M. Donice Byrd - The Warner Saga (3 page)

Reluctantly, Agnes turned it over to him.  He examined it momentarily and started back up the stairs.

“Is it from your family?”

“Agnes, when are you going to realize no one at the
Chicago Daily Journal
is going to pay you for information about me? I’m no one of importance. I just have lots of important friends.”

She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you think so little of me or of yourself. You were mentioned in Mrs. X’s column again today.”

“You mean someone with my initials was written up again,” he parried, knowing the news of his break up with Caroline Preston had made the column. At least the columnist claimed Caroline had broken it off with him so she could save face.

“The letter is from a business associate,” he said over his shoulder but not stopping.  “Thank you, Mrs. Donavan.”

“Wait. Another one of those children came in here looking for you.  Really, Mr. Warner, you have got to keep those urchins out of here.  This is a nice place and you’re going to chase business away if you keep giving these ragamuffins money and food.  They’re like stray cats, if you feed them once you can never get rid of them.”

Blake’s neck turned red and voice became tight and cold. Rarely did his anger show but at times like this he couldn’t contain himself.

“No, Agnes, they are not like cats,” he said in an overly controlled tone. “They are children who are hungry. Showing them a little kindness cost next to nothing but means the world to them. Would it have killed you to give an older girl a job instead of your niece?”

“They would steal the
guests blind.” Her voice betrayed how appalling she found the notion.

He clamped his mouth shut. Of course that was always a possibility but it was with any employee who cleaned the rooms.  He, himself, had had a pair of onyx
and diamond cufflinks vanish from his room.

“They could work in the kitchen washing dishes. You know I’d make sure they had proper clothing and a bath.”

“There are plenty of lesser hotels where they could work,” she countered, her lips tightening into a line.

“If anyone would give them a chance,” he said. “I’ve made arrangements at the
Holy Family Church over on Roosevelt Road to distribute food at noon five days a week. Send them there if I’m not here.”

Blake Warner casually tucked the missive into his pocket and climbed the stairs as if he didn’t have a care in the world, when he knew the envelope could contain his future.  He’d been waiting a month for some kind of decision to be made and apparently he had his answer.  He hoped the thickness of the envelope was a good sign.  As soon as he was inside his room, he cut open the packet using the straight razor from his pocket. He skimmed the letter quickly then read it again more slowly to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood.

“Damn,” he said under his breath.  This wasn’t an answer at all.  They were paying him a hundred dollars a month and instead of using his talents in the manner he was being paid, they were asking him to deliver the enclosed envelope to
Minnesota of all places.  It was ridiculous.

What else could go wrong today?  Less than an hour earlier, he’d had a run-in with Caroline Preston.  She’d intentionally sought him out trying to rekindle their courtship and made a dreadful scene in the middle of a public restaurant.  When she wouldn’t let it rest, she forced him to be deliberately cruel to put an end to it.  He didn’t like saying the things he said but he’d long since tired of her and she sounded like poor Amy Applegate.

It had been a long time since he thought of Amy and wondered what happened to her.  When he returned from his last semester of school, he heard she left abruptly not long after he departed.  She’d been his first real involvement and from her, he learned not to dally with one girl too long.  They became too attached.  Since then, he’d rid himself of more clingy females by showing his dark side than he cared to count.

He hated showing that side of his personality.  Although always there, just below the surface, he alone seemed to know that was the real Blake Warner.  It was the legacy of Beth as he sardonically thought of it.  The pleasurable moments spent in the company of a beautiful woman seemed to chase away the memory of her for a short time but he could never allow an attachment to get serious.  He’d never give a woman the power to rip out his insides again.  If he spent too much time alone, the dark thoughts and nightmares reared their ugly heads
and he forced himself to seek out another woman to distract him.

The time he spent living on the streets hand to mouth taught him a great deal about human nature; as a result, he could read most people like a book.  He should have known better than to get involved with Caroline but it wasn’t as if he had been her first.  His heartless reputation was well known in Chicago but for some reason, he never seemed to run out of women willing to go to his bed.  Her friends must have warned her.  Why did she think they called him Blake the Rake?  What made her think she was special?  She might have been a little prettier and her father might have been richer but when had that made a difference to him?

Going out of town for a fortnight or two might be just what he needed, he thought as he retrieved his carpetbag from the corner and began to pack a few essentials.  Agnes wouldn’t mind if he left his trunks with the rest of his belongings in her care.  She’d probably have a heyday going through his things.  No opera or theatre to attend, no women to avoid – no women, period.

He should probably go by Rebecca’s townhouse to tell her he was leaving and let her know when he’d be back.  If it wasn’t so important, he would just send a messenger.  Rebecca would be glad he was gone and wouldn’t be complicating her social life for a while.

Blake tossed the thick missive on the bureau next to a dividend check he received the day before and wondered, as he had countless times, if his mother’s parents would have been please or displeased to know their daughter’s bastard son continued to benefit from their investments so many years after they died.

It had been a shock the first time his initials appeared in the paper to have a pair of lawyers and an investigator show up at his hotel room door asking
questions about his mother. His grandparents were dead by then also but he was their sole heir. He wished he had met them and wondered if they would have taken him in when his mother died if they had known about each other. There was no point in wondering about it now. He would never know the answer.

