Rivals (30 page)

“This woman, who is she?” Flame glanced expectantly at the attorney.

He answered without looking at the photograph. “Ann Compton Morgan, Kell Morgan's wife. You see, after the house was finished and all the furnishings arrived, Kell decided it was time he took a wife. Naturally, not just any woman would do. He had a shopping list of requirements his future bride needed to fulfill. First of all, he wanted a woman with refinement and breeding, someone with culture and education, possessing style and grace—preferably pretty, but attractive would do. But, above all, she had to be the daughter of a family active in either politics, banking, or railroads. In short, his wife had to be a lady and a valuable liaison.” Observing the disapproving arch of her eyebrow, Ben Canon smiled. “As crude and chauvinistic as that might sound to you, you must remember that Kell Morgan was a pragmatic man. Christopher was the idealist.”

“Obviously,” she murmured.

“In the fall of 'eighty-nine, after the first great land run opened the so-called Unassigned Territory to homesteaders the previous spring, giving birth to the towns of Guthrie and Oklahoma City, Kell Morgan went to Kansas City to find his bride.”

“And his list went right out the window when he met Ann Compton,” Charlie Rainwater declared, punctuating it with a faint chortle of amusement as he pushed out of his chair and walked over to the tray to pour himself some coffee. “Fell for her like he'd been shot out of the sky, he did,” he said, winking at Flame.

“Is that true?” Flame turned to the attorney for confirmation, not so much doubting Charlie's word as being surprised by it. Kell Morgan seemed the type who would make a loveless marriage of convenience.

“Indeed, he fell hopelessly in love with her. And from the standpoint that her father was a socially prominent physician in the community, but without any important business connections in his family, she failed his major requirement in a wife. The fact that he married her anyway after a month-long whirlwind courtship merely proves that, like most men, Kell Morgan had his weaknesses.”

He walked back to the bookshelves and removed a slim volume, bound in rose-colored cloth, its edges threadbare and worn. “In every other respect, however, she was exactly what he'd wanted in a wife—an educated woman, well versed in arts and literature, trained in the social graces, and extraordinarily pleasing to the eye. When you read the diaries she kept, you'll see that Kell Morgan swept her off her feet. Although what girl wouldn't be if she was ardently pursued by a handsome and rich cattle baron with a grand and stately mansion on the prairie waiting for the warmth of a woman to transform it into a home. There are frequent passages in her diary that deal with the romantic ideas she had about life on the frontier. She expected it to be an exciting adventure. And it would seem that Kell Morgan had made little effort to dispell those notions. He was too intent on winning her affections—and her hand in marriage.”

When he paused to draw in a deep breath, Flame had the feeling he was doing it purely for effect. “Later, much later, he blamed himself for her disenchantment. Their first few months of married life here at Morgan's Walk were deliriously happy ones—according to her diary. Then, I suppose, the newness of her surroundings wore off. Nothing had prepared her for the tedium and isolation of ranch life—or the long hours, sometimes days at a time, she spent alone while her husband was out on the range. Growing up in the city, she was used to a constant round of teas, socials, cotillions, or friends stopping by to call. Here, she had no friends; visitors were few and far between; and her nearest neighbor was half a day's buggy ride away. She had nothing in common with the sun-browned women who lived around her. Most of them had never seen a parasol before she came and knew nothing about the classics or chamber music. Naturally, Tulsa was the closest town of any size, but the activities it offered—other than an occasional church social on a Sunday afternoon or parties at private homes—were geared more for the cattlemen in the area, eager to blow off steam on a Saturday, drink, gamble, and cavort with the town's soiled doves.”

Flame absently smoothed her hand over the diary's cloth cover. She, oddly, was reluctant to open the book and read the young woman's innermost thoughts. Somehow it seemed an invasion.

“From everything you've told me about her, I have the impression that she had a great deal more in common with Christopher than she did her husband.” As she voiced her thoughts, it suddenly occurred to her. “Is that what happened? Is she the reason he left and never came back?” Then she frowned, even more confused than before. “What does all this have to do with the Stuarts?”

A smile of amused tolerance rounded the attorney's plump cheeks. “You're getting ahead of me again, Flame.”

