Legacy (23 page)

Just as he released me, though, an unbidden image floated to the surface of my thoughts and I felt strangely lonely. In my mind I saw the Graybar mansion on Legacy. I saw it disappear, and then a new mansion took its place, and the mansion was mine. I saw it so vividly: a Federal-style brick house with lights at each of the leaded-glass windows and a garden with tall fruit trees and I was standing inside.

But Justin was not. The thought sent a chill up my spine. 'Hold me,' I whispered, pressing suddenly against him. And soon the chill went away and it was replaced with the hard, satisfied certainty that one day Legacy would indeed be mine. Justin and I together could not fail to defeat the Graybars.

Then the breakfast gong rang, and we had walked hand in hand back to the cabin.

We had told Father then - awakened him with the news, in fact. Asleep, his face looked vulnerable, the features almost swollen. Then it changed as he awoke, from momentarily confused to relief and happiness when he grasped what I was telling him. His reaction was so simple I found myself deeply moved. He gave me a quick hug and then held out his hands to Justin, smiling, his cheeks and eyes still puffed with sleep.

'Well!' He had pulled himself up and got his feet out from under the bedclothes and on to the floor, his grey eyes blinking but happy. 'Well!'

Now Justin came into the dining hall and walked towards our table. As he walked, he took care, I noticed, to get a good look at the faces of the men.

As Justin joined us, Vince also had come over and sat down. Father spoke casually to Justin first. 'Anybody look familiar, Doc?'

'Haven't seen any since dinner, if that's what you mean.' I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but of course we could not make a show here before the men. We would not even be able to announce our engagement until word came from Philadelphia that Justin's divorce was final.

Quickly, Father explained to Vince that a man had tried to break into our cabin late last night. Vince nodded as soon as he heard the description.

' 'At's Campbell, I tell you. He started that beard just a week or so ago, just before he went into town for the last time. Some of the men, they say he's trying to hide from somebody with that beard.'

Father nodded, his face impassive. 'I saw him without it a while back. But, look, might it have been somebody else from the camp? Isn't there anyone else you know around here who's got a red beard?'

Vince's lips came together and his chin dropped, giving him a dour look. 'Nobody else like that.' He gestured with his hand at the rest of the hall. 'You can see.'

Justin asked, 'Is everybody here this morning? Nobody stayed away?'

Vince sent his eyes quickly around the room. I could see his lips move as he silently counted the men at the tables. 'Okay, that's sixty-two in here, and you got how many in the sick house, seven? And that scum we killed yesterday, that makes the seventy. That was all.'

'All right,' said Father, 'then we can assume it's Campbell. Pass the word to the men that whoever puts us on to him gets himself a thousand dollars - after he's in custody alive, though. Dead, he's not worth anything.'

Vince nodded, asking no questions.

After Vince had gone, the three of us were alone at the table. It was daylight outside, the sun through the leaves making mottled shadows and glittering patterns on the tables near the windows. Father said to me, 'We'll find him. Don't worry. And then we'll make him talk. I'll give you twenty to one that he killed my watchman, and ten to one that Brad Graybar put him up to it.'

A week earlier, I would have been antagonistic, refusing to let Father set up yet another battle line between our two families. Even this morning I was tempted to remind Father that he had resolved to let Brad dig his own grave by himself only yesterday. But part of me was too elated with Justin and our engagement to get upset over something like that. And the rest of me had come to realize that Father's long war would not, could not, vanish overnight, even with the best of intentions on Father's part. The old hatred was built in by now. It had become a part of him and would always be there while Brad was alive, perhaps even while Steven was alive. The best I could hope for was that Father might become wrapped up in something else that would keep him from immersing himself in his personal vendetta, and that the rest of us could somehow manage to keep ourselves clear.

So I simply nodded and said something noncommittal and then changed the subject by asking Justin how his patient was getting along this morning.

Justin shrugged slightly. 'He's a strong man and he's in good condition. The worst part is over.'

'Will he be able to use the arm?' I asked.

'If it heals properly.' Justin went on to explain how he would fit Frank Kelso with a stiff leather brace, strapped tightly around the upper arm where the bone was missing. Even though three inches of bone were now gone, the brace would give the support he needed to work the arm and to perform most of the tasks he had been doing around the camp.

'Will he be able to skid a sledge?' Father asked.

'It depends.' Justin turned a palm up. 'Probably yes, but he might not feel up to it for a few months. If he asks for that assignment, say, anytime after four weeks from now, though, I'd let him try it. Be good for him.'

Around us the hall was empty now, with only a single waiter in denim overalls clearing away the remaining plates and utensils from the vacant tables. Inside that quiet, sun-filled hall, I felt for a moment what it would be like for Frank Kelso to get back on that sledge again and the private battle he would have with his own fears. How difficult it must be to do something like that, I thought, to pick yourself up and just go on after an experience like his. Probably all three of us were thinking something similar, for we were all silent, watching the waiter in overalls move around from table to table.

Then Justin broke the stillness. 'If it hadn't been for this one here and how stubborn she was,' he said, flashing me a grin, 'I might never have taken the risk of trying to remove all those fragments of bone. Frank Kelso might not have kept his arm.'

