Eyes of Silver, Eyes of Gold (38 page)

He picked the crumpled note up off the floor, smoothed it out, and read it again. “Cord - We both always knew it was a mistake, and I am finally admitting it. I am going back to my family. My father will talk to Ephraim about the baby. Anne.” Three sentences. Three sentences that could destroy a man. If he believed them.

He had only seen her handwriting on supply lists and recipes, but surely it was hers. The cookbook was open on the shelf, and he went over to compare the writing against a handwritten recipe tucked inside. It looked identical. In his mind he heard her laughing, referring to the cookbook as her most precious possession.

Numbness dissolved as Cord looked around the house with growing awareness. Nothing was gone, not even a coat. He studied the note again. Was there blue paper like this and blue ink in with her things? The only paper he knew of in the house was the white tablet he kept for bills of sale. The ink was black. She sometimes used that paper and a pencil for lists. The blue note had been folded he realized - as if to fit in an envelope. He refolded the note along the same lines and pocketed it.

Earlier he had distributed all the cash in the house, except the five hundred dollars he considered Anne’s, in several different pockets. Now he went back to the hiding place under a floor board and took the rest. Then he picked up the saddlebags, canteens, and bedroll he had packed earlier and headed for the barn without looking back.

By the time Cord reached Mason, snow was beginning to fall in small, icy flakes. He tethered Keeper in the lee of the barn behind the Wells house and threw his slicker over the horse to keep as much of the saddle and the horse as dry as possible. Then he began a careful reconnoiter of the house.

From the outside, the two-story frame house looked similar to Ephraim’s, but he knew from Anne the interior was quite different. Where Ephraim’s house had a huge kitchen, here it was a small room where no one spent time except to prepare the meals that were always served in the formal dining room. The house was dark except for a single light in a room toward the back. The back door was locked. The front was not. Bedrooms first, he thought, slipping noiselessly towards the stairs.

ROB WELLS WAS UNABLE TO
make himself even sit down anywhere in the house except the kitchen. Maybe because it was the only place he couldn’t remember ever having had a discussion with his father. So he sat there, drinking coffee and staring at the bottle of whiskey he had set in the middle of the table with longing.

Rob’s hero worship and unquestioning belief in his father had died a hard death that afternoon, but he was going to follow Edward’s instructions to the letter tonight one last time. His contingency instructions, he thought, with a bitterly. His father really believed Cord was going to accept that note and shrug. All Edward was worried about was what Ephraim and Frank might do because of the baby.

Rob knew absolutely his father was wrong. He knew he was going to have to face Cord tonight as surely as he knew the sun would rise in the morning. What Rob wanted most in the world was to begin draining the whiskey bottle. He wanted to drink until guilt and memory were obliterated, until the images raging in his mind disappeared, but before giving in, he was going to pass on his father’s lie.

And so he sat waiting, haunted by memories of his sister. He saw her as a girl, then a woman, saw her laughing and happy, sad and crying, but saw her always with her chin up, spine straight, taking whatever disappointments or constraints life offered with courage and pride. Then sickness flowed through him as he could not stop the pictures from this afternoon rising in his mind.

Through it all, interspersed with the images of Anne, was the picture of a lean, fierce man on a flame-colored horse, heading with increasing speed straight at the impossibly high undercut bank. Over and over, Rob saw again the man flattening out against the horse’s neck and back, the stallion’s muscles bunching and straining, felt again the awe he had felt that day as the horse landed atop the bank and went on. Cord would come, and Rob would tell him what his father had instructed him to say. And then Rob was going to tell him the truth.

Cord came out of the darkness of the house the way the torturing pictures came out of Rob’s memory, first just a presence felt, then one shadow darker than the others taking form, coming to life. He materialized like a ghost, eerily, without sound. The hat kept all but the flat planes of his lower jaw hidden. Light reflected from the lamp off the snow melting on the dark wool coat. A rifle dangled loosely from his right hand.

As Rob gaped, unable to decide if this was the real man or another figure from his mind, Cord moved slightly and the flame from the lamp glittered from his eyes with a feral light. Cold fingers clawed Rob’s spine. This was the sight that had destroyed Jack Hatch’s bravado and sent him to the gallows gibbering. Indeed this apparition might be sending Rob himself to hell before tonight was over, and knowing that, Rob still welcomed the vision. If there was a way to fix what he had helped his father do this afternoon, this man could do it.

Cord walked into the light, changing from devil to man. “Where is she?”

Rob knew then that Cord had already searched the house, and he answered with the words he had promised to speak. “She’s on her way to Chicago with my parents. She doesn’t want to see you again. My father will talk to Ephraim about the baby when he gets back.”

The words had no effect on Cord. “Your Aunt Clara?”

“Yes.”

“Give me the address.”

Rob took a pale blue envelope with Clara Wainwright’s return address on it out from under the whiskey bottle and handed it over. He watched Cord fit the matching piece of stationery into the envelope then push both deep into a coat pocket.

“So your aunt wrote the note,” he said.

“Yes.”

Cord helped himself to a cup of coffee and sat down opposite Rob at the table. “You’d better tell it.”

Relief sluiced through Rob, yet the fear and guilt were not diminished. His mouth moved, but no words came. The amber eyes narrowed. “She’s all right isn’t she?”

Rob stuttered, “N-no, yes, well, mostly.” Did he really see raging contempt in those terrible eyes, or was it his own opinion of himself reflected back from an icy void?

Cord snarled, “Tell it!”

After a few false starts, Rob told it.

For months, Edward Wells had all his friends alert, waiting to see Cord in town without Anne. When it finally happened today, Edward shut his shop and he and Rob hurried home. Edward told Leona that the thought of a grandchild had made him realize he was wrong and want to reconcile with Anne.