2

Minnesota
 

August 1862

The solitary man rode the black mare along the dual ruts that somehow qualified as a road to the inhabitants of this wooded wilderness called
Minnesota. A sense of relief filled him when he spotted the split-rail fence in the distance. If there was a fence, it meant he must be closing in on civilization.  After speaking to the locals in the last collection of buildings they pretended was a town, Lt. Sheehan pointed Blake in the direction of New London and rode off in search of the minister who serviced the spiritual needs of several area towns.

Content to ride alone, he began wondering if he missed a turnoff when he spotted the four foot high fence. On the other side of the fence
, someone planted a row of pine trees. Whoever planted them had not taken into consideration how much the trees would grow and now they crowded together forming a near wall of vegetation—or perhaps that was the idea.

It didn’t matter. He was so deep in thought about the grim task ahead; he gave little thought to it or the sounds of someone riding a horse on the other side.

A frown marred his face as he contemplated the strange way fate reached out and touched him. He travelled to Minnesota, gotten lost and came upon a man and woman murdered by Indians. He assumed they were murdered for the horses conspicuously missing from the wagon.

The Indian troubles were supposed to get better after Minnesota earned its statehood four years earlier but one of the soldiers at Ft. Ridgely had confided he knew the Indians were not being given the provisions they were promised and now that so many soldiers were
being sent south to fight against the seceding Southern forces, the Dakota Sioux were becoming blatant in their disregard for the treaties. But this murder—this was not stealing cattle or horses—this was a new terrifying development.

Blake placed the bodies in the back of the wagon, hitched his mare to the harness and took their bodies to Ft. Ridgely where a trapper recognized them despite the fact he’d not seen them in a decade. The last time he saw them; they had a small girl of five or six and were expecting their second child.

Fate placed those people in his path so he would see to their children. He knew that as well as he knew his name.

Some might dismiss it as coincidence but he needed to believe his life was more than fancy parties and balls; that he lived through a harsh winter eating scraps and nearly freezing to death so he would see the
need that existed; and he inherited a huge fortune so he could financially bear the cost of helping out as many children as he could find.

It was the only thing in his life that fulfilled the emptiness.

The sun beat down on Meredith as she put her mount through his paces, driving him hard and recklessly.  The hot breeze, stifling with humidity, made her aware of how hard she worked her horse.  Abruptly, she decided to cut the ride short.  Enticed with visions of a cool dip before she performed her chores, she shifted her body weight and increased the pressure of her legs as she drove Viper in the direction of the pond.

The pond was on the opposite side of their property, nestled in a copse of sugar maples and elm trees and the water was always deliciously cool, even on scorching days like this.

Her braid bounced on her back like a heavy rope until the ribbon fell free and her golden-red tresses uncoiled themselves and flowed behind her like savage flames.  Her body was one with the stallion as they galloped toward a treeless section of the tree-lined fence that separated the field from the road.  The horse’s gait readied for flight and her heart pounded with excitement as they approached the obstacle in their path.  Holding the reins tightly, she leaned forward, her knees snugly against his withers. 

Viper leapt the fence narrowly passing in front of a man riding a black horse.

Her horse shied crabwise on his landing to avoid the spooked and rearing black horse, its rider desperately reining the animal to get control.  She drew away to keep from being pummeled by the black horse’s pawing hooves, concentrating all her strength to control her
mount and keep him from bolting. In a panic, Meredith reined the stallion harshly but was carried twenty paces beyond the road before she could pull up. She wheeled around in the saddle just as the other rider landed flat on his back.

“Whoa, baby, whoa,” she cooed the charger, still feeling his nervous prancing. She leaned across his neck, placing her hand on the pulse point there trying to calm him. “Sh-sh, you’re fine.” Meredith tried to gauge if she felt anything amiss in his gait but, realizing the effort useless while he romped so erratically, she bailed out of the saddle. The big gray didn’t like the sudden movement and pulled against the reins.

“Please, Viper, not now.” When he didn’t stop acting temperamental, her own temper emerged. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to tell everyone you’re stubborn jackass.”

The horse whinnied and nudged her in the
shoulder with his nose hard enough to make her step back but other than that the horse appeared to be calming.

She looked back at the man and found him exactly where he landed, his eyes closed, his hand on his chest as he attempted to heave air into his lungs.

“Oh, God, oh, God! Are you all right?” she asked running to his side and falling on her knees in the dirt next to him, Viper’s reins still in her hand. “Are you dead?”

His eyes opened and met hers. “Can’t…breathe…wind…knocked out…of me,” he rasped as he fought his spasming lungs.

“Don’t talk,” she ordered placing her free hand on his. “Is anything broken? Is your horse hurt? Please don’t be hurt, the nearest doctor lives hours away. I’m so sorry. You know I’m sorry, don’t you? What can I do to help? Are you from around here? I’ve never seen you before. Are you lost? I am not very good at directions but I’ll try to help. Where are you going? Oh, lord. You’re going to die, aren’t you?”

Suddenly, he put his hand over hers. Meredith flinched infinitesimally as the slight contact sent shock waves of awareness through her. It didn’t make sense because she did the exact same thing moments earlier and knew the comforting gesture meant nothing. How pathetic that such a small gesture would undoubtedly escalate into a fond memory to take into her spinsterhood.