“It strikes me that Annie Morgan would never have been happy here.” Charlie Rainwater crossed to the fireplace and stood with one leg cocked and a hand propped on the smooth marble face as he gazed up at the portrait. “'Course, he always believed that she would have come to love it if she hadn't gotten with child that first year they were married.”

“Yes, the confinement of her pregnancy coupled with the loneliness and boredom she already felt merely added to her unhappiness,” Ben Canon agreed. “Not even the joy of giving birth to a healthy baby the following year made up for it. That boy, by the way, was Hattie's father, Jonathan Robert Morgan,” he added in an aside, then continued. “Naturally little Johnny had his own way of keeping Ann close to home, even though she was able to find a wet nurse for him. Kell did his best to keep her happy. All these books, the ebony piano in the parlor, a buggy of her own, and a matched team of high-stepping grays to pull it—he gave her everything but the one thing that might have helped: his company. As she frequently states in her diary, a son is no substitute for a husband. And by the early fall of eighteen ninety-three, you get a very real sense of her loneliness, dissatisfaction, and…desperation, I suppose.” He gestured briefly at the closed diary Flame held. “Hattie has marked the page where the story begins.”

Flame hesitated, then glanced at the slim volume in her hands, belatedly noticing the thin, age-yellowed tassel draped over the back cover. A chainstitch of thin threads connected it to a hand-tatted bookmark inserted between the pages near the back of the diary. She resisted the attorney's subtle urging to read the woman's private journal, then realized this was part of the proof Hattie had promised.

Reluctantly she slid her fingers along the bookmark and opened the diary to the prescribed page. For a moment she stared at the small, neat handwriting, each letter precisely and perfectly formed. Then she began to read.

21

August 29, 1893

I am going! Kell has finally consented to let me accompany him when he takes the herd of horses to Guthrie to sell to the homesteaders who have gathered there to make the Run into the Cherokee Strip. He didn't say, but I know it was Chris who persuaded him to change his mind. He was so adamant that I must remain at Morgan's Walk the last time we argued, insisting that such events attracted the worst as well as the best, that I despaired of him ever permitting me to go. How fortunate I am to have Chris for a brother-in-law. If he had not championed my cause, I am quite certain I would have gone mad if I had been forced to stay in this house all alone for two weeks
.

My darling Johnny will have to remain here with Sarah. I shall miss him dreadfully, but the journey overland would be too much for a three-year-old. It's terrible to be pulled like this, wanting so much to go, yet hating so much to leave my son behind. But it will only be for two weeks
.

It should be an experience quite beyond compare. Papa writes that his patients have talked of little else but the opening of the Cherokee Strip to settlers. I have heard that people are pouring in from all parts of the country to take part in the Run. Some are estimating that there may be as many as one hundred thousand people on the starting line when the gun goes off. One hundred thousand! And here I am, hungry for the sight of one
.

September 9, 1893

At long last, we have arrived in Guthrie. There were times when I despaired we would ever make it. The heat was—and is—unbearable. It has not rained all summer and the dust is so thick it coats everything. All my traveling clothes are covered with it. I know I resembled a walking powder puff when I arrived at the hotel. Each step I took, dust billowed about me. I fear the rigors of outdoor life shall never be for me. I have been bounced and jarred, jolted and rattled until I marvel that all my bones are still connected. Chris knows how I suffered on that journey, but I dared not say a word to Kell. He would have sent me back to Morgan's Walk on the spot and I would have missed all this excitement. (Although I assure you I shall be making the return by train.)

Excitement there is in great abundance, too. The street outside our hotel window is crowded with people in every kind and type of conveyance imaginable. Many of the wagons have clever little sayings written on their canvas covers. We passed one that read:

“
I won't be a sooner, but I'll get thar as soon as the soonest
.”

And another said:

In God we trusted
.

In Texas we busted
.

But let 'er rip

We'll make 'er in the Strip
.

