said at last. "Oh, she could do all sorts of practical things. Sew and cook and weave. And feed chickens. But she had an imagination that ran away with her. She was fun to be with, yet I couldn't always tell what she might be thinking. I'm not sure she belonged in the real world. She just lent herself to it at times. If I hadn't brought her here to the ranch, perhaps she'd be alive now, and so would the child. The snow came before I could get her to a hospital. Belle Durant was working for Mrs. Morgan then, and she knew what to do. If it had been a normal birth, we'd have pulled them both through. It wasn't."

Flames roared up the chimney as he built the fire high, and I turned to its warmth, seeking comfort. When the fire suited him, Jon looked around and saw my face.

"Don't be sorry for me, Laurie. Your grandmother helped me through that time. She'd experienced even worse, and she kept me busy-worked my tail off, listened when I wanted to talk, and kept me fighting to live. She made me understand that blame is a waste of time. Any kind of blame. Of oneself or others. Or of fate-whatever you want to call it. What matters is what you do with yourself and your life afterward. That's when we started our scheme to bring Jasper back to life. She wanted to restore it, and we'd begun some of the work before Mark Ingram turned up. She had let too much of it go out of her hands a while back, but she was going to buy it up again and make it into a live town, a working town."

"But what work could there be without tourists?"

"We were going to stock the ranch with gra.s.s-fed cattle. There's a growing demand around the country. All natural feed, with no pesticides or hormones used. The men we'd hire would come here to live with their families, and the old services for one another would begin again. There would be tourists too, of course, but they would come to see a mountain town that was alive, and not just make-believe. Then Ingram arrived and started turning the screws. He's only interested in a showplace to bring in money. Since he came, your grandmother has grown weaker. I can't get her to fight anymore, though I hoped you could."

"I think she wants to fight now," I said. "She was showing signs of coming to life when this was done to her. The sleeping pills, I mean. It's a delaying tactic, I think. Perhaps because she was going to change her will. Together we'll manage somehow, and find a way to block Mark Ingram."

"I had a feeling that you were a fighter too," he said. "You had to wake up to what was needed."

"How could you know what I didn't know myself?"

"Because I remember how s.p.u.n.ky you were as a little girl. No horse could scare you. None of the things your grandmother taught you made you quit, no matter how hard they were. I couldn't believe all that was gone forever."

"I can't have it both ways," I said. "If I'm not the child who fired the gun, in the same way I'm not even a grown-up version of the child you remember. I lost her somewhere along the way."

"No! What happened with the gun was superimposed-an accident. You responded to a frightening situation with a courage that you were too young to handle. That's what you must forgive. The rest hasn't been lost. You don't lose character. Maybe you just miss out for a while in developing it."

Was that what had happened to me? I wanted to believe in his words.

Jon's look was warm and kind-that of a loving friend. Which wasn't what I wanted him to be. "You'll be fine, Laurie. Just give yourself a little time."

There was an ache in me, a longing for what I couldn't have, yet at the same time new resolution seemed to rise in me from some unexpected source. I sat up on the couch so I could feel braver.

"Thank you, Jon. I always seem to be thanking you for rescuing me. I always seem to be leaning on you."

He sat down beside me and put an arm about my shoulders. "Leaning's not all that bad, Laurie. Providing it can be done both ways. You have to be willing to be leaned on too. That's what I'm doing now, what Persis Morgan is doing. So why not get started?"

For just a moment I clung to him. Clung physically to his strength and emotionally to his wisdom-both greater than my own. Then I stood up.

"I'll go back to the house now," I told him. "That's where I need to begin."

He came with me to the door, gave me a quick, affectionate hug, and watched me walk away. Red romped at my side on the path to the house. As I hurried into the wind, the longing in me that I couldn't help was stronger than ever. I'd never known before that loving could be so exquisite a pain. Was this the way my mother had felt about Noah Armand? And as hopelessly?

Outside, the world had turned gray and chill, with clouds 265.

racing overhead. This time it was really going to storm, and the air had a feeling of electricity to it. Red was ready enough to race me to the house, but he was becoming addicted to the outdoors and made no attempt to follow me inside when I reached the steps. As I crossed the porch to the open front door, the sight that met my eyes was so astonis.h.i.+ng that I stood still to stare. Dressed once more in her long red gown, Grandmother Persis was on her feet and being helped down the stairs by Belle Durant. With one hand she clung to the rail, and Belle's strong arm was around her, supporting. Behind them, Caleb exclaimed in horrified protest, while Gail looked down, disapproving, from the floor above.

When Belle saw me, she grinned. "This is your grandmother's idea-not mine. Come and lend a hand, Laurie. I can use some help."

I ran to offer support as Persis came down the last few steps.

"Let's get her into the parlor. Then you can go tell Bits to fix her some soup," Belle directed. "And coffee will help too."

When Persis had been helped to the sofa, where she insisted on sitting up, drowsy as she was, I hurried off to the kitchen. No one was there, and I opened the refrigerator. A jar of soup, left over from yesterday, and made with beef and beans and barley, was what I wanted. I heated it, started coffee. Then I carried bowl and cup back to the parlor on a tray.

Caleb and Gail were still in the room. Persis, sitting up against pillows, smiled faintly as I came in.

"How did you manage this?" I asked Belle as she began to spoon the soup for my grandmother.

"She started to wake up soon after you left. I told her about the dose of sleeping pills, and she started to fight her way back. She said it was time to get up and get downstairs. So here she is.