'She can be stubborn, but sometimes she can be right,' said Father as he finished the last of the coffee. 'Now, look, about today. Do you want to keep on with the trip to Long Reach camp, or would you rather just go back to Grampian?' He looked from me to Justin and back again. 'Considering the circumstances, I'd expect you'd have people to tell, plans to make, and so on. So I can go on by myself if you'd rather.'

'Well, actually, Father, we can't really start any official plans until . . . until Justin hears from his lawyers. Isn't that right, Justin?'

He nodded and so we agreed to keep on with our trip as planned. We packed, said our good-byes, and rode through the trees and down the logging road to the river. There we crossed back over the footbridge to the small railroad way station. The eastbound train was just approaching when we arrived, coming towards us on the horizon. We were traveling west, so there was no need to hurry. Father had ordered a westbound train to take us upriver.

But when we came inside the small shed to wait, the young attendant we had seen the day before jumped off his stool. 'You're Doctor McKay, aren't you? There's a message come in from Grampian on the telegraph for you just this morning.'

He handed Justin a brown envelope. Justin opened it with quick fingers. As he read, his face became a mask.

He crumpled the paper and looked at the attendant. 'Put up your signal and stop that train right now,' he said. 'I've got to take it back to Grampian.'

As the attendant scrambled out to the tracks to hoist his signal, Justin turned to us. His face was grim, his eyes showing strain. 'I'm sorry. It can't be helped, though.'

'Trouble at the clinic?' Father sounded sympathetic.

Justin shook his head. 'I wish it were that simple, but it's not.' He looked at me, and suddenly I felt cold.

He hesitated. Behind him, outside, the train was coming to a stop.

Then wordlessly, he held out the message for me to read. Scrawled in the attendant's smudged pencil were these words:

HAVE COME TO GRAMPIAN TO TALK ABOUT OUR

MARRIAGE. MUST SEE YOU AT ONCE.

ELAINE

The rush of feeling welled up inside of me. 'You're going back for this? For her? You're . . .'

'You don't understand, Catherine. She can make more trouble with the divorce. And in town she can make a stir that Grampian won't soon forget.'

'What does it matter what they think in Grampian?' My indignation was overriding my good judgment, but I felt too unfairly treated to stop now. 'You propose marriage to me this very morning, and now, when she snaps her fingers and wants to talk about marriage, you go running off.'

His eyes hardened. Outside, the trainman was sounding his whistle impatiently, and the engine was beginning to inch forward. The attendant called for us to hurry up if we were coming.

'I haven't time to explain,' he said. 'But if you're going to take it that way, then maybe you should just forget that this morning ever happened. Maybe that will make it easier.'

He turned and was outside in a few swift strides. Through a haze of tears, I saw him climb aboard the train as it gathered speed.

Chapter Ten

Two days later I was on a train traveling west. As I gazed through the windows of the railway coach, the forest passed in a constant flickering of bright green and dark shadow. The rattle of the coach wheels was a steady, monotonous background noise to go with the seemingly endless line of hemlocks, maples, oaks, and wooded green underbrush. Somewhere ahead of us, further up into the wooded mountains was the lake called Eagles Mere and the new resort hotel that Father had nearly finished building and expected to open within a week or two, out here in its complete isolation from the rest of the civilized world. We were going to give the hotel its final inspection before the first guests arrived.

Normally, I would have been excited at the prospect of seeing the new building and the deep blue lake for the first time. Today I found it difficult to care whether or not our train ride ever ended. Even though the future of this hotel could make or break Father's fortunes, I had no energy, no desire, to get involved. I was still numbed, unable to accept what had happened and how suddenly Justin had gone.

I had felt this tired, spiritless lethargy ever since Justin had climbed aboard that train and gone back to his wife. I had tried to rouse myself, tried not to show my grief to Father, tried not to admit my disappointment even to myself. But it had not been possible. I had barely been able to go through the motions at the second lumber camp, where we had spent the night after an hour's train ride upriver and a long journey on horseback up into the mountains, north of the river this time. I had forced myself to smile at the men when we were introduced by the camp foreman. There were only about twenty men in this camp, but they were in good spirits, just as we had hoped. Father had sent around the rest of the imported whisky and the cigars during the evening meal, so when the time came to introduce the camp's new owner and his daughter, the rough pine-log mess hall was filled with smoke and merry laughter.

The laughter turned suddenly quiet when Father spoke to the men and told them that he had come up here from Grampian because he needed more wood from this camp - nearly twenty per cent more than they had been turning out every day. When Father told them he intended to raise their wages by twenty per cent, though, the hall erupted with cheers. And when he told them he was going to see that they were fed twice as well, the cheers became even louder.

Then I was introduced. I stood up and smiled, wishing I could feel the happiness I knew I should have felt. Around the tables I recognized a few familiar faces from the clinic - the men who had got well and were now back up here on the job. They clapped and whistled their approval, and then at the table to my right I saw the blond, curly haired giant, Billy Joe Walker, get to his feet, holding a small book.