The determination—the fervor that is on the faces of these people—is something to see. Kell calls it land fever. It is definitely contagious, for I feel the same restlessness of spirit. Kell has forbade me to leave the room unless he or Chris accompanies me. He says there are too many desperados, gamblers, and swindlers in town, come to fleece these poor, unsuspecting homesteaders of their precious savings, and he fears for my safety should I venture out alone. Yet when I look out the window of our hotel room, I see whole families jammed in their wagons, young men on blooded horses, boys on ponies, old men on ambling gennets, and women—yes, women, here to make the Run all alone! The thought staggers me. Yet the ones I've seen seem to be a decent sort—not at all the type one might expect to find
.

As a matter of fact, a woman stopped us just as we were about to enter the hotel. She looked to be in her late twenties and, despite the layers of dust that clung to her, I could tell she was stylishly dressed….

“Please, will you buy my hat?” The woman fumbled momentarily with the lid to the hatbox she carried, then lifted it and produced the hat from inside for Ann's inspection. “It came all the way from Chicago and I've only worn it twice. You can see it's just like new.”

At first Ann drew back from the proffered hat and the strange woman accosting her on the sidewalk. Not that she could possibly be in any danger, not when she was flanked by two tall, strong men, with Kell on one side of her and Chris on the other. Then she saw the hat—red felt trimmed in red velvet and adorned with feathers and gray satin ribbon. It was the perfect thing to wear with her pearl-gray dress.

“It's beautiful,” Ann declared, then looked again at the woman, conscious all the while of the firm pressure of Kell's hand at her elbow and his rigid stance of disapproval, but she wouldn't be hurried inside. “Why on earth would you want to sell it?”

“I…” The woman pushed the receding line of her chin a little higher, asserting her pride. “…I need another five dollars to pay the filing fee when I make my claim.”

“Where is your husand?” Kell demanded, much to Ann's embarrassment.

“I have none.”

A spinster. Ann looked at her pityingly, then realized what the woman was saying. “You aren't making the Run yourself?” This was no sturdy farm woman with a complexion turned ruddy and coarse by the sun. Both her manner and style of dress spoke of gentility and education.

“Indeed I am,” she stated. “I intend to have a place of my own—become a woman of property.” Then she explained that she'd been a teacher for the last eight years in the backwoods of Texas, obliged to board with the parents of her pupils. “I want to sleep in my own bed, have my own curtains at the window, and cook my meals on my own stove. And this is my one chance to do it. Please, will you buy my hat?”

…Kell bought the hat for me, although afterward he said he shouldn't have encouraged her to go ahead with her foolhardy plan. He says that it will be a stampede when that gun goes off to start the Run. I'm quite sure he's right. I wonder at the daring she has. I know I could never be so bold as to do such a thing. Yet I understand the desperation I saw in her eyes, that need to break from a way of life she despises before it crushes her spirit completely
.

It is nearly four o'clock and I am to meet Chris in the lobby on the hour. I think I shall wear my new hat
.

There is so much more to tell. I hope I shall remember it all to write down later, but Chris awaits and I am anxious to be out of this room and among people again
.

From the stairs' bottom step, Ann scanned the jumble of people crowded into the hotel's small lobby. With the red felt hat perched atop her freshened curls and a closed parasol in hand, she idly fanned her face with a lavender-drenched kerchief, and dabbed occasionally at the perspiration that gathered so readily on her upper lip. A fan turned overhead, yet it seemed to accomplish little beyond circulating the oppressive heat. She looked, but there was no sign of Chris. Usually he was easy to spot in a crowd, like Kell, standing a good inch over six feet, which put him head and shoulders above nearly everyone else. It wasn't like him to be late. Perhaps he'd stepped outside for some air. Ann decided to check.

Skirting the crowded lobby, Ann made her way to the double doors, propped open to admit any breeze that was stirring. Outside the hotel, the spectacle of the street greeted her once again. She had never seen anything like it in her whole life—cowboys mounted on snorting, half-tamed broncs, dudes in their checked suits and square-crowned bowlers, and women in their poke bonnets and worn gingham dresses riding on buckboards and prairie schooners crammed with all their possessions. The constant stream of traffic churned the dust and created a cloud that hugged the ground. And the rumble of wagons, the rattle of trace chains, the thunder of hooves, the creak of leather, the crack of the whips, the shouted curses of the drivers all combined to assault the ears, just as the stench of sweating bodies, man and animal, combined to assault the nose.