As Anne had known she would, Leona had thought over the prospect of a grandchild herself after that terrible day at Ephraim’s. Although unable to see Anne again, she visited Martha during the week to tell her that she did not share her husband’s or son’s feelings about the baby and wanted Anne to know. Leona had admitted as much to Rob, but neither one of them said anything to Edward.

Now Leona was moved to tears by Edward’s change of heart, innocently believing every word. She didn’t seem to consider the appearance in the street of a team and carriage owned by Edward’s friend unusual. Edward, Leona, and Rob drove to the ranch, Leona happily anticipating her family reconciled again. Rob rode in grim silence, knowing and disagreeing with what he thought was his father’s plan.

The first difficulty was Anne’s attitude, for she came to the door with the Colt revolver in her hand. “You have no business here. Go home.”

Leona thought a simple explanation would move her daughter, but it did not. Unlike Anne, Edward could lie convincingly when he wanted to, but nothing he said alleviated Anne’s suspicion or unyielding attitude.

“I don’t care if you’ve had a change of heart. I haven’t. You can go to hell and so can Rob. If you want to act decently for a change, let Mother visit me here and in town without Rob sulking around in the background all the time. Neither of the two of you are welcome in my house or in my life.”

The argument went on and on until Leona was shaking with the cold. Anne was willing to have her mother come in and warm up, but Edward saw his wedge and used it.

“Your mother’s either going inside with all of us or staying outside with all of us. There’s no reason we can’t at least discuss this rationally. I never realized you had such an unforgiving nature. Don’t you think it would be better for everyone concerned if we began to work things out?”

“You and your friends tried to murder Cord right here in this yard. There’s nothing about it we can work out.”

But in the end her mother’s misery, standing in the bitter wind, moved Anne to let them in the house. Rob still hoped that her suspicion would prevail, for she did not put the pistol down. She let down her guard for seconds to reach for the coffeepot, however, and Edward jumped her, knocked the gun across the room and began to struggle with her.

Part of Rob’s great guilt was that he knew without his help his sister might have been able to fight free, but he helped his father subdue her. Edward even had lengths of rope ready in his pocket and soon had Anne’s hands tied behind her back, and when she continued resisting, her ankles.

Her fury shocked Rob. She cursed and swore in ways he never believed a woman could. So Edward gagged her.

The original plan was to pack enough of her things to heighten the illusion of her leaving willingly, but Anne’s suspicion had consumed a lot of time. Leona was too distraught to be bullied into packing. Rather than take a chance on Cord and Frank catching them at the house or on the road, Edward settled for merely putting the pistol away and leaving the note. They pulled into another ranch road to wait and actually saw Cord and Frank returning before heading back to Mason on the main road. Leona wept and protested and Rob again tried to make his father see the futility of the plan as he knew it, but to no avail.

Back at the house, Edward forced Leona to pack bags for the trip to Chicago. He pushed Anne into a chair in the parlor, and never took his eyes off her. Rob had never imagined hate could radiate from a person as it did from his sister that afternoon. The air in the room seemed smoky with it.

When everything was ready for their departure, Edward poured a dose of laudanum into a small glass and removed the gag to force Anne to drink it. Tied and helpless for almost three hours at that point, Anne had had plenty of time to think of what she wanted to say to her father. She spit the liquid in his face. He hit her with the same kind of blow he had used over a year before. Leona tried to stop her husband, and he backhanded her so hard she was knocked against a wall and fell. Rob was helping his mother up when the words began, venomous and hate-filled.

“You unnatural, miserable, mean-minded, son of a bitch, you can’t keep me in Chicago forever. When Cord finds out what you’ve done I hope he kills you the way his mother’s people kill their enemies, with a knife, inch by inch.”

Anne cursed her father in every way conceivable. She verbally assaulted his Christianity, his humanity, his morals, ethics, sanity, and his manhood. In the end Edward was driven to such rage he hit her a second time, and so forgot himself he told her - and thus Rob and Leona - what his real plan was.

“You think you’re just going to Chicago until you can run off again, don’t you? Not this time, daughter. As soon as we get there we’ll complete the paper work and have you in a private asylum. It will all be absolutely legal in case Mr. Ephraim Bennett tries to make trouble over his brother’s whelp. You’re going to stay right there, locked up and under guard with the other lunatics until we see some real indications you’re ready to rejoin the human race, and as for that mongrel you’re carrying, they’ll have it cut out of you before you’re there a day.”

Anne’s face had been flushed with anger. Now she went white. “You can’t do that.”

“Your aunt can. The arrangements have already been made with her friend Judge Davis. And as soon as I’ve been appointed your guardian, your
marriage
is going to be annulled.”

Rob tried to argue with his father, but that only brought out more horrifying details. Clara Wainwright had made all the arrangements. The day after the Wells family arrived in Chicago, Anne would be examined by doctors who would sign the required legal documents. The next morning there would be a short, predetermined competency hearing, and she would be committed to a private asylum. The doctors at the asylum were not unfamiliar with charges who conceived unwanted children. Families of patients knew abortion could be obtained - for a price. Anne would be free of Cord’s child before that night fell.

At first Edward would talk to Ephraim as if the child would be given to the Bennetts to raise after it was born, but after a month or two, he would tell the Bennetts that Anne had miscarried. Edward believed Cord would be indifferent about Anne and the baby and that his family would lose interest as soon as they knew there was no Bennett blood involved.

As Rob spoke, Cord felt the room begin to spin. He wondered wildly if it were possible for a man to die of fear just sitting in a chair. It had seemed merely a matter of going after her, bringing her home. Maybe some ugliness in convincing Edward Wells he no longer had any say in his daughter’s life. Definitely ugliness if he had dared to hit her again. Bile rose in the back of his throat.

“You mean he’d risk killing her just to kill the baby?”